by Mazin Qumsiyeh / Popular
Resistance
Israel’s
UN ambassador met with major American Jewish organizations telling them to work
hard to ensure there will not be passage of any votes on Palestine at the UN. Presidernt Obama met
with 80 influential Jewish donors (who each gave $25-35,000 to attend the
private dinner with the President) and Obama assured them that the US has iron-clad commitment to Israel. He
stated to them that any differences with the current Israeli government are not
about goals and strategies but merely minor tactical differences among close
friends and allies. Money and weapons will keep flowing and American lives will
continue to be threatened and shed for this Zionist cash. Fatah and Hamas are
dragging their feet and have yet to follow on their promises of putting
together a unity “authority” (although the term is misleading as there is no
authority under occupation) let alone allowing for a constitution of a representative
Palestinian National Council (the main demand of the Palestinian people).
Israeli apartheid system continues its ethnic cleansing.
Last week dozens of structures for poor Bedouins were demolished rendering
nearly 100 homeless. The apartheid Knesset is debating new racist laws to
punish free speech and any NGOs that do not accept apartheid/refuse to
acknowledge the Jewish nature of the state. The apartheid regime continues to
hold thousands of Palestinian political prisoners and continues to deny basic
human rights (like the right to return to one’s home and land or the right to
travel free in one’s country). Further, the despotic regimes in Syria, Bahrain,
Yemen, Morocco and
elsewhere continue to torture, kill, and imprison their citizens who dare call
for democracy. Greece
is being threatened about its loans unless it joins the US/Israel to stop the
freedom flotilla. Turkey’s elections consolidated power in the ruling party
which now felt a bit freer (or so we are told) to bend to US/Israel pressure to
a) stop the Freedom Flotilla II, and b) drop its demand for an apology and for
lifting the siege on Gaza (after the execution of 9 Turkish passengers in
International waters last year).
But all these political shenanigans can be stopped when
enough people say “enough is enough” and demand all these governments comply
with International law and human rights. The brave pioneers of the world-wide
people movement/Intifada who have worked for years urge you to join them. They
celebrate and consolidate success in Tunisia
and Egypt.
I send example regularly of people power and today I send you a few more links.
Action is the best antidote to despair. Silence is complicity.
Challenging Israeli apartheid, starting at Ben Gurion Airport “From July 8-16, I will join hundreds of
internationals for a week of solidarity actions in coordination with 15 Palestinian
civil resistance organizations in the occupied West Bank and East
Jerusalem…”
Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh teaches and does research at Bethlehem and Birzeit
Universities in occupied Palestine. He serves as
chairman of the board of the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between
People and coordinator of the Popular Committee Against the Wall and
Settlements in Beit Sahour He is author of “Sharing the
Land of Canaan: Human rights and the Israeli/Palestinian Struggle” and “Popular
Resistance in Palestine: A history of Hope and Empowerment”
See Also
Allemagne, Israël : les leçons de l’histoire
Conference de presse de Mazin Qumsiyeh, le 31 mai à Berlin.
David Cronin interviews Mazin Qumsiyeh in EI
AMAZING SPEECH BY WAR VETERAN Asombroso discurso de un
Veterano SUBTITULADO ESPAÑOL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kWU-JHetMM
Official weblinks to boats to Gaza
from Europe http://www.freedomflotilla.eu/
and general one http://witnessgaza.com/
and general one http://witnessgaza.com/
US boat
called the “Audacity of Hope” leads flotilla to break the illegal and immoral
siege on Gaza
Press Conference http://www.ustream.tv/channel/the-us-boat-to-gaza
Website http://ustogaza.org/
Promotional video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ag4ZP4-5es
ACTION: Easy way to contact US Congress (e.g. to demand Israel allow US
citizens safe passage both on the Freedom Flotilla and on the July 8-16
actions)
Video of action: Peaceful demonstrators in the village of
Deir Qaddis
9th International Seminar “Bridges instead of Walls” 26th –
31st July 2011 http://www.alternativenews.org/english/
“We need advocates for the truth,” they tell him.
by Stuart Littlewood
Kairos Palestine, the voice of Palestinian Christians, has
given the Archbishop of Canterbury
a strong ticking-off for remarks he made during a BBC interview.
Rifat Kassis, co-ordinator of Kairos Palestine, said he was
“deeply troubled” by the Archbishop’s “inaccurate and erroneous remarks” about
the situation of Christians in the Middle East.
He called the Archbishop’s failure to mention the Israeli occupation and the
regime’s oppressive policies “shocking”.
In a letter to the Archbishop http://www.kairospalestine.ps/sites/default/Documents/Kairos%20Palestine%20response%20to%20Dr%20Rowan%20%20Williams.pdf
he said: “We were deeply saddened by your declarations because we know that
Your Grace is well informed… and you know very well that in the Bethlehem area
alone there are 19 illegal Israeli settlements (such as nearby Har Homa built
on Jabal Abu Ghneim) and the wall that have devoured Christian lands and put
Bethlehem in a chokehold. You know well that only 13% of Bethlehem
area is available for Palestinian use and the wall isolates 25% or the Bethlehem area’s
agricultural land. Not to mention the situation of Christians in Jerusalem, which you know
very well, since you should have received reports from the Anglican Bishop in
the City whose residency permit was denied by the occupying power.”
Mr Kassis ended by saying: “We would like to remind Your
Grace that Christian Palestinians need advocates for the truth. It is the
truth, and only the truth, that will lead to peace and justice in our home.”
So what did Archbishop Rowan Williams say to the BBC http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/2071/christians-in-the-middle-east-archbishop-on-world-at-one
that so infuriated his Palestinian brethren?
Apparently it was the way he talked about the ethnic
cleansing of Christians referring to extreme pressure in Iraq while suggesting that the exodus of
Christians from Palestine
was due to “a much more un-dramatic but equally steady and strong pressure”.
Interviewer: “But that’s a strong term to use isn’t it,
ethnic cleansing?”
Archbishop: “It is a strong term but I think not
disproportionate where Iraq
is concerned. The level of violence has been extreme.”
However, Williams seemed careful to avoid connecting the
term ‘ethnic cleansing’ with Israel’s
programme to dispossess and terrorise Palestinians.
The interviewer then asked: “Do you think that the British
government, other governments, should be more vocal in their support for
Christians who you are seeing at the moment under great difficulty in a number
of these countries?”
Archbishop: “Well to be honest I think at the moment there
is quite a lot of support. And I can’t fault what’s been said by our government
on this issue because I think the issue of religious freedom in general has
very high priority in the Foreign Office at the moment. So I hope that
continues.”
The truth is that the British Foreign Office is infested
with pro-Israel placemen and has not lifted a finger for religious or any other
freedoms in the Occupied
Palestinian Territories.
The Archbishop continued: “Also I think people in the West
know perfectly well that if foreign powers take up the cause of a minority in
another country it can be utterly counterproductive.”
Was he, by any chance, thinking about the foreign powers
that implanted Jewish aliens in the Holy Land in 1947 and the running sore ever
since?
He went on the say: “I think there are still perhaps too few
people in this country who are aware of the haemorrhaging of Christian populations
from the Holy Land. The fact that Bethlehem, a majority
Christian city just a couple of decades ago, is now very definitely a place
where Christians are a marginalised minority. We want that to be a little bit
higher on people’s radar… “
Interviewer: “Would you see what’s happening in Bethlehem as another
example of what you’ve described as ethnic cleansing?”
Archbishop: “It’s not ethnic cleansing exactly because it’s
been far less deliberate than that I think. What we’ve seen though is a kind of
Newtonian passing on of energy or force from one body to another so that some
Muslim populations in the West Bank, under pressure, move away from certain
areas like Hebron, move into other areas like Bethlehem. And there’s nowhere
much else for Christian populations to go except away from Palestine.”
I’m sure that trapped and imprisoned Palestinian Christians
will be relieved to hear that their misery is all down to Newtonian energy
effects.
Archbishop Williams’s comments about Bethlehem were “particularly
faulty and offensive”, according to Rifat Kassis, especially his claim that
Muslims coming into the Bethlehem area, where space is limited, was forcing
Christians to leave.
Are the Archbishop and his Anglican Church the ‘advocates
for the truth’ so desperately needed?
It is not the first time the Archbishop has upset
Palestinian Christians. For decades the Israelis’ game has clearly been to
obstruct and paralyse Christianity in the Holy Land. When Palestine was under
British mandate, Christians accounted for 20 per cent of the population.
Sixty-three years of hostilities, dispossession, interference and economic
ruination have whittled their numbers down to less than 2 per cent. At this
rate there will soon be no Christians left in the land where Christianity was
born.
And in November 2008, while Israel was planning its
murderous assault against Gaza’s civilians (including the Christian community),
the Archbishop of Canterbury was gallivanting with the Chief Rabbi, Sir
Jonathan Sacks, on a visit to the former Nazi camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau in
Poland to demonstrate their joint solidarity against the extremes of hostility
and genocide.
“This is a pilgrimage not to a holy place but to a place of
utter profanity,” said the Archbishop, “a place where the name of God was
profaned because the image of God in human beings was abused and disfigured.
How shall we be able to read the signs of the times, the indications that evil
is gathering force once again and societies are slipping towards the same
collective corruption and moral sickness that made the Shoah possible?”
Evil was again gathering its forces and corruption and moral
sickness were on the rampage even as he spoke. And did the Archbishop and the
Chief Rabbi afterwards go to sniff the stench where the name of God had been
profaned in the ruins of the Gaza Strip and utter the same brave words?
Did they hell!
When the Church of England’s head honcho finally visited
Gaza, the Israelis refused him access to the Strip but at the last minute
allowed him into the shattered enclave for just one-and-a-half hours, enough
time to show his face at the hospital and no more. He said nothing about his
experience to the House of Lords where he has a seat and the support of a large
gaggle of bishops.
This despite his claim to be “in a unique position to bring
the needs and voices of those fighting poverty, disease and the effects of
conflict, to the attention of national and international policy makers”,
despite his declaration that “Christians need to witness boldly and clearly”,
and despite his urging greater awareness of the humanitarian crisis to ensure
that the people of Gaza are not forgotten.
The Archbishop’s website, however, did report how he
hobnobbed with the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, paid his respects to Yad Vashem
and the Holocaust, and talked with the President of Israel. There was no
mention of any similar get-togethers with senior Islamic figures, leaving a
question-mark over his real commitment to inter-faith engagement.
The Archbishop’s agreeing to accept the hospitality of
Jewish political and religious dignitaries while they squished his wish to
carry out his Christian duties in Gaza, tells us a great deal.
So is the guy a closet Zionist like so many other so-called
Christians?
I’m reminded of the he words of Desmond Tutu: “Where there
is oppression, those who do nothing side with the oppressor.”
“Christianity destroyed not by Muslims but by Israel.”
The Archbishop has a chance to redeem himself with the
international conference on Christians in the Holy Land he plans to hold next
month. For two days I’ve been asking his press office for details of delegates,
keynote speakers, etc but have received nothing. We are left to speculate.
It would be nice if the conference were addressed by that
excellent trio from the Holy Land Archbishop Theodosius Hanna (Greek Orthodox
Church), Monsignor Manuel Musallam (Latin Catholic) and Mr Constantine Dabbagh
(Executive Director of the Middle East Council of Churches)? These courageous
spiritual leaders and human rights defenders toured Ireland last November to
raise awareness of the situation in their homeland under Israeli military
occupation and the plight of the dwindling Christian community. Their central
message was simple: “We need only one thing, to be protected by the world
against the crimes of Israel” (For details please see my article “No such thing
as justice in the Holy Land”, 14 December 2010.)
Fr Manuel told members of the Irish Government:
“Christianity in the region has been destroyed not by Muslims but by Israel.
Israel destroyed the church of Palestine and the church of Jerusalem beginning
in 1948. It, not Muslims, has sent Christians in the region into a diaspora…
Christians in Palestine are not suffering persecution, because we are not
considered to be a religious community, but rather the people of Palestine. We
have the same rights and the same obligations.
“We have spoken to Israel for more than 18 years and the
result has been zero. We have signed agreements here and there at various times
and then when there is a change in the Government of Israel we have to start
again from the beginning. We ask for our life and to be given back our
Jerusalem, to be given our state and for enough water to drink… I have not seen
Jerusalem since 1990.”
However, given the Anglican Church’s recent form, it
wouldn’t surprise me if the conference is hosted by the CMJ (the Church’s
Ministry among Jewish People). The CMJ is “propelled by devotion to God and the
fulfillment of His promises to His people Israel”. In its statement of faith
the CMJ says Christians have “a special responsibility to love, defend and
share the Gospel with God’s historic, chosen People, the Jews”.
The CMJ’s attitude to the Israel-Palestine struggle is unhelpful
to the Palestinians. For example…
Gentiles are “fellow-citizens with God’s people”…
CMJ rejoices that, after 2000 years… the Jewish people now,
at last, have returned to the land from which the majority were dispersed in
AD70…
CMJ recognizes that the State of Israel was set up as a
result of a majority vote of the United Nations in 1947… However the Ministry
does not hold any official position as to the appropriate location of the
borders of the state.
That signifies approval for Israel’s continuing land-grab
and lawlessness. If CMJ recognizes the UN’s partition it should also accept the
borders on which it was based.
According to Wikipedia, “CMJ has always adopted a Zionist
position, and expressed the view that the Jewish people deserved a state in the
Holy Land decades before Zionism began as a movement.”
The CMJ was adopted as an official ministry of the Church of
England in 1995 and has been operating in the shadows ever since. It is, if you
like, the Church of England’s Zionist wing.
Stuart Littlewood
___________________________________________
Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free
Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation.
See Also
Kristol, Abrams, Kagan letter presses House GOP to back
Libya mission
By Ben Smith
Politico
Politico
Three prominent conservative foreign policy hands are
circulating a letter to House Republicans today urging them not to cut off
funding for the conflict in Libya.
The draft letter, being circulated by Weekly Standard Editor
Bill Kristol, former Bush aide Elliott Abrams, and Brookings’s Robert Kagan,
warns that cutting off funding would be “an abdication of our responsibilities
as an ally and as the leader of the Western alliance.
The authors say they share Congressional concerns about the
evasion of the War Powers Act, as well as Obama’s conduct of the war; but they
say their main complaint is that Obama hasn’t used American power aggressively
enough.
“We should be doing more to help the Libyan opposition,
which deserves our support. We should not be allowing ourselves to be held
hostage to U.N. Security Council resolutions and irresolute allies,” they write.
“What would be even worse, however, would be for the United States to become
one of those irresolute allies. The United States must see this effort in Libya
through to its conclusion. Success is profoundly in our interests and in
keeping with our principles as a nation. The success of NATO’s operations will
influence how other Middle Eastern regimes respond to the demands of their
people for more political rights and freedoms. For the United States and NATO
to be defeated by Muammar al-Qaddafi would suggest that American leadership and
resolution were now gravely in doubt—a conclusion that would undermine American
influence and embolden our nation’s enemies.”
Full letter after the jump.
An Open Letter to House Republicans
We thank you for your leadership as Congress exercises its
Constitutional responsibilities on the issue of America’s military actions in
Libya. We are gravely concerned, however, by news reports that Congress may
consider reducing or cutting funding for U.S. involvement in the NATO-led military
operations against the oppressive regime of Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi.
Such a decision would be an abdication of our responsibilities as an ally and
as the leader of the Western alliance. It would result in the perpetuation in
power of a ruthless dictator who has ordered terrorist attacks on the United
States in the past, has pursued nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass
destruction, and who can be expected to return to these activities should he
survive. To cut off funding for current efforts would, in short, be profoundly
contrary to American interests.
We share the concerns of many in Congress about the way in
which the Obama administration has conducted this operation. The problem is not
that he has done too much, however, but that he has done too little to achieve
the goal of removing Qaddafi from power. The United States should be leading in
this effort, not trailing behind our allies. We should be doing more to help
the Libyan opposition, which deserves our support. We should not be allowing
ourselves to be held hostage to U.N. Security Council resolutions and
irresolute allies.
What would be even worse, however, would be for the United
States to become one of those irresolute allies. The United States must see
this effort in Libya through to its conclusion. Success is profoundly in our
interests and in keeping with our principles as a nation. The success of NATO’s
operations will influence how other Middle Eastern regimes respond to the
demands of their people for more political rights and freedoms. For the United
States and NATO to be defeated by Muammar al-Qaddafi would suggest that
American leadership and resolution were now gravely in doubt — a conclusion
that would undermine American influence and embolden our nation’s enemies.
In Speaker Boehner’s June 14, 2011, letter to President
Obama, he wrote that he believes “in the moral leadership our country can and
should exhibit, especially during such a transformational time in the Middle
East.” We share that belief, and feel that now is the time for Congress to
exhibit that moral leadership despite political pressures to do otherwise.
Sincerely,
Source: The Passionate Attachment
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