Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Khalid Amayreh - The Vatican must show goodwill toward Muslims
The highly-publicized conversion to Catholicism of a naturalized Italian citizen of Egyptian origin this week once again illustrates the uneasy relations between Islam and western Christianity.The problem, of course, doesn’t lie in the conversion itself. People after all should be free to choose their faith and way of life without coercion. The Quran itself declares that “let there be no compulsion in religion.” The way Muslims ought to relate to disbelievers is engraved in Sura (or chapter) 9 of Islam’s holy scriptures, which reads:
Say : O ye that reject Faith!
I worship not that which ye worship,
Nor will ye worship that which I worship.
And I will not worship that which ye have been wont to worship,
Nor will ye worship that which I worship.
To you be your Way, and to me mine.
But the problem lies in the vindictive atmosphere surrounding the conversion ceremony, including the anti-Islamic allusions and insinuations.
Magdi Allam, who an Israel newspaper once called a “Muslim Zionist” admitted that he had always been a nominal Muslim, that he had never really practiced Islam and never prayed in his life. Yet, we have been told ad nauseam by a wantonly ignorant or dishonest Western media that Allam was “a prominent Muslim.”
Well, the truth is that he was neither Muslim nor prominent. How could a person who praises and glorifies Israel’s genocidal crimes against his fellow human beings (Christian and Muslims alike) be a man of faith? Morality, honesty and candor are the ultimate signs of faith, characters that Allam conspicuously lacks.
So, it is highly doubtful that a man who believes Zionism represents true righteousness and genuine civility will be a righteous individual, let alone a good Catholic.
In the context of his baptism at the hands of the Pope of the Vatican, Allam made a series of provocative lies against Islam.
The man who had written a book titled “Long Live Israel” was quoted as saying that “the root of evil is innate in an Islam that is physiologically violent and historically conflictual."
This is a cardinal mendacity, because all religions, ideologies, and isms are by definition “conflictual.” Indeed, in order for an idea, any idea, to be un-conflictual, it has to be completely “morally neutral” between good and evil. Christianity itself was conflictual from day one.
In Matthew 10-34-39, Jesus is quoted as saying that:
"Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it."
In the Gospel of Thomas 16, (SV), Jesus said:
"Perhaps people think that I have come to cast peace upon the world. They do not know that I have come to cast conflicts upon the earth: fire, sword, war. For there will be five in a house: there'll be three against two and two against three, father against son and son against father, and they will stand alone."
The above shows beyond doubt that Allam doesn’t know what he is talking about when he faults Islam for being “historically conflictual.”
As to the issue of violence, Allam is being equally ignorant of historical facts, because if a religion is to be judged solely by the behavior of its followers, then Christianity stands out as the main candidate for being the most violent religion under the sun.
Let us consider some of the following historical facts pertaining to the relationship between Christianity and violence. In the past century alone, Western “Christians” killed more than a hundred million people, mostly other Christians. In just two essentially ‘Christian' World Wars, as many as 70 million people were killed. Indeed, the numerous crusades, holocausts, pogroms, inquisitions, gulags and ethnic cleansings that the White man committed in the name of Jesus make Muslim violence and wars look utterly negligible in comparison.
In the Middle Ages, Catholics spread death, terror and havoc through Europe, Asia Minor and the Levant. The Franks not only slaughtered Muslims and Jews en masse, but targeted their Orthodox coreligionists, destroying and desecrating their churches, murdering their priests and raping their women.
In North America, South America and Australia the White man murdered millions in the name of Christ and Manifest Destiny.
To be sure, Muslims, too, indulged in violence, including unjustified violence. However, stigmatizing Islam with this calumny, as if the hands of Catholics and other western Christians were clean, constitutes a pornographic deviation from historical truth and honesty.
Samuel P. Huntington is one of the West’s most prominent contemporary intellectuals. He argued that “the west won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence.”
“Westerners,” he said, “often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.”
One Vatican official, Cardinal Giovanni, told an Italian newspaper following the conversion ceremony that “conversion is a private matter, a personal thing and we hope that the baptism will not be interpreted negatively by Muslims.”
Well, one might give Giovanni the benefit of the doubt were it not for the purposefully high profile the Vatican gave this conversion. In the final analysis, the Vatican can’t hope for good relations with Muslims and at the same time continue to incite hatred and racism against a religion that has as many as 15 hundred million followers, including millions of Europeans and hundreds of thousands of Italians.
Millions of erstwhile Christians converted to Islam in Europe and North America in recent years. However, unlike the Vatican, the Muslim religious authorities have chosen not to turn every conversion into a trial of Christianity.
Finally, it is imperative to remember that Muslims and Christians are neighbors and compatriots all over the world. This fact alone, which is not going to disappear, necessitates that each community be sensitive to the sensibilities and feelings of the other.
Mutual respect, we are told, is the essence of religious faith.
I add a comment below:
To read excellent opinion pieces in Italian on Allam, see Sherif's blog. To add my own commentary, I want to mention that 4 and a half years ago, Allam came to my town to promote his book on Saddam Hussein (which had as bibilographical references nothing more than Allam's own articles and pages were dedicated to the style of moustache and hair colouring of Saddam...) and one of the conclusions he came to was that the War never would really have happened if people had not protested for "peace". He said that this gave Saddam the false confidence that he could win, and that the war then became inevitable. In essence, protesters were blamed for fanning the flames of war. Also at that presentation, two Palestinians who tried to speak had the microphone taken from them before they could even finish their question. As soon as they said negative comments about Israel, the "security" force ran to them and shut them up. There were about 20 people who protested this, and we were asked to leave. The host of the event, who is a bookseller and who knows me later apologised to me for it but said that there were strict rules set by Allam and his own bodyguards that they did not want any agitators. The list of topics that would not be addressed were Palestine and Israel and when these words came out, the security staff were ordered to remove the microphones. The fact that calling most of us sitting there agitators because we protested the war is evidence of the kind of person Allam is.
Labels: hasbara, Islam, Israel, Italy, journalism
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Miguel Martinez - Looking for the King of Copy and Paste
Translated by Ernesto Páramo. Revised by author
Two days after the FARC guerrillas delivered two kidnapped parliamentarians to president Chávez of Venezuela, the Spanish newspaper El Pais followed by many other mass media outlets everywhere, was determined to confuse its readership and nip in the bud all reports of a significant news item which could have given us hope for the future. This event was, however, against their political editorial line, so they replaced it with a pseudo-report entitled " Are Hugo Chávez and Naomi Campbell engaged?"
In Italy, the press behaved in a similar fashion. Israel managed to snatch the role of guest of honour at the Turin Book Fair away from Egypt, to whom the event had been solemnly promised: thus, in the sixtieth anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, two of the three great publishing events (Turin and Paris) are both dedicated to Israel this year (Frankfurt was dedicated to Israel in 2005). Repubblica, the leading Italian daily close to the centre-left, replied by devoting its front page and two full pages inside to a weird and unknown blog which had copied a list of signatories to a pro-Israel petition that had been in the public domain for months: La Repubblica pretended that the appearance of this list on the blog was a clear sign of a dangerous anti-Semitic revival.
Note from the Spanish translator Juan Vivanco
In Italy there are probably at least half a million, perhaps a million blogs.
Because of inevitable statistical constraints, we have to assume that a small proportion of these blogs – which still could amount to something like 10.000 - are written by mad people.
Now, “Mad“ is a strictly scientific term, which does not refer to the contents, but to a series of unequivocal psychoelectronic indicators. For example, the random use of capital letters (known as CapsLock syndrome).
Among these mad characters, there is one that likes to be known as KING SHAULOS II, and up to yesterday, His Majesty had a blog covered with banners reading “ NO TO TURKEY IN EUROPE ”. Actually he does not use random capital letters: he uses nothing but capital letters.
And he proclaims to be the only sovereign of THE CHRISTIAN WEST, clearly under “JESUS VINCIT-REGNAT-IMPERAT IN LISBON AND IN SAINT PETERSBURG, THERE IS ONLY ONE KING – THE KING OF KINGS”.
On the pages of his blog we can also see the image of the Three Kings, and more significantly, a True Portrait of His Majesty SHAULOS in person:
The blog is also full of useful advice:
“THE INSTANT THAT SYNCHRONIZES THE PRESENT IS THE WILL OF GOD, KING SHAULOS II”
His political program is very clear:
ELECTIONS:
“LET'S ADOPT ISRAELI ELECTORAL LAW –
LET'S PRESERVE THE ITALIAN CHARACTER OF DEMOCRACY,
LET'S PREVENT THE CONTAMINATION OF ITALIAN IDENTITY BY ISLAM AND JUDAISM”
In short, he is as twisted as the late Oriana Fallaci, with the difference that he adds Judaism to his pet hates (…).
I have seen the King's blog a couple of times, and it has given me some cheerful laughs (I know, we should not laugh at mad people, but I have never claimed to be politically correct).
However, this morning I saw him again.
On the front page of Repubblica. Plus, they dedicated the whole of pages 10 and 11 to him.
Just a question… how much would it cost a run of the mill blogger to buy all that newspaper space?
The headlines are simply fantastic:
Black list of Jews “return to fascism”
On the Net, the black list of Jewish teachers
Amato [ Interior Minister]: An offense against the law and against civilization
The blog closed, the hunt is on for the author. "We will get him”
Public derision, just as during fascism
Memory must be studied at University to put a stop to hate
Too dangerous a climate, according to the University's point of view.
Code name H5N1, a year of poison sown in the internet
The alarm of the Department of the Interior …Anti-Semitism is reborn in Italy in this way
As you get your breath back, let's try to understand exactly what His Majesty did. First, what is all that about a “Jews black list”?
Very simple. It is the list of signatories of an appeal “against anti-Semitism ” that has been in the public domain for a long time.
If you read the petition, you will see that it has nothing to do with anti-Semitism, and everything to do with the State of Israel (yes, the usual, "those who fight on behalf of the native Palestinians population are anti-Semitic”).
So public was the petition that the promoters bought space in the newspaper Corriere della Sera to publish it, on 14th May 2005.
The space was not bought by the Neonazi International but by “Luzzato Amos, President of the Union of Jewish Italian Communities”. This means, that those on the list paid to publish their full names in a newspaper that sells a million copies a day, if my memory serves me right.
Three months ago (15.11.2007) [1] His Majesty King Shaulos II, with a simple copy and paste job, took the list from a Jewish web-page and put it on his blog (ten readers a day?) with this presentation:
“THIS IS A LIST OF THE JEWISH UNIVERSITY PROFESORS WHO DECLARE OPENLY THEIR SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL”
A piece of nonsense, since the majority of the professors on the list are right wing extremists, racial segregation fanatics and genocide apologists, they are anything, but Jewish.
On the other hand, no one has said that Shaulos II was a wise king.
As it happens, he did not compile the “black list” himself.
The supposedly black-listed put it together themselves (…).
However, now His Majesty King Shaulos II will have to face the Jewish community who call him “ a cancer that can propagate and affect anyone ”, the Chancellor of Rome's University says “ it is an unacceptable act of intolerance ”, the Chancellor of the other Roman university of Tor Vergata, Alessandro Agro, calls for the King to be jailed (being a King, I suppose to be guillottined). ” And also, he will have to face the whole Italian people, as Walter Veltroni, leader of the centre-left (and the enemy and scourge of gypsies) assures us.
Ready for the fight, the Minister of the University said his whole ministry would “pursue charges in court against the the authors of the list”.
The authors of the list, let us not forget, are Amos Luzzato and the Corriere della Sera.
Soon, Shaulos II will have to face scores of accusations from all the interested parties. The newspaper La Repubblica assures us that the professors are going to take him to court for libel.
Let’s see. The blogger has said (erroneously) that all those on the list are Jewish and (correctly) that they are all apologists of Israel.
Wonder which of the two statements they will sue him for.
Note:
[1] In other words, both I and those “included on the black list ” have had time to find that the list existed. After all, something called Google exists.
This means these people kept silent until the scandal of how Israel stole from Egypt the place of honor at the Turin Book Fair blew up in their faces. (see the document in Italian).
Source: http://kelebek.splinder.com/post/15873818/ Original article published on 9th February, 2008
About the author Miguel Martínez and Ernesto Páramo are members of Tlaxcala, the network of translators for linguistic diversity. This translation may be reprinted as long as the content remains unaltered, and the source, author, translator and reviser are cited.
URL of this article on Tlaxcala: http://www.tlaxcala.es/pp.asp?reference=4646&lg=en
French Spanish Italian
Two days after the FARC guerrillas delivered two kidnapped parliamentarians to president Chávez of Venezuela, the Spanish newspaper El Pais followed by many other mass media outlets everywhere, was determined to confuse its readership and nip in the bud all reports of a significant news item which could have given us hope for the future. This event was, however, against their political editorial line, so they replaced it with a pseudo-report entitled " Are Hugo Chávez and Naomi Campbell engaged?"
In Italy, the press behaved in a similar fashion. Israel managed to snatch the role of guest of honour at the Turin Book Fair away from Egypt, to whom the event had been solemnly promised: thus, in the sixtieth anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, two of the three great publishing events (Turin and Paris) are both dedicated to Israel this year (Frankfurt was dedicated to Israel in 2005). Repubblica, the leading Italian daily close to the centre-left, replied by devoting its front page and two full pages inside to a weird and unknown blog which had copied a list of signatories to a pro-Israel petition that had been in the public domain for months: La Repubblica pretended that the appearance of this list on the blog was a clear sign of a dangerous anti-Semitic revival.
Note from the Spanish translator Juan Vivanco
In Italy there are probably at least half a million, perhaps a million blogs.
Because of inevitable statistical constraints, we have to assume that a small proportion of these blogs – which still could amount to something like 10.000 - are written by mad people.
Now, “Mad“ is a strictly scientific term, which does not refer to the contents, but to a series of unequivocal psychoelectronic indicators. For example, the random use of capital letters (known as CapsLock syndrome).
Among these mad characters, there is one that likes to be known as KING SHAULOS II, and up to yesterday, His Majesty had a blog covered with banners reading “ NO TO TURKEY IN EUROPE ”. Actually he does not use random capital letters: he uses nothing but capital letters.
And he proclaims to be the only sovereign of THE CHRISTIAN WEST, clearly under “JESUS VINCIT-REGNAT-IMPERAT IN LISBON AND IN SAINT PETERSBURG, THERE IS ONLY ONE KING – THE KING OF KINGS”.
On the pages of his blog we can also see the image of the Three Kings, and more significantly, a True Portrait of His Majesty SHAULOS in person:
The blog is also full of useful advice:“THE INSTANT THAT SYNCHRONIZES THE PRESENT IS THE WILL OF GOD, KING SHAULOS II”
His political program is very clear:
ELECTIONS:
“LET'S ADOPT ISRAELI ELECTORAL LAW –
LET'S PRESERVE THE ITALIAN CHARACTER OF DEMOCRACY,
LET'S PREVENT THE CONTAMINATION OF ITALIAN IDENTITY BY ISLAM AND JUDAISM”
In short, he is as twisted as the late Oriana Fallaci, with the difference that he adds Judaism to his pet hates (…).
I have seen the King's blog a couple of times, and it has given me some cheerful laughs (I know, we should not laugh at mad people, but I have never claimed to be politically correct).
However, this morning I saw him again.
On the front page of Repubblica. Plus, they dedicated the whole of pages 10 and 11 to him.
Just a question… how much would it cost a run of the mill blogger to buy all that newspaper space?
The headlines are simply fantastic:
Black list of Jews “return to fascism”
On the Net, the black list of Jewish teachers
Amato [ Interior Minister]: An offense against the law and against civilization
The blog closed, the hunt is on for the author. "We will get him”
Public derision, just as during fascism
Memory must be studied at University to put a stop to hate
Too dangerous a climate, according to the University's point of view.
Code name H5N1, a year of poison sown in the internet
The alarm of the Department of the Interior …Anti-Semitism is reborn in Italy in this way
As you get your breath back, let's try to understand exactly what His Majesty did. First, what is all that about a “Jews black list”?
Very simple. It is the list of signatories of an appeal “against anti-Semitism ” that has been in the public domain for a long time.
If you read the petition, you will see that it has nothing to do with anti-Semitism, and everything to do with the State of Israel (yes, the usual, "those who fight on behalf of the native Palestinians population are anti-Semitic”).
So public was the petition that the promoters bought space in the newspaper Corriere della Sera to publish it, on 14th May 2005.
The space was not bought by the Neonazi International but by “Luzzato Amos, President of the Union of Jewish Italian Communities”. This means, that those on the list paid to publish their full names in a newspaper that sells a million copies a day, if my memory serves me right.
Three months ago (15.11.2007) [1] His Majesty King Shaulos II, with a simple copy and paste job, took the list from a Jewish web-page and put it on his blog (ten readers a day?) with this presentation:
“THIS IS A LIST OF THE JEWISH UNIVERSITY PROFESORS WHO DECLARE OPENLY THEIR SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL”
A piece of nonsense, since the majority of the professors on the list are right wing extremists, racial segregation fanatics and genocide apologists, they are anything, but Jewish.
On the other hand, no one has said that Shaulos II was a wise king.
As it happens, he did not compile the “black list” himself.
The supposedly black-listed put it together themselves (…).
However, now His Majesty King Shaulos II will have to face the Jewish community who call him “ a cancer that can propagate and affect anyone ”, the Chancellor of Rome's University says “ it is an unacceptable act of intolerance ”, the Chancellor of the other Roman university of Tor Vergata, Alessandro Agro, calls for the King to be jailed (being a King, I suppose to be guillottined). ” And also, he will have to face the whole Italian people, as Walter Veltroni, leader of the centre-left (and the enemy and scourge of gypsies) assures us.
Ready for the fight, the Minister of the University said his whole ministry would “pursue charges in court against the the authors of the list”.
The authors of the list, let us not forget, are Amos Luzzato and the Corriere della Sera.
Soon, Shaulos II will have to face scores of accusations from all the interested parties. The newspaper La Repubblica assures us that the professors are going to take him to court for libel.
Let’s see. The blogger has said (erroneously) that all those on the list are Jewish and (correctly) that they are all apologists of Israel.
Wonder which of the two statements they will sue him for.
Note:
[1] In other words, both I and those “included on the black list ” have had time to find that the list existed. After all, something called Google exists.
This means these people kept silent until the scandal of how Israel stole from Egypt the place of honor at the Turin Book Fair blew up in their faces. (see the document in Italian).
Source: http://kelebek.splinder.com/post/15873818/ Original article published on 9th February, 2008
About the author Miguel Martínez and Ernesto Páramo are members of Tlaxcala, the network of translators for linguistic diversity. This translation may be reprinted as long as the content remains unaltered, and the source, author, translator and reviser are cited.
URL of this article on Tlaxcala: http://www.tlaxcala.es/pp.asp?reference=4646&lg=en
French Spanish Italian
Labels: absolute madness, anti-Semitism, documents, hasbara, Israel, Italy, journalism, propaganda, Tlaxcala
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Bill Fletcher - Palestine Matters
When atrocities befall the Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli occupiers, much of the Western world remains silent. Particularly in the USA, we await an Israeli explanation for the atrocity, often assuring ourselves that we will be offered a rational and acceptable justification for whatever has taken place. Civilians killed, for instance, when the Israelis choose to assassinate a Palestinian leader, and we are generally told that it is tragic collateral damage. The use of cluster bombs in the attack on Lebanon in 2006, and we are treated to stories about the brutality of Hezbollah. The fact is that Israel is the only power in the Middle East with nuclear weapons, and we are entertained with silence. In each case, the response is accepted as understandable, given Israel's fight for existence.Today the people of Gaza are victims of what both Israeli and Palestinian human rights activists correctly call collective punishment. After the Hamas/Fatah mini-civil war in which Hamas took over Gaza, allegedly because they believed that Fatah was preparing to attack them, the Israelis began a blockade (as well as military incursions) with the full support of the Bush administration. This was followed by rocket attacks on Israeli settlements near Gaza by some Palestinian military units. The Israeli blockade never let up nor did Israeli attacks on Gaza or Palestinian rocket attacks against settlements. Despite Hamas' repeated offers for a truce, the Israeli government has turned a deaf ear, finally locking the people of Gaza into a collective hell.
When, a few weeks ago, humanitarian organizations began voicing louder and louder concerns regarding the conditions facing the people of Gaza, the Israeli government and their apologists in the USA shrugged this off. I was stunned, for instance, to read commentaries in the US media where it was suggested that, while conditions may not have been ideal, there was no humanitarian threat. When Hamas blew up the walls blocking off Gaza from Egypt and hundreds of thousands of people entered Egypt in order to get badly needed supplies, some commentators in the USA suggested that the Palestinians were really just interested in obtaining more cheap cigarettes.
As a little reminder, the notion of collective punishment, that is, taking steps against an entire people due to the actions of some, is illegal according to international law. Consider, for instance, if the USA decided to blockade and bomb Sicily due to the activities of the Sicilian Mafia (which has been responsible for the deaths of thousands through the drug trade as well as other illegal activity). What if, in addition, the USA took military action against the Italian government because it had not taken a strong enough stand against the Mafia? Such an approach would be considered absurd, but this is, in effect, what has been unfolding against the Palestinians, not just today, but for the length of the Occupation that began in 1967.
As a little reminder, the notion of collective punishment, that is, taking steps against an entire people due to the actions of some, is illegal according to international law. Consider, for instance, if the USA decided to blockade and bomb Sicily due to the activities of the Sicilian Mafia (which has been responsible for the deaths of thousands through the drug trade as well as other illegal activity). What if, in addition, the USA took military action against the Italian government because it had not taken a strong enough stand against the Mafia? Such an approach would be considered absurd, but this is, in effect, what has been unfolding against the Palestinians, not just today, but for the length of the Occupation that began in 1967.
The suffering in Gaza specifically, and Palestine in general, has not been the subject of any substantive discussion in the 2008 Presidential campaign. There is a code of silence that surrounds this subject and an unspoken assumption that whatever steps Israel needs to take to ensure its survival will receive 100% support from the US political establishment. Additionally, as was in full view in the aftermath of former President Jimmy Carters best-selling book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, those who question the Israeli Occupation and the US complicity in it, are subject to vitriolic attack, and more often than not, accused of being anti-Semitic. Thus, the conditions have been stacked in most so-called mainstream circles against a reasonable discussion of a key foreign policy matter.
The continued consequences of this approach should not need to be reiterated. Despite the photo-op that took place in Annapolis with the Bush-orchestrated Israeli/Palestinian summit in 2007, little progress has been made. Israeli strangulation of the Gaza makes it politically unlikely for the Palestinian National Authority, under President Abbas, to make any significant compromises, not that the Palestinians have much more to give.
The garroting of the Gaza and the destruction of the wall separating it from Egypt actually serves as a metaphor for the larger Palestinian situation. Whether through the "apartheid" Wall created by the Israelis cutting off Palestinian territory and creating, in effect, reservations for the Palestinians; through the imprisonment of some Palestinian leaders; through the assassination of other Palestinian leaders; and through the increase in illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory, the Palestinian people are being pushed further and further to the brink.
The garroting of the Gaza and the destruction of the wall separating it from Egypt actually serves as a metaphor for the larger Palestinian situation. Whether through the "apartheid" Wall created by the Israelis cutting off Palestinian territory and creating, in effect, reservations for the Palestinians; through the imprisonment of some Palestinian leaders; through the assassination of other Palestinian leaders; and through the increase in illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory, the Palestinian people are being pushed further and further to the brink.
The good news, to the extent to which there is any, is that there has been a noticeable change in the climate on the ground in the USA when it comes to discussing Palestine. The fact that Carter's book was a best seller, not to mention the growing attention in the USA and in Europe to the need for an immediate end to the Israeli Occupation, quite possibly portends an opening toward a just resolution of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
Yet the US political establishment does not get it. Each time they attempt to silence discussion of Palestine, or pretend that atrocities against Palestinians are simply the figments of someone's imagination, their credibility in the eyes of the world further diminishes. It is the equivalent of attempting to keep a bubble under water.
With each atrocity against the Palestinian people comes another battle cry from one or another part of the planet, not only against Israel, but against their unconditional backers in Washington, DC. And those battle cries should raise our concern.
What about this do our political leaders not understand? When will they get the wax out of their ears and the cotton out of their mouths and recognize that a different road must be taken?
Bill Fletcher, Jr. is Executive Editor of The Black Commentator. He is also a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies and the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum. Click here to contact Mr. Fletcher.
Labels: activism, Gaza, human rights violations, Israel, Italy, journalism, Palestine, Palestinian politicians, US
Monday, January 28, 2008
Culture cannot save Israel, Shabtai and more on the Turin Israel Extravaganza
The Israeli poet Aharon Shabtai says “no” also to the Book Fair of Paris. Here is the letter he sent to negatively respond to the invitation of the director of the book fair, dedicated, as is the Turin edition, to Israel.Dear Edna,
Thank you for your letter.
I do not believe that a State that maintains an occupation, committing on a daily basis crimes against civilians, deserves to be invited to any kind of cultural week. That is, it is anti-cultural; it is a barbarian act masked as culture in the most cynical way. It manifests support for Israel, and even to France that sustains the occupation. And I do not want to participate.
Kind regards,
Aharon Shabtai
7 December, 2007
Culture - Aharon Shabtai
The mark of Cain won't sprout
from a soldier who shoots
at the head of a child
at the head of a child
on a knoll by the fence
around a refugee camp-
-for beneath his helmet,
conceptually speaking,
his head is made of cardboard.
On the other hand,
the officer has read The Rebel;
his head is enlightened,
and so he does not believe
in the mark of Cain.
He's spent time in museums,
and when he aims his rifle at a boy
as an ambassador of Culture,
he updates and recycles
Goya's etchings
and Guernica.
ANOTHER LETTER TO VALENTINO PARLATO
Dear Valentino,
I think that for you to have expressed your hasty negative judgment on the proposal of boycotting of the International Book Fair of Turin this year, which has decided to choose as its guest of honour the State of Israel in the year that marks the 60th since its birth, you could and should have used less banal and more convincing arguments. Your fine distinction between the (just) boycott of Apartheid South Africa and the (wrong) boycott of Apartheid Israel is of a subtlety that is even somewhat dangerous to interpret. You write, with a particularly insufferable tone, that “with the 60th anniversary of the foundation of the State of Israel, the Palestinian question inevitably reopens”. In reality, the Palestinian question has been open for 60 years and has never been closed. The State of Palestine, which itself was foreseen by the UN in December 1947, never saw the light of day, not even on that minuscule 22% in which the Palestinian population has been rounded up into after the Nakba, that is, the Catastrophe, that is, the ethnic cleansing of 1948. And it is really strange that you, in order to justify these 60 years of oppression, occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing bring in Stalin, notorious organiser of Gulags. It is just as strange that you cite the fact that in the Warsaw Ghetto the last Jews who were the protagonists of a heroic armed resistance (that right to resistance that the cowardly and hypocritical European governments deny to the Palestinians who are occupied militarily and who have been mistreated for decades by Israel), sung the Internationale before being massacred. Those heroes, certainly, would have had nothing whatsoever to do with a State, the State of Israel, that for more than 60 years denies every kind of right to the Palestinian people, that forces them to undergo cruel incarceration in a ghetto and constant genocide. Not in their names, please! Hence, there is nothing to celebrate: next 15 May will be a sad and tragic date, it is the sign of a historical failure and a catastrophe that unfolds day after day. It is with a heavy heart that I write this to you, deeply troubled by your brief article and, I add, aware that the newspaper you edit is one of the very few non-embedded voices and that through your correspondents from Palestine, it is able to still communicate that tragic truth without compromise, taking the side of the victims and not of the persecutors no matter what ethnic group or religion they belong to.
I think that for you to have expressed your hasty negative judgment on the proposal of boycotting of the International Book Fair of Turin this year, which has decided to choose as its guest of honour the State of Israel in the year that marks the 60th since its birth, you could and should have used less banal and more convincing arguments. Your fine distinction between the (just) boycott of Apartheid South Africa and the (wrong) boycott of Apartheid Israel is of a subtlety that is even somewhat dangerous to interpret. You write, with a particularly insufferable tone, that “with the 60th anniversary of the foundation of the State of Israel, the Palestinian question inevitably reopens”. In reality, the Palestinian question has been open for 60 years and has never been closed. The State of Palestine, which itself was foreseen by the UN in December 1947, never saw the light of day, not even on that minuscule 22% in which the Palestinian population has been rounded up into after the Nakba, that is, the Catastrophe, that is, the ethnic cleansing of 1948. And it is really strange that you, in order to justify these 60 years of oppression, occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing bring in Stalin, notorious organiser of Gulags. It is just as strange that you cite the fact that in the Warsaw Ghetto the last Jews who were the protagonists of a heroic armed resistance (that right to resistance that the cowardly and hypocritical European governments deny to the Palestinians who are occupied militarily and who have been mistreated for decades by Israel), sung the Internationale before being massacred. Those heroes, certainly, would have had nothing whatsoever to do with a State, the State of Israel, that for more than 60 years denies every kind of right to the Palestinian people, that forces them to undergo cruel incarceration in a ghetto and constant genocide. Not in their names, please! Hence, there is nothing to celebrate: next 15 May will be a sad and tragic date, it is the sign of a historical failure and a catastrophe that unfolds day after day. It is with a heavy heart that I write this to you, deeply troubled by your brief article and, I add, aware that the newspaper you edit is one of the very few non-embedded voices and that through your correspondents from Palestine, it is able to still communicate that tragic truth without compromise, taking the side of the victims and not of the persecutors no matter what ethnic group or religion they belong to.
Vincenzo Tradardi
ISM Italia
Parma 24 January 2008
Translated from Italian by Mary Rizzo, member of Tlaxcala, network of translators for linguistic diversity.
Labels: activism, boycott, good news, hasbara, Israel, Italy, journalism, Palestine, poetry
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Turin Book Fair "Israel Guest of Honour", and the debate begins!
at the left, a book to BUY!Turin will host the International Book Fair in May. Already, there has been quite a bit of movement about it in activist circles. Why? Because the Guest of Honour is Israel, and 60 Authors (magic of numbers?) will be the highlighted ones. Aharon Shabtai already said NO! Ibrahim Nasrallah said NO! and others too have raised their voices. Strange thing thought, the leading Left Newspaper il manifesto, who takes money for the paid ad for supporting Gaza, comes out against the Boycott. It is the reasoning behind it that is incredible. Read this editorial by Valentino Parlato and this response (I will translate more later, I have a growing list here) by Diego Traversa.
A WRONG BOYCOTT
By Valentino Parlato (from il manifesto, 24/01/08)
The International Book Fair will be held in Turin next May (from the 8th to the 12th) but it is already arousing quarrels and polemics that have concerned even our tenacious and tolerant group. The fair is being held in the 60th anniversary of Israel’s foundation and therefore, quite inevitably, the Palestinian question gets resumed.
After World War II and the massacre of the Jews, it was necessary to recognize their right to have a territory and a state of their own. Even Stalin was in favour of the foundation of Israel while Great Britain, a fact of not minor importance, was against it. And it’s my personal memory to insist that the Arab world wouldn’t have accepted a Jewish state, it favoured great manifestations of resistance: in Tripoli (where I lived at that time) a violent and blooddy anti-Jewish pogrom took place in a complicit indifference of the British military authorities.
Today’s polemics regard this Book Fair, one that gives Israel a place of honour with the risk of a literary legitimization of its policies. Let me say first that I have no position in principle against the boycott, since it was more than fair to endorse it against the racist white South Africans. But there’s boycott and boycott and therefore I’m completely against boycotting this Book Fair (books must be always respected) and against boycotting Israel. The Israelis, who after all are still Jews, no matter how many wrongs as they have done against the Palestinians, can by no means be compared with the racist South Africans and moreover, there’s a point that we can’t forget and, by no means a small one, that there is the historical persecution of the Jewish people, there are the ghettos and the concentration camps.
At this point is useful recalling what I was told in an interview to il manifesto with Rome’s Chief Rabbi. In the Warsaw Ghetto, the last song the Jews sung was the Internationale (translator’s note, Communist anthem). And then they were slaughtered by the Germans.
Hence let’s take advantage of this International Book Fair of Turin to talk, to criticize Israel’s policies, to uphold the Palestinians’ rights who, in those territories, seem to have turned into the new Jews. Let’s talk and argue with each other, but let’s tell the boycott to go to hell. Not only because the Israelis are Jews and not Afrikaaners, but also because the boycott is mute. It’s a no without any arguments. Next May in Turin there are going to be Jewish writers of high stature and we must talk, reason, argue and defend the Palestinian people’s rights along with them. I’m aware of the ancestral fears of Israel’s people. I’m aware of their fear, I was told by a good Israeli ambassador in Rome, of being the target of renewed crusades. I think I can understand, but Israel must be more Jewish with the Palestinians. It must consider them as close relatives. But just because of all this, the boycott serves only to be detrimental the Palestinians and the Israelis.
Translated by Diego Traversa and revised by Mary Rizzo
By Valentino Parlato (from il manifesto, 24/01/08)
The International Book Fair will be held in Turin next May (from the 8th to the 12th) but it is already arousing quarrels and polemics that have concerned even our tenacious and tolerant group. The fair is being held in the 60th anniversary of Israel’s foundation and therefore, quite inevitably, the Palestinian question gets resumed.
After World War II and the massacre of the Jews, it was necessary to recognize their right to have a territory and a state of their own. Even Stalin was in favour of the foundation of Israel while Great Britain, a fact of not minor importance, was against it. And it’s my personal memory to insist that the Arab world wouldn’t have accepted a Jewish state, it favoured great manifestations of resistance: in Tripoli (where I lived at that time) a violent and blooddy anti-Jewish pogrom took place in a complicit indifference of the British military authorities.
Today’s polemics regard this Book Fair, one that gives Israel a place of honour with the risk of a literary legitimization of its policies. Let me say first that I have no position in principle against the boycott, since it was more than fair to endorse it against the racist white South Africans. But there’s boycott and boycott and therefore I’m completely against boycotting this Book Fair (books must be always respected) and against boycotting Israel. The Israelis, who after all are still Jews, no matter how many wrongs as they have done against the Palestinians, can by no means be compared with the racist South Africans and moreover, there’s a point that we can’t forget and, by no means a small one, that there is the historical persecution of the Jewish people, there are the ghettos and the concentration camps.
At this point is useful recalling what I was told in an interview to il manifesto with Rome’s Chief Rabbi. In the Warsaw Ghetto, the last song the Jews sung was the Internationale (translator’s note, Communist anthem). And then they were slaughtered by the Germans.
Hence let’s take advantage of this International Book Fair of Turin to talk, to criticize Israel’s policies, to uphold the Palestinians’ rights who, in those territories, seem to have turned into the new Jews. Let’s talk and argue with each other, but let’s tell the boycott to go to hell. Not only because the Israelis are Jews and not Afrikaaners, but also because the boycott is mute. It’s a no without any arguments. Next May in Turin there are going to be Jewish writers of high stature and we must talk, reason, argue and defend the Palestinian people’s rights along with them. I’m aware of the ancestral fears of Israel’s people. I’m aware of their fear, I was told by a good Israeli ambassador in Rome, of being the target of renewed crusades. I think I can understand, but Israel must be more Jewish with the Palestinians. It must consider them as close relatives. But just because of all this, the boycott serves only to be detrimental the Palestinians and the Israelis.
Translated by Diego Traversa and revised by Mary Rizzo
Memory, Hypocrisy and that Messy Little Place of Honour
By Diego Traversa
By Diego Traversa
Despite all the respect that I might have for Valentino Parlato, I am writing to express how stunned his editorial on the Turin Book Fair has left me.
It seemed to me a very simplistic and dogmatic article, overflowing to the brim with hypocrisy and a “feel-good” sentiment. But, of course, it’s still January, the Day of Holocaust Memory is upon us so naturally all of us must acknowledge how important it is to be philo-Jewish, all of us to kneel down humbly and to make amends for the horrors of the past. And, since I am here, I am going to take advantage of the opportunity myself, to absolve my duty and publicly ask pardon from all Jews: forgive us for what our people did to you and forgive me if I had a grandfather who was a convinced Fascist.
Having said this, let’s go back to dig through the lines of the article by Valentino Parlato, authoritative and legendary voice of il manifesto.
His comments on the upcoming Book Fair of Turin seem to me at the very least pointless and contradictory.
In the first place, it is not true that it was necessary to give a state to the Jews and further, neither is it true that Stalin was in agreement: his was mere political shrewdness, oriented at extending the Russian dominion towards the Mediterranean. This is indeed true in that Russia radically changed its politics by becoming fiercely anti-Zionist, just to show how much Stalin had the Jewish people close to heart!
It seemed to me a very simplistic and dogmatic article, overflowing to the brim with hypocrisy and a “feel-good” sentiment. But, of course, it’s still January, the Day of Holocaust Memory is upon us so naturally all of us must acknowledge how important it is to be philo-Jewish, all of us to kneel down humbly and to make amends for the horrors of the past. And, since I am here, I am going to take advantage of the opportunity myself, to absolve my duty and publicly ask pardon from all Jews: forgive us for what our people did to you and forgive me if I had a grandfather who was a convinced Fascist.
Having said this, let’s go back to dig through the lines of the article by Valentino Parlato, authoritative and legendary voice of il manifesto.
His comments on the upcoming Book Fair of Turin seem to me at the very least pointless and contradictory.
In the first place, it is not true that it was necessary to give a state to the Jews and further, neither is it true that Stalin was in agreement: his was mere political shrewdness, oriented at extending the Russian dominion towards the Mediterranean. This is indeed true in that Russia radically changed its politics by becoming fiercely anti-Zionist, just to show how much Stalin had the Jewish people close to heart!
The pivot of Parlato’s theorem is that one must reject the anti-Israeli boycott for an entire set of reasons: because the Jews have suffered unspeakable wrongs, because they can’t be compared to racist white South Africans (as a matter of curiosity, who knows if the Israeli magnates of the diamond industry momentarily put aside their traffic with South Africa when the entire world was practicing the boycott…) and especially because the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto, before they were massacred by the Nazis, “sang the Internationale”.
What kind of discourse is he engaged in?
It is as if the sole fact of having had relatives who are evacuated and socialists guarantees any individual whatsoever the right to act any way he wants, stepping on the rights of others. It is almost like saying that the single mother in Taranto who made an unauthorised occupation of the house of that old woman who was taken to the hospital has the right to do such a thing. Even if this example does not fit like a glove, seeing as how the Israelis have done much more than occupy someone else’s house unlawfully.
In the first place, theirs is not a popular nationalism, but rather a nationalism imposed from on high, born out of diplomatic trafficking and intrigue between powers when the Jewish masses had not even the slightest interest in searching for a new country. Furthermore, it was not only the Jewish Socialist leaders who brought forward demands of independence, but even the ultra-conservatives and the representatives of the petit bourgeois and the middle classes. As a matter of fact, truth to tell, the history of Israel is nothing but an anthem, the triumph of an ideology that is one of the most reactionary possible. After the Ben-Gurions and Moshe Sharetts (who, rather than Socialists, I would define National Socialists), came the Begins, the Shamirs, and the Sharons to model modern Zionism, that is, the “ideological” children of that Vladimir Jabotinsky who promoted the crudest nationalism by supporting violence and the transfer of the Palestinian people. Therefore, telling us the story that the Jews sang the Internationale as valid argumentation to justify the existence of the Jewish state seems to me quite absurd, if not outright ridiculous and unjust, as if the destruction and violence committed against the indigenous Americans was justified by the religious persecution that the founding fathers and pilgrims of the Mayflower underwent and rendered dignified by their sacred hymns.
Yet, I don’t wish to focus too much attention on the history of Israel, but I can’t help but notice that the entire contradiction expressed by Parlato comes to the surface when he talks about boycotting: first he insists that it was right to enact that instrument against South Africans, but then he summons that the boycott is useless because it is “a no without arguments”.
It seems to me that the boycott is a civil and democratic form of non-violent protest: it is not censorship, forbidding someone to speak. It is only an outspoken way to express dissent. Specifically, considering the place of honour that has been given to the writers of Israel, it is more than opportune to should dissent against the exponents (respectable or not as they may be) of a country as racist, militaristic and warlike as Israel. Precisely because the Israelis have not learned anything from their past; precisely because they should be the first to oppose the modern horrors committed in Palestine, being, as we are constantly reminded, the “only” people to have known just what true suffering is; and especially because they do not treat the Palestinians like Semitic brothers (quite the opposite, they hate them a great deal, as witnessed in the widespread racism within Israeli society).
I am sorry for those Israeli writers who rightly point their fingers at the terrible politics enacted by their government, but unfortunately, this event in Turn has taken on a stale and disgusting taste of institutional legitimisation of Israel: the first to boycott this disgrace should be precisely those same writers who know firsthand what it means to live in Palestine today and how much horror Zionism has brought about. Theirs would be a clamorous deed, more meaningful than a thousand boycotts.
In regards to Valentino Parlato, I can only say: January may have become the Month of Memory but, please, let’s be careful it does not become the Month of Hypocrisy.
Translated from Italian by Mary Rizzo. Diego Traversa and Mary Rizzo are both members of Tlaxcala, network of translators for linguistic diversity.
Labels: activism, boycott, gatekeeping, hasbara, Israel, Italy, jewish identity politics, journalism, poetry, Zionism
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Ilan Pappe interviewed in Italy
ETHNIC CLEANSING GOES ON AND ISRAEL WANTS YOU TO ACCEPT ITIlan Pappe: the peace process means what piece of Palestine Israel is supposed to annex and what Bantustan is supposed to be given to the Arabs
By Emanuela Irace from il manifesto 23/12/07
Ilan Pappe arrived in Italy without causing any sensational uproar. He is IEMASVO’s guest [1], at the ISIAO’s Roman venue [2], for a conference over Israel-Palestine. Title: “One land, two peoples”.
After having denounced in recent months the impossibility of working peacefully in a hostile milieu, namely at Haifa University, Pappe moved to Britain where he now teaches at Exeter University. Historian of dissent, “revisionist”, born in 1954 in Israel, son of Jews who fled from the Germany of the ‘30s, he has published a half dozen books. Amongst the most recent works there is “The ethnic cleansing of Palestine”, not yet translated into Italian. The core of the exploration by the great historian is the Zionist policy comprised of deportations and compulsory expulsions carried out against the Palestinians during and after the 1948 war, when some 400 villages were evacuated, razed and destroyed in the space of five years.
Professor Pappe, you write of ethnic cleansing, in 1948, as the foundational moment of Israel. In this way you shatter the “topos” of the voluntary exile of the Palestinians.
“The Palestinians were driven out in 1947-48, even though the official historical record speaks about pressure from the Arab leaders who ostensibly persuaded them to flee. The idea of finding a refuge for the Jewish community, persecuted in Europe and annihilated by Nazism, clashed with a native population who was in a phase of redefining itself. A colonial project that practiced ethnic cleansing, tackling the demographic problem beforehand: the existence of 600 thousand Jews against one million Palestinians. In February 1948, before the Arabs decided to oppose it in a military manner, the Israelis had already expelled over 300 thousand native people.”
How was the ethnic cleansing carried out and why had everyone kept silent?
“It lasted eight months and only in October 1948 did the Palestinians start to defend themselves in any serious way. The Zionists’ response to this were the slaughters in the province of Galilee, the confiscation of houses, of bank accounts, of lands. The Israelis erased a people and its culture. Nobody denounced the situation because the World War had just ended. The UN couldn’t admit that one of their resolutions (note of the author: the resolution 181, about Palestine’s partition) was ending up with ethnic cleansing. The Red Cross had already been accused of not having impartially reported what happened in the Nazi concentration camps and the most important media wanted to avoid a clash with the Jews.”
A guilt complex and “diplomacy” in the governments’ actions: and what were the consequences?
“During the Holocaust, the countries that are today criticizing Israel, either were accomplices or they kept silent. These are the reasons why the international community has renounced its right to judge us. It bears guilt which it can no longer find a remedy for. Thus losing, still today, the right to criticize Israel’s government. The consequence is that when the state of Israel was established, nobody blamed it for the ethnic cleansing which it had been founded on, a crime against humanity carried out by those who planned and fulfilled it. From that time on, ethnic cleansing has become an ideology, an infrastructural decoration of the state. A matter that is still topical, since Israel’s primary target is demographic: to seize as much territory as possible with the least number of Arabs living in it as possible.”
By what forms and means does the ethnic cleansing go on?
“Through ‘cleaner and more presentable’ systems. The Minister of Justice has been trying for a month to legitimize the illegal settlements by leaving the outposts in place. We’ve learnt that the High Court of Justice is pondering whether to authorize the government to make a cut-down on fuel supplies, thus leaving Gaza without electricity, where there are a million Palestinians who would find themselves in the situation of not being able to have access to drinking water, since the water-bearing stratum is polluted with sewage and people can drink it only if there is an electrical water purification system. Yet, there are many other ways and examples to annihilate the Palestinians, in primis the Wall, accepted by the US and the EU.”
What is Israel asking from its allies?
“It wants them to accept its model as such. During the 1967 war, 300 thousand Palestinians were expelled from the West Bank, in the last seven years ethnic cleansing has become ‘building the Wall’, that pushes the Palestinians back towards the desert, outside the area of Greater Jerusalem reserved for them. The problem is that the Israeli leadership thinks of its own state by ethnic, racial yardsticks and therefore it is racist by all means. All of this is perceived by the Palestinians and this fact embodies the biggest hindrance to peace between Palestine and Israel. The so-called ’peace process’ is thus reduced to deciding what part of Palestine has to again be annexed by Israel and what tiny part can perhaps be given to the Palestinian population.”
What can be done to reverse this process?
“First of all, we have to change our terminologies. It’s not about a clash between Jews and Palestinians. It’s matter of colonialism. It’s incredible how a colonialist policy can be still accepted in the 21st century. We have to force Israel to comply with the same measures that were imposed on racist South Africa in the ‘60s and the ‘70s. Today there are opinion movements of young Jews, in Europe and in the US, who point the finger at Israel’s colonialist policies and accuse it as a colonialist and racist state, not because it is a state founded by Jews.”
In France and in other European countries there are laws that place restrictions on the right to express “revisionist” opinions towards Israel, yet there are no steps taken against the continuous violation of the UN resolutions.
“I underwent such an experience about two years ago. One of my lectures was interrupted by a group of extremists, composed of Jews like me, who prevented me from continuing. The police came in, to protect rather than to accuse me. As to keeping silent, it’s by far easier for people to think in a conventional manner. One has to have a lot of energy and originality to act in non-conformist ways. For instance, UN Resolution 194 states that the Palestinian refugees have the right to return to their land. Yet it’s much easier to do nothing and keep thinking in the usual identical formula.”
Are these the very reasons why the Italian left goes on proposing the “two peoples, two states” model?
“Certainly, the Italian left isn’t courageous. Yet it has no choice but to change, since the situation on the ground is becoming catastrophic. If Israel invades Gaza, as it’s quite likely to do, many Palestinians will be killed and yet the situation won’t change. Gaza is a big prison, and what might happen, just as in many prison uprisings, is: the army will restore the ’law and order’ by beating and killing. It’s bound to be a slaughterhouse but as soon as they leave the situation will remain exactly the same.”
What would the outcome of a “two peoples, one state” formula be instead?
“It’s necessary that the populations accept one another, that the Jews acknowledge their Arab neighbours and brothers and vice-versa. Not before they both recognize history for what it has been and only after they both shoulder their own responsibilities. Recognition, responsibility and mutual acceptance. Only by following this way a single state may be fulfilled, one depending on the “one person, one vote” principle and where citizens, in spite of not loving each other, may coexist. It’s a project that can be achieved if we are allowed to continue to criticise and prevent the crimes Israel is continuously carrying out and if the disinvestment campaign goes on being applied as was done with South Africa.”
Translated by Diego Traversa and revised by Mary Rizzo, members of Tlaxcala , network of translators for linguistic diversity.
Italian version at:
http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/23-Dicembre-2007/art36.html
notes:
1) IEMASVO: Enrico Mattei Institute of High Studies on Mid-East
2) ISIAO: Italian Institute for Africa and East
Labels: "transfer", boycott, human rights violations, Israel, Italy, journalism, Nakba, occupation, Palestine, Tlaxcala, Zionism
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
A new chance to enter Gaza?
Second dispatch by the Italian solidarity delegation to GazaYesterday we closed the day watching al Jazeera which reported both on the apostolic blessing Urbi et Orbi and on our delegation.
Today, December 24, we received a phone call by the Gaza authorities who expressed their regret about the fact that we were not allowed into Gaza by the Israeli army. Actually they had been ready to receive us with all honours. We have been informed that the news about our delegation was spread throughout Gaza. At the same time the solidarity communiqué by the "Popular Committee against the Siege" has been sent around the world.
This morning we held a press conference in Ramallah with the kind help of our Palestinian friends. We were the guests of "Ramattan TV" which co-operates with numberous Arab media outlets. A dozen of jounalists were present including the influencial Al Arabia TV channel. Maria Grazia Ardizzone of the Anti-imperialist Camp stressed the political meaning of our mission to raise the awareness of the genocidial character of the embargo. Ugo Giannangeli, who had been international observer to the elections which saw the landslide victory of Hamas, said that we would do all to meet the legitimate government deposed by Abu Mazen. Don Franzoni, after having denounced the submission of the Italian government with regard to Israel, refered to the Second Vatican Council expressing the determination of the Christians to dialogue with the Muslims first of all with those fighting against the occupation of Palestine. The Senator Fernando Rossi closed recording his struggle in the Italian parliament against the Italian foreign missions like the one in Afghanistan. The announced his determination to return with a new delegation composed of MPs meeting also the Palestinian political prisoners held by Israel.
Then the delegation moved to the Italian consulate in Jerusalem staging a protest action in order to press for a new attempt by the Italian embassy to obtain a permission to enter Gaza. They promissed to open fresh negotiations. In any case we decided to present ourselves again at the Eretz checkpoint.
The night we went to Bethlehem were we staged a protest in front of the nativity church with a banner reading "Stop the embargo! Gaza must live!"
Leonardo Mazzei
on behalf of the Italian solidarity delegation "Gaza must live"
Jerusalem, Palestine, December 24
Labels: activism, call to action, EU, friends, Gaza, human rights violations, Israel, Italy, journalism, Palestine
Monday, December 24, 2007
Italian Humanitarian Delegation DENIED ENTRY TO GAZA
(photo from Jer and Whit Visit Palestine)Statement from Eretz checkpoint
Apropos concentration camps:
This morning the Italian solidarity delegation, which departed from Rome yesterday, was blocked by the Israeli military at the Eretz checkpoint. Entry into Gaza was denied.
The criminal embargo imposed by Israel, the U.S. and the European Union is not limited to goods but does cut all human contacts. The Gaza strip is not an open air prison but an outright concentration camp. Prisoners usually are allowed to receive visits, but not in Gaza.
With the lockout of this morning the Israeli government slapped as well in the face of the Italian authorities. The Italian foreign ministry had assured that all necessary steps had been taken to allow the delegation into Gaza.
In order to denounce the genocidal embargo the solidarity delegation will continue its activities in the forthcoming days. For tomorrow morning a press conference has been scheduled in Ramallah as well as a meeting with the Italian consulate in Jerusalem where we will express our protest in the strongest terms possible. In the afternoon we will demonstrate against the embargo in Bethlehem on the occasion of Christmas matins. Meanwhile we are contemplating about a new protest action at the Eretz checkpoint.
We will keep you informed.
Italian solidarity delegation “Gaza must live”
December 23, 2007
Apropos concentration camps:
This morning the Italian solidarity delegation, which departed from Rome yesterday, was blocked by the Israeli military at the Eretz checkpoint. Entry into Gaza was denied.
The criminal embargo imposed by Israel, the U.S. and the European Union is not limited to goods but does cut all human contacts. The Gaza strip is not an open air prison but an outright concentration camp. Prisoners usually are allowed to receive visits, but not in Gaza.
With the lockout of this morning the Israeli government slapped as well in the face of the Italian authorities. The Italian foreign ministry had assured that all necessary steps had been taken to allow the delegation into Gaza.
In order to denounce the genocidal embargo the solidarity delegation will continue its activities in the forthcoming days. For tomorrow morning a press conference has been scheduled in Ramallah as well as a meeting with the Italian consulate in Jerusalem where we will express our protest in the strongest terms possible. In the afternoon we will demonstrate against the embargo in Bethlehem on the occasion of Christmas matins. Meanwhile we are contemplating about a new protest action at the Eretz checkpoint.
We will keep you informed.
Italian solidarity delegation “Gaza must live”
December 23, 2007
response from Popular Committee Against Siege
Dear Italians, lovers of freedom,
We are very sorry for what happened to you but this is an indication of the false claims of our oppressors. Israelis claim that they are democratic, but you have seen that they are barbarous by denying your entry to Gaza strip. This shows how Israeli democracy is false. It's only a game to make the people believe that they are victims. Yet, you have seen that the are putting all Gaza residents in a big concentration camp to perish one by one. But, they will never succeed because we are supported by the real democratics like you, the real lovers of freedom who came from far places to say nay for Israeli's crime.
Your attempt has debunked the Israeli allegation that they are the paragon of democracy. Imagine that what you have faced is always happening to patients! They are being killed in cold blood. Israelis are violating human rights laws, accords, charters and the IV Geneva Conventions. However, USA and EU are supporting them in a very flagrant way.
Even though you were not allowed in, but our children were very happy that you tried to come and help them. They keep clinging hope on people like yourselves. We express our heartily thanks. We invite you to make more attempts to get into Gaza Strip. The Gaza Strip is in bad conditions, so Israelis will do all steps to prevent others from seeing the real picture. The siege associated by Israeli media blackmail. Today, the number of death toll of Gaza patients under blockade has risen up to 50. So, again we stress on your visit to Gaza…. Or more people will die….
PCAS is still determined that you come to Gaza Strip to interact with what's going on. Your visit will make the world exposed to humanitarian crisis. If you tried again to get in and they prevent you we suggest the follows:
1-We will make a big demonstration to Eretz checkpoint.
2- You can organize a demonstration from your side associated with some Israeli peace bodies and groups.
3- We will organize a press conference on our side and you do the same on your side.
4- You have to attract more media coverage on your side.
5- We will be pleased to publish anything from your side in our website: http://www.freegaza.ps/
6- We invite you to bring more activists into Israel and to launch a big demonstration.
PCAS is still waiting your visit to Gaza and it will facilitate all burdens from your side.
Looking forward for more coporation,
PCAS Chairman
Jamal N. KHOUDARY
We are very sorry for what happened to you but this is an indication of the false claims of our oppressors. Israelis claim that they are democratic, but you have seen that they are barbarous by denying your entry to Gaza strip. This shows how Israeli democracy is false. It's only a game to make the people believe that they are victims. Yet, you have seen that the are putting all Gaza residents in a big concentration camp to perish one by one. But, they will never succeed because we are supported by the real democratics like you, the real lovers of freedom who came from far places to say nay for Israeli's crime.
Your attempt has debunked the Israeli allegation that they are the paragon of democracy. Imagine that what you have faced is always happening to patients! They are being killed in cold blood. Israelis are violating human rights laws, accords, charters and the IV Geneva Conventions. However, USA and EU are supporting them in a very flagrant way.
Even though you were not allowed in, but our children were very happy that you tried to come and help them. They keep clinging hope on people like yourselves. We express our heartily thanks. We invite you to make more attempts to get into Gaza Strip. The Gaza Strip is in bad conditions, so Israelis will do all steps to prevent others from seeing the real picture. The siege associated by Israeli media blackmail. Today, the number of death toll of Gaza patients under blockade has risen up to 50. So, again we stress on your visit to Gaza…. Or more people will die….
PCAS is still determined that you come to Gaza Strip to interact with what's going on. Your visit will make the world exposed to humanitarian crisis. If you tried again to get in and they prevent you we suggest the follows:
1-We will make a big demonstration to Eretz checkpoint.
2- You can organize a demonstration from your side associated with some Israeli peace bodies and groups.
3- We will organize a press conference on our side and you do the same on your side.
4- You have to attract more media coverage on your side.
5- We will be pleased to publish anything from your side in our website: http://www.freegaza.ps/
6- We invite you to bring more activists into Israel and to launch a big demonstration.
PCAS is still waiting your visit to Gaza and it will facilitate all burdens from your side.
Looking forward for more coporation,
PCAS Chairman
Jamal N. KHOUDARY
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS! (in Italian for now)
ALL'INFERNO NON SI ENTRA
DISPACCIO DELLA DELEGAZIONE PARTITA PER GAZA
Ramallah, Palestina, Domenica 23 dicembre, ore 16,00
«Questa mattina, mentre si udivano spari di mitragliatrice e dopo un defatigante viaggio (segnaliamo la maniacale attenzione che la polizia aeroportuale israeliana ha riservato soprattutto a Maria Grazia Ardizzone), la delegazione di solidarieta’ con il popolo di Gaza* si e presentata al valico di Eretz per varcare il confine con l’inferno di Gaza. E’ stata brutalmente RESPINTA dall’ esercito israeliano.
Il criminale embargo decretato dal governo di tel Aviv, sostenuto dagli Usa e dall’Unione Europea, non si limita al blocco delle merci, dei medicinali ecc., giunge perfino ad impedire i contatti umani. La Striscia non e una prigione a cielo aperto, ma un vero e proprio campo di concentramento. In carcere infatti almeno i colloqui sono consentiti, a Gaza no.
Con il sopruso di questa mattina l’esercito ed il governo di Israele hanno dato anche un sonoro ceffone alle autorita italiane.
Esse avevano infatti assicurato (incontro col viceministro Ugo Intini, svoltosi alla Farnesina l’11 dicembre) che avrebbero compiuto i passi necessari affinche’ la delegazione potesse raggiungere Gaza.
Il crimine di questo embargo genocida evidentemente puo compiersi solo grazie a molte complicita e non tollera testimoni, ne’ intrusi.
Per denunciare questa situazione la delegazione di solidarieta continuera’ la sua attivita nei prossimi giorni.
Nel frattempo il muro di silenzio ha iniziato a cedere. Leonardo Mazzei e Vainer Burani sono stati a lungo intervistati dalla TV araba al Jazeera. Le interviste saranno trasmesse questa sera.
Per domani mattina (lunedi’ 24 dicembre) e prevista (grazie al determinante contributo delle organizzazioni della Resistenza palestinese) una conferenza stampa a Ramallah.
Subito dopo ci recheremo al consolato italiano di Gerusalemme dove protesteremo, con un sit-in, per la situazione che si e determinata.
Domani sera saremo invece a Betlemme in occasione della Santa messa di Natale. La delegazione italiana, affiancata dai fratelli palestinesi, musulmani e cristiani, e da decine di militanti antisionisti israeliani, esporra’ uno striscione in lingua italiana con su scritto «STOP EMBARGO! GAZA VIVRA’»
Tutte queste attivita sono finalizzate ad una nuova e piu forte iniziativa al valico di Eretz, al quale ci ripresenteremo, piu’ numerosi, il 26 dicembre.
Sacchi con medicinali, giochi e altro materiale sono stati consegnati ai volontari di due Ong italiane attive da tempo all'interno di Gaza e verranno distribuiti alla popolazione. Leonardo Mazzei x la Delegazione*
La Delegazione e’ composta da: Leonardo Mazzei «Comitato Gaza Vivrà» - Fernando Rossi, Senatore - Giovanni Franzoni, Comunità Cristiane di Base - Lucio Manisco, Giornalista ed ex parlamentare - Maria Grazia Ardizzone, Campo Antimperialista - Elvio Arancio, Centro studi cultura islamica di Torino - Davide Casali, Fotoreporter, inviato di Infopal.it - Giuseppe Pelazza, Avvocato - Vainer Burani, Avvocato, membro «Giuristi Democratici» - Maria Grazia Da Costa, Operatrice sanitaria - Ugo Giannangeli, Avvocato, onlus «Per Gazzella» - Zeno Leoni, Giornalista - Carmela Vaccaro, Docente universitaria, esperta di acqua - Erika Miozzi, Associazione umanitaria di volontariato «Sumud» - Anika Persiani, Associazione umanitaria di volontariato «Sumud» - Margarita Langthaler «Comitato Gaza Vivrà di Vienna.
Il criminale embargo decretato dal governo di tel Aviv, sostenuto dagli Usa e dall’Unione Europea, non si limita al blocco delle merci, dei medicinali ecc., giunge perfino ad impedire i contatti umani. La Striscia non e una prigione a cielo aperto, ma un vero e proprio campo di concentramento. In carcere infatti almeno i colloqui sono consentiti, a Gaza no.
Con il sopruso di questa mattina l’esercito ed il governo di Israele hanno dato anche un sonoro ceffone alle autorita italiane.
Esse avevano infatti assicurato (incontro col viceministro Ugo Intini, svoltosi alla Farnesina l’11 dicembre) che avrebbero compiuto i passi necessari affinche’ la delegazione potesse raggiungere Gaza.
Il crimine di questo embargo genocida evidentemente puo compiersi solo grazie a molte complicita e non tollera testimoni, ne’ intrusi.
Per denunciare questa situazione la delegazione di solidarieta continuera’ la sua attivita nei prossimi giorni.
Nel frattempo il muro di silenzio ha iniziato a cedere. Leonardo Mazzei e Vainer Burani sono stati a lungo intervistati dalla TV araba al Jazeera. Le interviste saranno trasmesse questa sera.
Per domani mattina (lunedi’ 24 dicembre) e prevista (grazie al determinante contributo delle organizzazioni della Resistenza palestinese) una conferenza stampa a Ramallah.
Subito dopo ci recheremo al consolato italiano di Gerusalemme dove protesteremo, con un sit-in, per la situazione che si e determinata.
Domani sera saremo invece a Betlemme in occasione della Santa messa di Natale. La delegazione italiana, affiancata dai fratelli palestinesi, musulmani e cristiani, e da decine di militanti antisionisti israeliani, esporra’ uno striscione in lingua italiana con su scritto «STOP EMBARGO! GAZA VIVRA’»
Tutte queste attivita sono finalizzate ad una nuova e piu forte iniziativa al valico di Eretz, al quale ci ripresenteremo, piu’ numerosi, il 26 dicembre.
Sacchi con medicinali, giochi e altro materiale sono stati consegnati ai volontari di due Ong italiane attive da tempo all'interno di Gaza e verranno distribuiti alla popolazione. Leonardo Mazzei x la Delegazione*
La Delegazione e’ composta da: Leonardo Mazzei «Comitato Gaza Vivrà» - Fernando Rossi, Senatore - Giovanni Franzoni, Comunità Cristiane di Base - Lucio Manisco, Giornalista ed ex parlamentare - Maria Grazia Ardizzone, Campo Antimperialista - Elvio Arancio, Centro studi cultura islamica di Torino - Davide Casali, Fotoreporter, inviato di Infopal.it - Giuseppe Pelazza, Avvocato - Vainer Burani, Avvocato, membro «Giuristi Democratici» - Maria Grazia Da Costa, Operatrice sanitaria - Ugo Giannangeli, Avvocato, onlus «Per Gazzella» - Zeno Leoni, Giornalista - Carmela Vaccaro, Docente universitaria, esperta di acqua - Erika Miozzi, Associazione umanitaria di volontariato «Sumud» - Anika Persiani, Associazione umanitaria di volontariato «Sumud» - Margarita Langthaler «Comitato Gaza Vivrà di Vienna.
Labels: absolute madness, activism, call to action, EU, friends, Gaza, human rights violations, Italy, occupation, Palestine, refugees
Friday, December 14, 2007
Let us help Gaza RESIST!
Italian delegation goes to Gaza for ChristmasBlessed are you who are poor,
for the kingdom of God is yours.
Blessed are you who are now hungry,
for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who are now weeping,
for you will laugh.
from the Gospel of Luke
1974 years ago, Jesus of Nazareth was crucified for having promised the oppressed hope in salvation and justice. 1974 years later, in the same places, another martyrdom is taking place, and this time it is the whole Palestinian people which is undergoing it.
The Gaza Strip is the symbol of this tragedy.
During the last year, the embargo decreed by the Israeli authorities has turned Gaza into a concentration camp: one and a half million people survive with great difficulty. There is no other way of putting it: we are facing a humanitarian catastrophe.
Thanks to the brazen support of the US and the European Union, the Israeli regime hoped that they could force Gaza to surrender through hunger, accepting not only the historical hoax called the “Road Map”, but also the idea of giving power back to the man who had lost it in regular elections: Abu Mazen.
However, Gaza has not given in. Gaza lives and resists.The decision was taken, therefore, to make this collective punishment even harsher.
Goods, things and bodies cannot cross the borders, tanks, bombers and bombs can.
From January to this day, with the beginning of the embargo, the Israeli army – on the pretext of responding to the launching of rudimentary rockets - has carried out countless devastating incursions against Gaza, not sparing even the West Bank.
The Gaza Strip is the symbol of this tragedy.
During the last year, the embargo decreed by the Israeli authorities has turned Gaza into a concentration camp: one and a half million people survive with great difficulty. There is no other way of putting it: we are facing a humanitarian catastrophe.
Thanks to the brazen support of the US and the European Union, the Israeli regime hoped that they could force Gaza to surrender through hunger, accepting not only the historical hoax called the “Road Map”, but also the idea of giving power back to the man who had lost it in regular elections: Abu Mazen.
However, Gaza has not given in. Gaza lives and resists.The decision was taken, therefore, to make this collective punishment even harsher.
Goods, things and bodies cannot cross the borders, tanks, bombers and bombs can.
From January to this day, with the beginning of the embargo, the Israeli army – on the pretext of responding to the launching of rudimentary rockets - has carried out countless devastating incursions against Gaza, not sparing even the West Bank.
Israeli sources say that their army has killed 457 Palestinians since January, including nearly one hundred children. The majority were innocent civilians.
In these days, the siege of Gaza has become even harder: attacks continue, and Palestinians continue to die.
In such a dramatic situation, during Christmas, the Palestinian people could not be left to themselves. This is why a delegation will go to Gaza to bring its inhabitants solidarity. Not only from those who signed the “Gaza Must Live!” appeal, but also from that large part of the Italian people whose heart beats with the hearts of the Palestinian people, and which demands an end to the Israeli siege and embargo, as well as an end to the complicity of the International Community, including the Italian government.
In these days, the siege of Gaza has become even harder: attacks continue, and Palestinians continue to die.
In such a dramatic situation, during Christmas, the Palestinian people could not be left to themselves. This is why a delegation will go to Gaza to bring its inhabitants solidarity. Not only from those who signed the “Gaza Must Live!” appeal, but also from that large part of the Italian people whose heart beats with the hearts of the Palestinian people, and which demands an end to the Israeli siege and embargo, as well as an end to the complicity of the International Community, including the Italian government.
The delegation is of a humanitarian nature, and intends to investigate the situation and look into practical ways to help the population of Gaza RESIST.
We want to breach an embargo which has even been extended to human beings, aware as we are of the symbolic importance this act has for the whole Palestinian people.
It is with these goals in mind that we shall meet the humanitarian organisations and civil society, as well as the legitimate authorities of Gaza.
The delegation will be made up as follows:
Fernando Rossi – Member of the Italian Senate;
Giovanni Franzoni – Comunità Cristiane di Base (Grassroots Christian Communities);
Lucio Manisco – Journalist and former Member of Parliament;
Maria Grazia Ardizzone –Anti-imperialist Camp;
Elvio Arancio – Islamic Studies Centre of Turin;
Davide Casali - Photojournalist;
Vainer Burani – Lawyer, member of Giuristi Democratici (Democratic Lawyers);
Maria Grazia Da Costa – Health Care Operator;
Ugo Giannangeli – Lawyer, member of the non profit association “Per Gazzella”;
Margarita Langthaler – Anti-imperialist Coordination of Vienna;
Zeno Leoni – Journalist;
Leonardo Mazzei – “Gaza Vivrà” Committee;
Erika Miozzi – Humanitarian non profit association “Sumud”;
Giuseppe Pelazza – Lawyer;
Anika Persiani – Humanitarian non profit association “Sumud”;
Carmela Vaccaro – University professor and expert on water issues.
According to the mandate it received at the meeting in Florence the delegation will report on the situation when it comes back, and will propose the next steps in this mobilisation. Original URL http://www.gazavive.com/
Translated from Italian by Miguel Martinez, member of Tlaxcala, network of Translators for linguistic diversity.
url for Tlaxcala article: http://www.tlaxcala.es/pp.asp?reference=4331&lg=en
Labels: activism, Gaza, Italy, occupation, Palestine
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Film about Fallujah by "Un Ponte Per..."
Angeli DistrattiLucky Red Distribution presents a film by Un Ponte Per...
"Angeli Distratti" (Distracted Angels) Fallujah: Opening the doors to hell.
Fallujah is a metaphor of war. War that takes civilians hostage. Entire families have been forced to leave their land, homes, their entire history.
The film will be distributed from 16 November in Rome, Milan, Turin and Florence. Hopefully soon, it will be available to a wider audience.
http://www.unponteper.it/informati/article.php?sid=1492
Labels: activism, film, Iraq, Italy
Gaza Must Live campaign will send delegation
Gaza Must Live campaign (GAZA VIVRA’)Appeal for the end of a gencidal embargo
Sign the appeal!
All signatures should be sent to
info@gazavive.com
They will be published on www.gazavive.com
In addition to your name and surname, it is important to include the city or country you live in and the association you belong to or your profession.
We are now 2.348 signatures!
Read the complete list at
www.gazavive.com
The list has been updated to 13 November.
The collection of signatures continues: join the appeal!
*************
The Campaign Continues, Soon a delegation will go to Gaza
Last Friday, in Florence (Italy), an assembly was called to decide the next steps for the pro-Gaza campaign.
In the first place, we stressed that the appeal is still underway, even though it already has a huge number of signers. Certainly, this is but a drop in the bucket compared to the drama of an embargo that every day is causing victims who are decimated by the lack of medicine, when they are not killed directly by Israeli weapons.
But it is at least something that allows the putrid situation in our country and in others that act along the same lines, to make that tiny bit of difference when set next to the enormous indifference that is rampant.
It is however, a “tiny bit” that is greatly appreciated in Gaza, where we have been invited to send a delegation where we can undertake political encounters and meet with humanitarian organisations so as to promote new initiatives that are aimed at contrasting the embargo and its effects upon the population.
The assembly has accepted this invitation, deciding to work towards the building of a representative delegation togethere with those who have signed the appeal that will be sent to Gaza in the Christmas period.
It is an intitiative that is politically strong, with the purpose of expressing the solidarity of that part of the international public that has not been completely dumbstruck by the silence that the media uses around the tragedy of Gaza.
Upon the return of this delegation, and on the basis of the results of the activities that have been undertaken, we will set a large national meeting, to be held in February in Florence.
The assembly had lastly stressed the importance and necessity of continuing to work against the accord of military cooperation between Italy and Israel and against the decision to consider Hamas a terrorist organisation.
Translated from Italian by Mary Rizzo
Labels: activism, EU, Gaza, Italy
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Soldier Lozano is Saved - Calipari's Murderer will not face trial
by Claudio Fava (25 October 2007)The American soldier has been acquitted by the third Higher Court of Rome by entering a non suit. Hence, not only will he never be put on trial, no judgment will be expressed on his involvement in the murder of Nicola Calipari.
How should we consider the decision of the third Higher Court of Rome which strips Italy of any jurisdiction about Nicola Calipari’s death by letting a murder and its perpetrator go unpunished? Should we see it as a legal whim? As the extreme obedience to a literal interpretation of legal codes? As a mere jurisdictional flaw? And above all, who, according to our court, should now see to demanding justice and truth over the death of our officer? Maybe a US military court? The Iraqi justice system? Or our good Lord?
Let’s stick to the facts. The American soldier Mario Lozano has been acquitted with the decision of entering a nonsuit. Hence, he will never be put on trial nor judged for that murder. Therefore, the first meaningful fact is this: Nicola Calipari’s death is a crime that will go unpunished. No one is held accountable, there is no responsibility, no punishment, no judiciary memory. Period.
Second fact. The verdict by the Roman judges aligns itself with other very questionable decisions of political and institutional importance, that we have been collecting for the last twelve months as regards our relationship with the US Administration. Italian Minister of Justice Clemente Mastella decided to not demanding the extradition of the 27 CIA agents who have been accused by Milan’s court of abduction. The government raised a competence conflict with Milan’s Prosecutor’s office by demanding that trial to be called off. Prime Minister Prodi, emulating his predecessor Berlusconi, has renewed the State Secrecy that is in vigour around the whole issue of Abu Omar’s abduction by removing it from the democratic control of the Parliament and from the magistracy’s verifications. Sismi’s (note: Italian military secret services) Director Nicolò Pollari, defendant at Milan’s trial who is blatantly guilty of “intelligence” collusion with the secret services of a foreign country in violation of Italian sovereignty, was kept in office until the expiration of his mandate and at last he was rewarded with a consultancy job in the government’s employ. Let’s stop here, for our nation’s mercy.
If we place all these episodes together, from today’s verdict to yesterday’s State Secrets, all these facts, which are different between each other in form but all clearly questionable in the substance, we get the feeling that our government has a guilty conscience towards the Bush Administration. As if we should ask their forgiveness, in one way or another, for the malice of having withdrawn our troops from Iraq. Let’s be honest: when such an intertwined and articulated combination of functions and responsibilities, from Rome’s Higher Courts to the Minister of Justice and the Premier, takes place, we are far beyond a vague impression. Actually, it makes more sense to speak of a cultural and political submission that is unfolding in these nervous weeks by denying truth and granting impunity. Impunity for Marine Lozano, impunity for the CIA’s chiefs, who are convinced that Italy is nothing more than their own backyard, the home itself of the American secret services.
That’s why this verdict, beyond the pale of alleged law, bewilders and worries us. Because it shows the effects of a terrible atmosphere filled with conspiracy of silence. And also because it unveils a renewed tolerance towards crimes and criminals from an allied country in the name of an alleged raison d’état. The sense of which escapes us common citizens once again.
http://www.aprileonline.info/4741/salvato-il-soldato-lozano
Translated from Italian by Diego Traversa and revised by Mary Rizzo, members of Tlaxcala, network of translators for linguistic diversity.
Labels: absolute madness, Iraq, Italy, military, US, war
Monday, October 15, 2007
Haniyeh interview: "Abbas, the conference is a trap"
HANIYEH TO ABBAS: “THE CONFERENCE IS A TRAP. DON’T GO”
by Umberto De Giovannangeli (l’Unità, 12/10/07)
“We want to say to President Abbas: don’t endorse the deceitful conference that President Bush wants to hold in order to try to whitewash his failure in the Middle East. That conference is a trap the Palestinians must not fall into.”
These are the words of the leader of Hamas Ismail Haniyeh, who Abbas forced into stepping down. In this interview with l’Unità, Haniyeh shows an opening to dialogue with Fatah: “There’s no way left for us but to set up a national unity government. We’re ready as of this moment to join a negotiation with President Abbas and Fatah, but it must be clear that what was carried out by Hamas in Gaza was nothing but a reaction to a putsch attempt from gangs working on behalf of people who were aiming only at strengthening their own power”. He is referring to Fatah’s former strong man in Gaza, Mohammed Dahlan.
Abu Mazen and the Israeli Premier Olmert are engaged in defining a Joint Declaration in view of the international US-sponsored international conference. What’s your position?
“The conferenced hatched by Bush is only a deceitful one. It’s a trap we Palestinians must not fall into. We are talking about an American attempt at whitewashing their failed Middle East policies. I want to tell Abbas: don’t let yourself be taken in by this trickery.”
Olmert has committed himself to implementing a peace founded on two States.
“It’s a deception. Olmert continuously speaks about peace but those are only words. Facts show us another story: confiscated property, villages divided by the wall in the West Bank, a population, in Gaza, that has been living under siege for more than a year. Is this the peace Israel wants? Olmert speaks about a State, so does Bush, and meanwhile the West Bank is being shattered into thousands of fragments pieces that they dare shamelessly call a ‘State’.”
Israel argues that Hamas doesn’t aim at setting up a Palestinian State but only at destroying the Jewish one.
“Hamas won at the elections, free elections, presenting a clear programme, which we didn’t fail to observe: to strive for a State of Palestine over the territories occupied in 1967, a State with Jerusalem as its capital. This is our government programme.”
If this is the case, why did Hamas carry out the military coup d’état in Gaza?
“We’re willing to accept an investigating commission by the Arab League that may shed light on what really happened in Gaza.”
And what is thought to have “really” happened?
“An attempt at overthrowing what the elections had sanctioned. I ask you: whenever has it happened that a movement which has obtained its mandate through an election victory then carried out a coup d’état? The truth is that in Gaza there was someone who wanted to come to an armed showdown in order to overturn the outcome of the elections.”
Concerning your relation with Fatah, is the only dialogue an armed one?
“No, it must not be. There’s no other alternative but a national reconciliation government, and even Egypt is aware about this, as they have offered themselves as the mediator. As far as I’m concerned, if it’s of any use, I’m willing to take a step backward. Our administration in Gaza is only temporary.”
Is Hamas willing to have talks with Israel? And if so, what will be the basis of such talks?
“We’ve stated for a while that we’re willing to negotiate a lasting truce, at least 10-15 years. On the condition, however, that Israel puts an end to the siege of Gaza, to the building of the Wall in the West Bank, that it releases the Palestinian prisoners locked up in its prisons, that it brings to an end the assassinations of the militants and leaders of the Intifada. Israel knows well that Hamas is able to enforce and to fulfil the accords it makes. Armed resistance isn’t the goal of Hamas but it remains one of the necessary means to obtain the liberation of Palestine. But it must be clear: Hamas isn’t against peace but only against capitulation.”
But, if you are in favour of peace, why don’t you agree to recognize Israel?
“Because an oppressed people must not be forced to recognise its own oppressor. Israel’s recognition cannot be a pre-condition for a negotiation, if anything, it’s one of the issues to be discussed.”
Why doesn’t Hamas accept new elections?
“It’s certainly not us who fear the elections. But, in order for the elections to be free, first of all the siege against Gaza must be lifted and then everyone has to recognise the only body that really represents the people’s will: the Palestinian Legislative Council. (The parliament of the Occupied Territories where Hamas has the absolute majority, editor’s note.) We are willing to open a confrontation with Fatah even over this issue, without any blackmailing.”
In an interview with l’Unità, Italian Foreign Minister D’Alema repeated that it’s possible, under certain conditions, to open a dialogue with Hamas. What is your reply?
“I’ve appreciated Italy’s stance and the endeavour it’s made in order to stand up against the Americans’ ostracism. Hamas is a friend to Italy and it is willing to discuss the demands put forward. Italy might undertake an exploratory mission: Prodi and D’Alema are welcome in Gaza. Yet, to discuss is one thing, to submit to a diktat is another kettle of fish.”
There are some who claim that Hamas intends upon having a state of “its own” in Gaza.
“This is false. I must repeat: our aim was and is that of setting up an independent state over all the territories occupied by Israel in 1967. We won’t be the ones who fail to keep this commitment.”
(Osama Hamdan collaborated in the interview).
There is no l’Unità link; the article can be read at: http://www.informazionecorretta.com/main.php?mediaId=13&sez=110&id=22229
Translation from Italian by Diego Traversa, revised by Mary Rizzo, members of Tlaxcala
by Umberto De Giovannangeli (l’Unità, 12/10/07)
“We want to say to President Abbas: don’t endorse the deceitful conference that President Bush wants to hold in order to try to whitewash his failure in the Middle East. That conference is a trap the Palestinians must not fall into.”
These are the words of the leader of Hamas Ismail Haniyeh, who Abbas forced into stepping down. In this interview with l’Unità, Haniyeh shows an opening to dialogue with Fatah: “There’s no way left for us but to set up a national unity government. We’re ready as of this moment to join a negotiation with President Abbas and Fatah, but it must be clear that what was carried out by Hamas in Gaza was nothing but a reaction to a putsch attempt from gangs working on behalf of people who were aiming only at strengthening their own power”. He is referring to Fatah’s former strong man in Gaza, Mohammed Dahlan.
Abu Mazen and the Israeli Premier Olmert are engaged in defining a Joint Declaration in view of the international US-sponsored international conference. What’s your position?
“The conferenced hatched by Bush is only a deceitful one. It’s a trap we Palestinians must not fall into. We are talking about an American attempt at whitewashing their failed Middle East policies. I want to tell Abbas: don’t let yourself be taken in by this trickery.”
Olmert has committed himself to implementing a peace founded on two States.
“It’s a deception. Olmert continuously speaks about peace but those are only words. Facts show us another story: confiscated property, villages divided by the wall in the West Bank, a population, in Gaza, that has been living under siege for more than a year. Is this the peace Israel wants? Olmert speaks about a State, so does Bush, and meanwhile the West Bank is being shattered into thousands of fragments pieces that they dare shamelessly call a ‘State’.”
Israel argues that Hamas doesn’t aim at setting up a Palestinian State but only at destroying the Jewish one.
“Hamas won at the elections, free elections, presenting a clear programme, which we didn’t fail to observe: to strive for a State of Palestine over the territories occupied in 1967, a State with Jerusalem as its capital. This is our government programme.”
If this is the case, why did Hamas carry out the military coup d’état in Gaza?
“We’re willing to accept an investigating commission by the Arab League that may shed light on what really happened in Gaza.”
And what is thought to have “really” happened?
“An attempt at overthrowing what the elections had sanctioned. I ask you: whenever has it happened that a movement which has obtained its mandate through an election victory then carried out a coup d’état? The truth is that in Gaza there was someone who wanted to come to an armed showdown in order to overturn the outcome of the elections.”
Concerning your relation with Fatah, is the only dialogue an armed one?
“No, it must not be. There’s no other alternative but a national reconciliation government, and even Egypt is aware about this, as they have offered themselves as the mediator. As far as I’m concerned, if it’s of any use, I’m willing to take a step backward. Our administration in Gaza is only temporary.”
Is Hamas willing to have talks with Israel? And if so, what will be the basis of such talks?
“We’ve stated for a while that we’re willing to negotiate a lasting truce, at least 10-15 years. On the condition, however, that Israel puts an end to the siege of Gaza, to the building of the Wall in the West Bank, that it releases the Palestinian prisoners locked up in its prisons, that it brings to an end the assassinations of the militants and leaders of the Intifada. Israel knows well that Hamas is able to enforce and to fulfil the accords it makes. Armed resistance isn’t the goal of Hamas but it remains one of the necessary means to obtain the liberation of Palestine. But it must be clear: Hamas isn’t against peace but only against capitulation.”
But, if you are in favour of peace, why don’t you agree to recognize Israel?
“Because an oppressed people must not be forced to recognise its own oppressor. Israel’s recognition cannot be a pre-condition for a negotiation, if anything, it’s one of the issues to be discussed.”
Why doesn’t Hamas accept new elections?
“It’s certainly not us who fear the elections. But, in order for the elections to be free, first of all the siege against Gaza must be lifted and then everyone has to recognise the only body that really represents the people’s will: the Palestinian Legislative Council. (The parliament of the Occupied Territories where Hamas has the absolute majority, editor’s note.) We are willing to open a confrontation with Fatah even over this issue, without any blackmailing.”
In an interview with l’Unità, Italian Foreign Minister D’Alema repeated that it’s possible, under certain conditions, to open a dialogue with Hamas. What is your reply?
“I’ve appreciated Italy’s stance and the endeavour it’s made in order to stand up against the Americans’ ostracism. Hamas is a friend to Italy and it is willing to discuss the demands put forward. Italy might undertake an exploratory mission: Prodi and D’Alema are welcome in Gaza. Yet, to discuss is one thing, to submit to a diktat is another kettle of fish.”
There are some who claim that Hamas intends upon having a state of “its own” in Gaza.
“This is false. I must repeat: our aim was and is that of setting up an independent state over all the territories occupied by Israel in 1967. We won’t be the ones who fail to keep this commitment.”
(Osama Hamdan collaborated in the interview).
There is no l’Unità link; the article can be read at: http://www.informazionecorretta.com/main.php?mediaId=13&sez=110&id=22229
Translation from Italian by Diego Traversa, revised by Mary Rizzo, members of Tlaxcala
Labels: Gaza, Israel, Italy, occupation, Palestine, Palestinian politicians, US
Friday, October 5, 2007
Fabio Mini (an Italian General) - "Operation Swarm"- War without End against Iran
Writing for Italy's l'Espresso, Italian General Fabio Mini has understood and explained the dangerous mechanisms of gaining consensus to wage war against "Enemies", which are variable and flexible according to the interests of hegemonic power. This enlightening article explains the manner in which War against Iran has been promoted in the West as well as the operative elements that will bring it about. A MUST READ! Translated from Italian by Diego Traversa and revised by Mary Rizzo for Tlaxcala and peacepalestine. (Also on peacepalestine by Fabio Mini: Even Escape is an Art, about the impossible disengagement from Iraq.Anyone who thought that the green light for the Israeli-American attack against Iran would come from the American Congress, was wrong. Equally wrong were those who thought that a president like Bush, so frustrated by the Iraqi chaos, the Afghan deadlock and the industrial lobbies’ pressures, would wind up making the decision on his own. The attack against Iran will take place thanks to the newly-appointed French Foreign Minister Kouchner. In these years of threats and counter-threats, of pretexts to make war, the only “revealing” words have been those from the laconic phrase “we must prepare ourselves for the worst.” Many have taken these words as a slip of the lip, others have regarded them as a bad luck-dispelling provocation, others as an instigation and still others as a submission to an ineluctable event. It could be that the sentence contains all of this, but the profound essence of Kouchner’s words is different.
Strange connections and affinities have come into being in these last 15 years of worldwide military interventions of different kinds. Armies have been integrated with private soldiers, visionaries with mercenaries, business with ideology, and truth has gotten so imbued with lies that the propaganda’s logic can’t account for either. And one of the most unusual connections is the one that has been established between military staff, humanitarian workers and foreign policy, to such an extent that each of the three components can pass itself off as the other two. The main cement of this union is the emergency concept. Foreign politics has lost its nature of continuity in the relations between states and in the sphere of international organizations. It has been devoting itself for a while to running emergency relations, meaning extemporaneous relations connected to temporary and changeable interests or positions that are transitory and changeable to variable geometries.
At the end of the day, emergency politics is the only kind that allows a limited and selective commitment. Moreover, it can be done or undone at one’s will, since the dimension of the emergency can be manipulated or interpreted. Following the same manner of reasoning, the armies of these last 15 years have exclusively devoted themselves to emergency situations, preferably abroad and for so-called humanitarian reasons, in order to guarantee themselves consensus and support. There are no longer any armies able to defend their own territories or to provide defence in case of war. It’s increasingly difficult to find a state threatened with war by another state and today all the world’s armies rely on a minimum 12-month notice allowing them to mobilise the resources for national defence. Therefore, they have become specialized in emergency in the respect of both the kind and the timing of the interventions.
When Kouchner candidly states that we “must prepare ourselves for the worst” he simply interprets a philosophy which doesn’t have as its objective the searching for the best, less traumatic solution, but which instead calls on the political class to manage the emergency, the military means and the humanitarian organizations which have by now become inseparable. It’s also about the recognition of the political class’s incapacity itself to think of and find enduring solutions. It is about the military instruments and their incapacity in managing conflict situations until their complete stabilization, and the incapacity of the humanitarian organizations in settling the problems of the people in more long-term perspective than the one offered by emergency. Finally, Kouchner also admits that the summation of these incapacities leads inevitably to war.
Then, war it will be.
It’s obvious that, under these conditions, some exaggerations are required in order to assure the accomplishment of the emergency and the intervention of the various components: something has to happen: what the observers call the “trigger” so that it may provoke the political emergency, there has to be an immediate danger for the security of everyone and a humanitarian catastrophe has to be in sight (the bigger, the better). There has to be, in other words, a manageable apparatus capable of “inventing” the emergency, as well inventing its conclusion that will allow disengagement and the end of the commitment whether or not there has been any solution of these problems. The attack against Iran falls perfectly within this scenario and, looking at it carefully, it’s by now a nearly completed picture.
There are multiple pretexts available for the attack. The idea that Iran intends upon developing a nuclear bomb and to destroy Israel is by now widely recognized by everyone. What’s missing are confirmations and evidence beyond poor empty boasting, but in the past we have witnessed terroristic boasting that has at any rate, come about and nobody is willing to run the risk of underestimating it, not even for truth’s sake. An Iranian or Iranian-supported attack against the American forces in Iraq, this too without a scrap of proof, has started to persuade even the most sceptical people. Sooner or later, after much speaking about it and evoking it, it will be taken as an invitation or a challenge and it will really be carried out. The support Iran gives to Hamas and Hezbollah makes Teheran extremely vulnerable. An excess or mistake by one of these formations is sufficient to set off an immediate military intervention.
The foreign policy of the most major nations, Europe included, is by now used to the idea that a military intervention is able to bring Iran back to the positions it was in 20 years ago. Moreover, what’s starting to be accepted is the idea that the purpose isn’t only that of preventing a nuclear power from rising but also that of terminating the country as a regional player which embodies oil and strategic interests in every part of south central Asia. Regarding the military planning aspect, everything has already been prepared for a while. The plans for the attack date back to 1979, at the time of the US embassy crisis, and they have been updated with new technologies and strategies ever since.
The thesis that it’s about an attack basically aimed at the atomic installations with no collateral damage for the civil population is only a miserable fantasy from those who have by now become used to telling lies. Even the idea that it may be restricted to Iranian soil is suspicious to say the least, since the end of the stubbornness and the boastfulness of the Ayatollahs, on one side, and by the Israeli-Americans, on the other, has to do with interests and ambitions which go far beyond the Persian Gulf.
Whatever the kind of attack it may be, it will produce heavy military and civil casualties regardless of whether or not a nuclear emergency fall-out or a radiation leak is triggered. Any kind of attack must have as its premise the destruction of defence structures: air and missile bases, deposits, mobile ramps, military ports, naval units, radars and anti-aircraft artilleries, land and armoured units, communication and command headquarters will have to be eliminated before or during the attack against the nuclear installations.
Many of these structures are located near the most densely populated areas. Even taking into account the most sophisticated cruise missiles, the “intelligent” bombs directed against the targets by the Israeli and American commandos, who have already been operative for some time in Iran, a quite high margin of collateral effects remains. Were mini nuclear fission bombs or neutron bombs to be used instead of the conventional “bunker busting” bombs, the damage percentage might rise, even thought not as greatly as many expect.
Also the thesis that precise attacks may be carried out with only one component, the aerial and missile one, is a deception. A complex operation, as they say they want to realize, that aims at bringing the Iranian bellicose potential back to the stone age, requires multiple attack actions, with many forces, from many directions and in short lapses of time in order to prevent, as colonel Boyd used to say, any capability of decision, reaction and counter-strategy by the enemy. The multiple action has to also prevent the direct retaliation by the Iranian air and naval forces against the oil installations and cargos in the Persian and Oman Gulfs. It has to neutralise the missile threats against the American military bases in Central Asia and the Middle East. It has to prevent indirect Iranian strategic operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, the Caucasus area and anywhere else a Shia may represent trouble. Moreover, Teheran controls the northern coast of the Hormuz Straits and closing this seaway to oil cargos might cause oil prices to skyrocket to levels between 200 and 400 dollars per barrel.
The same would happen if Iran turned sabotage actions and bombings against the oil installations of other countries in the area. The military strategy of the attack against Iran can’t therefore be entrusted to a surgical attack or to one single component. It can be nothing but that of “Swarm Warfare” (or Horde Warfare), unearthed by Arquilla and Ronfeld after the unmatchable realization by Gengis Khan. In modern terms, this strategy makes all the components of warland operative, naval, air, missile, space, virtual and information ones on multiple settings and levels. To achieve all this, it’s necessary that the “swarm” of the various components and actions, which develop by focusing on one place and then by spreading to other directions and places, be are at least sufficient enough in order to prevent any sort of reaction. The hordes entrusted with destroying the targets materially have to get integrated and to focus on targets along with the virtual hordes of diplomatic actions, of psychological warfare and with those of the manipulation of information.
The military actions have to be aimed at creating a humanitarian emergency that allows the international organizations to intervene in Iranian territory. Obviously, the responsibility for the catastrophe must be pinned on the Iranians themselves. Even in this respect, everything is ready or practically ready, not least after Kouchner’s exhortation. International agencies and NGOs are already looking forward to going to Iran to set women free from their chadors. If they are given the chance to intervene so as to gather refugees, to treat the wounded, to do the counts of the dead and to call elections every month, there will be a rush to bring democracy to Iran.
This scenario’s complexity shouldn’t lead one to think that it’s necessary to deploy a huge amount of forces. The Israeli and American flight formations’ bombing capacities are so high that they can cover multiple targets with a limited amount of jets. The naval missiles are by now technological weapons that don’t require mass interventions to carry out precise or wide-scale destruction. If anything, the variety of the plans and the kinds of intervention will bring about coordination, command and control problems, yet nothing out of the ordinary. The US and Israel have been cooperating for half a century and the matters of pseudo-authorizations from third countries about flying over or troops’ transit are by now overcome both by political accords with concerned countries and by the two powers’ inclination to ignore any objections.
What remains is the serious and important unknown of the post-emergency. The doubt about the future of a state which retains imperial origins and outlooks and which finds itself being turned from “rogue state” into “loser state” and being regarded as a political and strategic black hole after having been considered as aspiring to the role of regional power. Deep uncertainty remains not so much for the reaction to the defeat or the reduction of its aspirations but for the reaction to the humiliation. What can’t be ruled out is just what they want to avoid, that is, Iran’s nuclearization, still to be proved and implemented, which might instead be favoured with the help of foreign powers as a reaction to the humiliation.
Fabio Mini is an Italian General, former commander of the NATO forces in Kossovo.
Italian original: http://espresso.repubblica.it/dettaglio/Operazione-sciame-di-fuoco/1796788 Translated by Diego Traversa and revised by Mary Rizzo, members of Tlaxcala.
Labels: absolute madness, EU, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Italy, military, NATO, propaganda, US, war
