martes, 30 de diciembre de 2008

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Por segundo día, miles de personas salieron hoy a las
calles en el mundo árabe, Europa y Estados Unidos para
protestar por la ofensiva aérea de Israel en la Franja
de Gaza, que dejó al menos 345 muertos.

En la manifestación más numerosa, decenas de seguidores
del movimiento islamista Hezbollah permanecieron
parados bajo la lluvia en la capital del Líbano para
condenar la campaña de bombardeos israelíes, que hoy
entró en su tercer día.

Los manifestantes desbordaron una gran plaza y sus
calles aledañas, mientras agitaban banderas palestinas,
libanesas y de Hezbollah y pancartas con frases de
apoyo a los palestinos y condena a Israel.

La marcha fue convocada por el jefe de Hezbollah,
Hassan Nasrallah, quien ayer había urgido a los árabes
y musulmanes a levantarse en apoyo a los palestinos y
declarado hoy lunes como día de luto y solidaridad con
los habitates de Gaza.

Nasrallah se dirigió hoy a la multitud por una pantalla
gigante desde un lugar secreto, y llamó a los
palestinos a unirse.

"La fuerza aérea israelí no podrá destruir la voluntad
de los combatientes que tiran cohetes, y los residentes
de las colonias (judías) a 20 y 40 kilómetros de
distancia de Gaza tendrán que quedarse afuera de sus
colonias o en refugios, dijo Nasrallah.

"Muerte a Israel", gritaban los manifestantes, informó
la agencia de noticias DPA.

Nasrallah volvió a advertir a Israel que sufrirá
numerosas víctimas si lanza una ofensiva terrestre en
Gaza, y que fracasará otra vez como cuando luchó contra
las milicias de Hezbollah en una guerra por aire y
tierra durante un mes en 2006.

Más de 300 palestinos murieron desde que Israel comenzó
con sus bombardeos en Gaza, el sábado. El Estado judío
dijo que la ofensiva fue una represalia a los continuos
ataques con cohetes desde esa región ubicada entre
Israel y el Mediterráneo.

Las protestas no se limitaron al mundo árabe y
musulmán, ya que también hubo manifestaciones en
embajadas de Israel en grandes capitales de Europa y
otras acciones en Estados Unidos.

Entre 500 y 1.000 personas protestaron enfervorecidas
por segundo día ante la embajada israelí en Londres,
gritando consignas contra Israel, al que denostaban
como "Estado terrorista", y agitando pancartas.

En un clima de máxima tensión, policías parados detrás
de una valla de seguridad custodiaban el perímetro de
la sede diplomática, ubicada en el oeste de Londres, y
de tanto en tanto debían contener a manifestantes que
querían trepar la barrera.

En Grecia, unos 300 griegos y árabes arrojaron piedras
a la embajada de Israel en Atenas y protagonizaron
escaramuzas con la policía en una acción organizada por
el partido comunista.

Diez personas fueron detenidas ayer frente a la
embajada israelí en Londres en otra protesta que
coincidió también con manifestaciones frente a las
embajadas de Israel en Madrid y con marchas anti
israelíes Conpenhagen y París.

Las marchas también se extendieron a América, y en
particular a Estados Unidos, donde hoy hubo protestas
en Anaheim, una ciudad de California donde habitan
muchos palestinos, y en Phoenix, Arizona. Unas 300
personas se manifestaron ayer en Nueva York.

Además de la marcha en Beirut, miles de personas más
tomaron las calles del puerto libanés de Sidón y de
otras ciudades de países árabes, entre ellas El Cairo,
en Egipto, donde unas 3.000 personas se manifestaron
frente al sindicato de prensa egipcio.

En Irán, un influyente partido político, Sociedad
Clerical Combatiente, comenzó a registrar hoy a
voluntarios para pelear contra Israel en represalia por
sus ataques en Gaza.

En Irak, unos 1.000 seguidores del clérigo chiita anti
estadounidense Muqtada al-Sadr también protestaron en
el este de Bagdad con cantos contra Israel y una quema
de baneras estadounidenses e israelíes.

El partido político del primer ministro iraquí emitió
un comunicado en el que condenó la ofensiva israelí y
llamó a todos los países árabes a cortar relaciones con
el Estado judío y poner fin a "las conversaciones
públicas y secretas" con Tel Aviv.

El rey de Jordania Abdullah II donó hoy sangre para las
víctimas y se manifestó "molesto" por la ofensiva de
Israel.

"Denunciamos con todas las letras que el terrorismo de
Estado israelí, la hipocresía de la ONU, en primer
lugar, y de las potencias mundiales por respaldar a un
país usurpador, racista y asesino como es Israel", dijo
el presidente de la Federación de Entidades Arabes de
la Argentina (FEARAB), Alejandro Salomón, durante su
discurso de protesta frente a la Embajada de Israel en
Buenos Aires.

De ese acto participaron la presidenta de la Federación
de Entidades Argentino-Palestinas, Tilda Rabi, y
representantes de la Federación de Tierra y Vivienda,
de Luis D´Elía, el Partido Obrero, el Partido
Socialista, el MST, la Corriente Clasista y Combativa
(CCC), la FUBA y agrupaciones barriales, además de los
dirigentes Luis Zamora y Mario Cafiero.


Por su parte, Salomón pidió al Gobierno que exprese
su "solidaridad" para "terminar con esta masacre".
Hamás o el reto de gobernar una franja de miseria
Los islamistas expulsaron de Gaza a los leales a Fatah en junio de 2007
JUAN MIGUEL MUÑOZ | Ashkelón 29/12/2008


El Serrallo de Gaza, el edificio que ya fuera ocupado por militares británicos e israelíes, está en ruinas. Un bloque de la Universidad Islámica, varias mezquitas, el Ministerio del Interior, decenas de comisarías, inmuebles e instituciones que el Gobierno de Hamás iba construyendo paso a paso han sido derruidos por los bombarderos israelíes.


Israel asegura que la ofensiva militar contra Hamás en Gaza está "en sus fases iniciales"
El Ejército israelí ataca un barco con ayuda humanitaria
El Gobierno israelí califica la ofensiva en Gaza como "guerra hasta el final" contra Hamás
Ismail Haniya


A FONDO
Capital: Tel Aviv. Gobierno: República. Población: 7,112,359 (est. 2008)


Es un varapalo tremendo para el movimiento islamista palestino. Le costará remontar. Desde el 14 de junio de 2007, Hamás gobierna la franja tras expulsar a las fuerzas policiales y militares leales al presidente Mahmud Abbas, que hicieron todo lo posible para derrocar al partido vencedor en las elecciones de enero de 2006. Ha sido un año y medio de esfuerzos del Gobierno de Ismail Haniya para cumplir unos objetivos que sólo podían ser modestos. Poco han conseguido. Pero tal era la gravedad del caos antes de la toma del poder en la franja de Gaza, que ciertos logros sí son apreciados por la población.

El primero: la seguridad en las calles. Los matones y los tipos armados -a saber de cual de las facciones palestinas- pululaban por las ciudades a sus anchas. En la cúspide del enfrentamiento entre Hamás y Fatah, en mayo y junio de 2007, los milicianos de ambos bandos se apostaban en los tejados de decenas de edificios del centro de la ciudad para dirimir a balazos la grave fractura política que todavía persiste. Casi nadie salía de su casa durante aquellos días.

De golpe todo cambió. Nadie dispara ahora al aire ni en bodas ni entierros; las patrullas son las de la policía; la gente sale a pasear y a cenar a alguna terraza en el Mediterráneo -poco más se puede hacer-; los asaltos a comercios son cosa del pasado y ningún cooperante o periodista occidental ha sido secuestrado bajo el mando de este Gobierno. Grandes carteles instan a los ciudadanos a acudir a comisarías y juzgados para resolver sus litigios. Se les promete atención y educación. Lo corrobora Ahmed, un hombre recién casado que detesta a Hamás, pero que admite que el trato dispensado en las comisarías y el afán de los funcionarios por resolver los problemas es encomiable.

Afronta Hamás la tarea de gobernar con una plantilla que derrocha entusiasmo pero que carece de experiencia, como han puesto de manifiesto las huelgas orquestadas -todavía hoy se mantienen- por la Autoridad Palestina que gobierna Cisjordania. Jueces y funcionarios de justicia fieles a Fatah abandonaron sus trabajos siguiendo instrucciones del presidente, Mahmud Abbas. Cobran sus salarios a condición de rechazar toda colaboración con el Ejecutivo de Haniya. Lo mismo hicieron muchos profesores de escuela, que se sumaron a la huelga, y los médicos. Aunque en este caso, son muchos los que afirman que no dejarán morir a gente por seguir las directrices de Fatah.

Sin embargo, claro está, aliviar las penurias económicas del millón y medio de habitantes de la franja de Gaza era una meta primordial, nunca conseguida. Imposible eludir el bloqueo económico israelí, jamás relajado aunque durante cuatro meses de tregua Hamás impuso orden y no se dispararon cohetes contra Israel. El suministro de energía eléctrica, combustibles y gas es raquítico, y los materiales para la construcción no entran desde hace casi tres años. Tampoco se suministran muchos alimentos ni medicamentos. Los cientos de túneles horadados en la frontera con Egipto no son más que un pequeño alivio a una hecatombe económica que sirven para introducir alimentos, bienes de primera necesidad y fuel. También armas. Sin apertura de las aduanas con Israel o sin una salida al exterior a través de Egipto, todo queda al arbitrio de los gobiernos hebreos.

Es un secreto y no lo es. Pero al Gobierno no le falta dinero. Más de una vez, a final de mes, el Ejecutivo ha adelantado una semana el pago de los salarios a los funcionarios. Solía coincidir con retrasos en el abono de los sueldos a los trabajadores que dependen de la Autoridad Palestina que gobierna en Cisjordania. ¿Cómo consigue Hamás los fondos? No contestarán con precisión sus dirigentes, pero las aportaciones de Irán y de algún país árabe no alcanzan las sumas que donan devotos y prósperos musulmanes de todo el mundo. Por los túneles, en maletas, llegan a Gaza los fondos. Ahora los deberán emplear para reconstruir lo arrasado. Otra vez.










Pais: Israel
Israel asegura que la ofensiva militar contra Hamás en Gaza está "en sus fases iniciales"
El Ejército israelí ataca un barco con ayuda humanitaria
El Gobierno israelí califica la ofensiva en Gaza como "guerra hasta el final" contra Hamás

lunes, 29 de diciembre de 2008

VIVA ZAPATA???

El periodista del zapatazo a Bush será juzgado el último día del año
• Al Zaidi dice que no se arrepiente y que volvería a hacerlo, según su hermano



Familiares de Muntadar al Zaidi muestran carteles con su foto y un texto que pide su libertad. Foto: AP / KHALID MOHAMMED MÁS INFORMACIÓN

La presencia en Irak de las tropas que no son de EEUU, en el limbo
EL PERIÓDICO
BAGDAD
El juicio de Muntadar al Zaidi, el periodista iraquí que lanzó sus zapatos contra el presidente de EEUU, George Bush, comenzará el 31 de diciembre, según señalaron ayer el juez que ha llevado a cabo las primeras investigaciones y el hermano del procesado, Udai al Zaidi.
El juez de instrucción que se ha ocupado del asunto, Dhiya al Kenani, afirmó que "la investigación ya ha terminado y el caso ha sido transferido al Tribunal Penal Central". El magistrado confirmó que el juicio comenzará el último día de este año.

El CARGO Zaidi está acusado de "agresión contra un jefe de Estado extranjero en visita a Irak" por el incidente ocurrido en una rueda de prensa en Bagdad el pasado día 14. Este delito conlleva una pena de entre 5 y 15 años de cárcel, pero muchos observadores creen que, al final, se enfrentará solo a un cargo de "intento de agresión", que reviste menos gravedad.

Udai al Zaidi pudo reunirse ayer, durante una hora y cuarto, con su hermano encarcelado y afirmó que "tenía signos claros de tortura en su cuerpo, como quemadas de cigarrillo en el oído" y el ojo izquierdo hinchado. Agregó que tenía también una herida en la nariz y hematomas en los brazos y las piernas y que su hermano piensa presentar una demanda por el maltrato recibido.

Udai explicó que, durante el encuentro, su hermano lloró de felicidad y le dijo que no se arrepentía de su acto y que, si tuviera la oportunidad, volvería a hacerlo. Según Udai, Muntadar dijo al juez que le tomó declaración que esperaba ser abatido a tiros después de haber tirado el primer zapato. "Como no ocurrió, le dio tiempo a lanzar el segundo", explicó Udai, citando a su hermano.

Además, señaló que el periodista escribió bajo coacción y amenazas la carta en la que pedía perdón al primer ministro iraquí, Nuri al Maliki, que fue divulgada por el Gobierno de Bagdad el pasado jueves.
Gaza: "This is only the beginning"
Ewa Jasiewicz writing from the occupied Gaza Strip, Live from Palestine, 28 December 2008


Palestinian children attend funeral processions for victims of Israeli missile strikes in Rafah refugee camp, southern Gaza Strip, 28 December 2008. (Hatem Omar/MaanImages)

27 December 2008

As I write this, Israeli jets are bombing the areas of Zeitoun and Rimal in central Gaza City. The family I am staying with has moved into the internal corridor of their home to shelter from the bombing. The windows nearly blew out just five minutes ago as a massive explosion rocked the house. Apache helicopters are hovering above us, while F-16s soar overhead.

United Nations radio reports say one blast was a target close to the main gate of al-Shifa hospital -- the largest medical facility in Gaza. Another was a plastics factory. More bombs continue to pound the Strip.

Sirens are wailing on the streets outside. Regular power cuts plunge the city into blackness every night and tonight is no exception. Only perhaps tonight it is the darkest night people have seen here in their lifetimes.

As of this writing, more than 220 people have been killed and at least 400 injured through attacks that shocked the Strip in the space of 15 minutes. Hospitals are overloaded and unable to cope. These attacks come on top of the already existing humanitarian crisis that came about because of the 18-month Israeli siege which has resulted in a lack of medicines, bread, flour, gas, electricity, fuel and freedom of movement.

Doctors at al-Shifa Hospital had to scramble together 10 make-shift operating theaters to deal with the wounded. The hospital's maternity ward had to transform their operating room into an emergency theater. Al-Shifa only had 12beds in their intensive care unit, they had to make space for 27 today.


There is a shortage of medicine -- over 105 key items are not in stock, and blood and spare generator parts are desperately needed.


Al-Shifa's main generator is the life support machine of the entire hospital. It's the apparatus keeping the ventilators and monitors and lights turned on that keep people inside alive. And it doesn't have the spare parts it needs, despite the International Committee for the Red Cross urging Israel to allow it to transport them through Erez checkpoint.


Al-Shifa's Head of Casualty, Dr. Maowiya Abu Hassanieh explained that "We had over 300 injured in over 30 minutes. There were people on the floor of the operating theater, in the reception area, in the corridors; we were sending patients to other hospitals. Not even the most advanced hospital in the world could cope with this number of casualties in such a short space of time."

As Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi, the Israeli occupation forces Chief of Staff, said this morning, "This is only the beginning."

But this isn't the beginning -- it is an ongoing policy of collective punishment and killing with impunity practiced by Israel for decades. It has seen its most intensified level today. But the weight of dread, revenge and isolation hangs thick over Gaza. People are all asking: If this is only the beginning, what will the end look like?

11:30 am

Alberto Acre, a Spanish journalist, and I were on the border village of Sirej near the city of Khan Younis in the south of the Strip. We had driven there at 8am with the mobile clinic of the Union of Palestinian Relief Committees. The clinic regularly visits exposed, frequently raided villages far from medical facilities. We had been interviewing residents about conditions on the border. Stories of olive and orange groves, and family farmland, bulldozed to make way for a clear line of sight for Israeli army watch towers and border guards. Prior to today, Israeli attacks have been frequent -- indiscriminate fire and shelling sprayed homes and land on the front line of the south eastern border. One elderly farmer showed us the grave-size ditch he had dug to climb into when Israeli soldiers would shoot into his fields.

Alberto was interviewing a family that had survived an Israeli missile attack on their home last month. It had been a response to rocket fire from resistance fighters nearby. Four fighters were killed in a field by the border. Israel had rained rockets and M-16 fire back. The family, caught in the crossfire, has not returned to their home.

I was waiting for Alberto to return when ground shaking thuds tilted us off our feet. This was the sound of surface to air fired missiles and F-16 bombs slamming into the police stations and bases of the Hamas authority across Gaza. We zoomed out of the village in our ambulance, and onto the main road to Gaza City, before jumping out to film the smoldering remains of a police station in Deir al-Balah near Khan Younis. Eyewitnesses said two Israeli missiles had destroyed the station. One had soared through a children's playground and a busy fruit and vegetable market before striking its target.

Civilians dead

There was blood on a broken plastic yellow slide, and a crippled, dead donkey with an upturned vegetable cart beside it. Aubergines and splattered blood covered the ground. A market trader present during the attack began to explain in broken English what happened: "It was full here, full, three people dead, many, many injured." An elderly man with a white kuffiyeh scarf around his head threw his hands down to his blood-drenched trousers and cried, "Look! Look at this! Shame on all governments, shame on Israel, look how they kill us, they are killing us and what does the world do? Where is the world, where are they, we are being killed here, hell upon them!"

He began to pick up splattered tomatoes he had lost from his cart, picking them up jerkily, and putting them into plastic bags, quickly. Behind a small tile and brick building, a man was sitting against the wall, his legs were bloodied. He couldn't get up and was sitting, visibly in pain and shock, trying to adjust himself, to orientate himself.

The Deir al-Balah police station itself was a wreck, a mess of twisted piles of concrete -- broken floors upon floors. Smashed cars and a split palm tree split the road.

We walked on, hurriedly, with everyone else, eyes skyward at four US-made Apache helicopters whose trigger mechanisms are supplied by the United Kingdom's Brighton-Based EDM Technologies. They were dropping smoky bright flares -- a defense against any attempt at Palestinian missile retaliation.

Turning down the road leading to the Deir al-Balah Civil Defense Force headquarters we suddenly saw a rush of people streaming across the road, shouting "They've been bombing twice, they've been bombing twice!" We ran too, but towards the crowds and away from "a ministry building," which our friend explained could be a possible second target as the Apaches rumbled above.

Arriving at the police station we saw the remains of a life at work smashed short. A prayer matt clotted with dust, a policeman's hat, the ubiquitous bright flower-patterned mattresses, burst open. A crater around 20 feet in diameter was filled with pulverized walls and floors and a motorbike, tossed on its side like a toy.

Policemen were frantically trying to get a fellow worker out from under the rubble. Everyone was trying to call him on his cell phone. "Stop it everyone, just one, one of you ring," shouted an officer. A fire licked the underside of a room now crushed to just three feet high. The men rapidly grasped and threw back rocks, blocks and debris to reach the man.

We made our way to al-Aqsa Hospital. Trucks and cars loaded with the men of entire families -- uncles, nephews, brothers -- piled high and speeding to the hospital to check on loved ones, horns blaring without interruption.

Hospitals on the brink

Entering al-Aqsa was overwhelming -- pure pandemonium, charged with grief, horror, distress and shock. Limp, blood-covered and burnt bodies streamed by us on rickety stretchers. Before the morgue, tens of shouting relatives crammed up to its open double doors. Our friend explained that "they could not even identify who was who, whether it is their brother or cousin or who, because they are so burned." Many were transferred, in ambulances and the back of trucks and cars to al-Shifa Hospital.

The injured couldn't speak. Causality after casualty sat propped against the outside walls, being comforted by relatives, with wounds temporarily dressed. The more drastically injured were inside, where relatives jostled with doctors in constant motion to bring in their injured in scuffed blankets. Drips, bloody faces, scorched hair and shrapnel cuts to hands, chests, legs, arms and heads dominated the reception area, wards and operating theaters.

We saw a bearded man on a stretcher on the floor of an intensive care unit, shaking and shaking, involuntarily, legs rigid and thrusting downwards -- a spasm consistent with a spinal cord injury. Would he ever walk again or talk again? In another unit, a baby girl, no older than six months, had shrapnel wounds to her face. A relative lifted a blanket to show us her fragile bandaged leg. Her eyes were saucer-wide and she was making stilted, repetitive, squeaking sounds.

A first estimate at al-Aqsa Hospital was 40 dead and 120 injured.

The hospital was dealing with casualties from the bombed market, a playground, a Civil Defense Force's station, a civil and traffic police stations -- all were leveled. Two of the dead were carried out on stretchers from the hospital. Their bodies were lifted up by crowds of grief-stricken men and taken to the graveyard accompanied by cries of "There is not God but God!"
Who cares?


Many Palestinians in Gaza feel that no one is looking out for them apart from God.

Back in al-Shifa Hospital tonight, we met the brother of a security guard who was sitting in the doorway of the former headquarters of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The building collapsed on top of him after an Israeli missile strike. He said to us, "We don't have anyone but God. We feel alone. Where is the world? Where is the action to stop these attacks?"

Majid Salim, stood beside his comatose mother, Fatima. Earlier today she had been sitting at her desk at work at the Khadija Arafat Charity, located near the headquarters of Hamas' security forces in Gaza City. Israel's attack had left her with multiple internal and head injuries, a tube down her throat and a ventilator keeping her alive. Majid gestured to her, "We didn't attack Israel, my mother didn't fire rockets at Israel. This is the biggest terrorism, to have our mother bombarded at work."

The groups of men lining the corridors of the over-stretched al-Shifa hospital are stunned, agitated, patient and lost. We spoke to a group of men whose brother had both arms broken and serious facial and head injuries. They explained that "We couldn't recognize his face, it was so black from the weapons used." Another man turns to me and said. "I am a teacher. I teach human rights -- this is a course we have, human rights." He paused. 'How can I teach, my son, my children, about the meaning of human rights under these conditions, under this siege?"

The UN Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and local government schools have developed a human rights syllabus, which teaches children about international law, the Geneva Conventions, the International Declaration on Human Rights, and The Hague Regulations. One goal of the program is to develop a culture of human rights in Gaza, and to help generate more self-confidence and a sense of security and dignity for the children. But the contradiction between what should be adhered to as a common code of conduct agreed to by most states, including Israel, and the realities on the ground is stark. International law is not being applied or enforced with respect to Israeli policies toward Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, inside Israel, or the millions of refugees living in camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.

How can a new consciousness and practice of human rights ever graduate from rhetoric to reality when everything points to the contrary in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and in Israel? The United Nations have been spurned and shut out by Israel. Earlier this month, Richard Falk, the UN's Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, was held prisoner at Ben Gurion Airport before being unceremoniously deported. The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated regions on the planet. In the Jabaliya refugee camp alone, Gaza's largest, 125,000 people are crowded into a space of only two square kilometers. Bombardment by F-16s and Apache helicopters at mid-morning, as children leave their schools for home, reveals an utter contempt for civilian safety. This is compounded by an 18-month siege that bans all imports and exports, and has resulted in the deaths of more than 270 people as a result of a lack of access to essential medicines and treatment. Israel is granted immunity by an international community that offers empty phrases for Israel to "urge restraint" and "minimize civilian casualties."
A light

There is a saying here in Gaza: "At the end of the tunnel, there is another tunnel." Not so funny when you consider that Gaza is being kept alive through the smuggling of food, fuel and medicine through an exploitative industry of over 1,000 tunnels running from Egypt to the southern city of Rafah. On average, one to two people die every week in the tunnels. Some embark on a humiliating crawl to get their education, see their families, to find work, on their hands and knees. Other tunnels are reportedly big enough to drive through.

As bombs continue to blast buildings around us, jarring the children in this house from their fitful sleep, the saying could take on another twist. After today's killing of more than 200, is it that at the end of the tunnel, there is another tunnel, and then a grave? Or is it a wall of international complicity and silence?

Yet, there is a light through the wall --
a light of conscience turned into activism by people all over the world. We can turn a spotlight onto Israel's crimes against humanity and the enduring injustice here in Palestine, by coming out onto the streets and pressuring our governments; demanding an end to Israeli apartheid and occupation, broadening our call for boycott, divestment and sanctions, and for a genuine and just peace. Through institutional, governmental, and popular means, this can be the light at the end of the Gaza's tunnel.

Ewa Jasiewicz is a journalist, community and union organizer, and solidarity worker. She is currently Gaza Project Co-coordinator for the Free Gaza Movement.



Related Links
BY TOPIC: Gaza massacres (27 December 2008)

BARACK - blessed, baruch-- OBAMA AND THE JEWS.




How Barack Obama learned to love Israel
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 4 March 2007


(EI Illustration)

I first met Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama almost ten years ago when, as my representative in the Illinois state senate, he came to speak at the University of Chicago. He impressed me as progressive, intelligent and charismatic. I distinctly remember thinking 'if only a man of this calibre could become president one day.'

On Friday Obama gave a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Chicago. It had been much anticipated in American Jewish political circles which buzzed about his intensive efforts to woo wealthy pro-Israel campaign donors who up to now have generally leaned towards his main rival Senator Hillary Clinton.

Reviewing the speech, Ha'aretz Washington correspondent Shmuel Rosner concluded that Obama "sounded as strong as Clinton, as supportive as Bush, as friendly as Giuliani. At least rhetorically, Obama passed any test anyone might have wanted him to pass. So, he is pro-Israel. Period."

Israel is "our strongest ally in the region and its only established democracy," Obama said, assuring his audience that "we must preserve our total commitment to our unique defense relationship with Israel by fully funding military assistance and continuing work on the Arrow and related missile defense programs." Such advanced multi-billion dollar systems he asserted, would help Israel "deter missile attacks from as far as Tehran and as close as Gaza." As if the starved, besieged and traumatized population of Gaza are about to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Obama offered not a single word of criticism of Israel, of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians.

There was no comfort for the hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza who live in the dark, or the patients who cannot get dialysis, because of what Israeli human rights group B'Tselem termed "one cold, calculated decision, made by Israel's prime minister, defense minister, and IDF chief of staff" last summer to bomb the only power plant in Gaza," a decision that "had nothing to do with the attempts to achieve [the] release [of a captured soldier] nor any other military need." It was a gratuitous war crime, one of many condemned by human rights organizations, against an occupied civilian population who under the Fourth Geneva Convention Israel is obligated to protect.


From left to right, Michelle Obama, then Illinois state senator Barack Obama, Columbia University Professor Edward Said and Mariam Said at a May 1998 Arab community event in Chicago at which Edward Said gave the keynote speech. (Image from archives of Ali Abunimah)

While constantly emphasizing his concern about the threat Israelis face from Palestinians, Obama said nothing about the exponentially more lethal threat Israelis present to Palestinians. In 2006, according to B'Tselem, Israeli occupation forces killed 660 Palestinians of whom 141 were children -- triple the death toll for 2005. In the same period, 23 Israelis were killed by Palestinians, half the number of 2005 (by contrast, 500 Israelis die each year in road accidents).

But Obama was not entirely insensitive to ordinary lives. He recalled a January 2006 visit to the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona that resembled an ordinary American suburb where he could imagine the sounds of Israeli children at "joyful play just like my own daughters." He saw a home the Israelis told him was damaged by a Hizbullah rocket (no one had been hurt in the incident).

Six months later, Obama said, "Hizbullah launched four thousand rocket attacks just like the one that destroyed the home in Kiryat Shmona, and kidnapped Israeli service members."

Obama's phrasing suggests that Hizbullah launched thousands of rockets in an unprovoked attack, but it's a complete distortion. Throughout his speech he showed a worrying propensity to present discredited propaganda as fact. As anyone who checks the chronology of last summer's Lebanon war will easily discover, Hizbullah only launched lethal barrages of rockets against Israeli towns and cities after Israel had heavily bombed civilian neighborhoods in Lebanon killing hundreds of civilians, many fleeing the Israeli onslaught.

Obama excoriated Hizbullah for using "innocent people as shields." Indeed, after dozens of civilians were massacred in an Israeli air attack on Qana on July 30, Israel "initially claimed that the military targeted the house because Hezbollah fighters had fired rockets from the area," according to an August 2 statement from Human Rights Watch.

The statement added: "Human Rights Watch researchers who visited Qana on July 31, the day after the attack, did not find any destroyed military equipment in or near the home. Similarly, none of the dozens of international journalists, rescue workers and international observers who visited Qana on July 30 and 31 reported seeing any evidence of Hezbollah military presence in or around the home. Rescue workers recovered no bodies of apparent Hezbollah fighters from inside or near the building." The Israelis subsequently changed their story, and neither in Qana, nor anywhere else did Israel ever present, or international investigators ever find evidence to support the claim Hizbullah had a policy of using civilians as human shields.

In total, forty-three Israeli civilians were killed by Hizbullah rockets during the thirty-four day war. For every Israeli civilian who died, over twenty-five Lebanese civilians were killed by indiscriminate Israeli bombing -- over one thousand in total, a third of them children. Even the Bush administration recently criticized Israel's use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians. But Obama defended Israel's assault on Lebanon as an exercise of its "legitimate right to defend itself."

There was absolutely nothing in Obama's speech that deviated from the hardline consensus underpinning US policy in the region. Echoing the sort of exaggeration and alarmism that got the United States into the Iraq war, he called Iran "one of the greatest threats to the United States, to Israel, and world peace." While advocating "tough" diplomacy with Iran he confirmed that "we should take no option, including military action, off the table." He opposed a Palestinian unity government between Hamas and Fatah and insisted "we must maintain the isolation of Hamas" until it meets the Quartet's one-sided conditions. He said Hizbullah, which represents millions of Lebanon's disenfranchised and excluded, "threatened the fledgling movement for democracy" and blamed it for "engulf[ing] that entire nation in violence and conflict."

Over the years since I first saw Obama speak I met him about half a dozen times, often at Palestinian and Arab-American community events in Chicago including a May 1998 community fundraiser at which Edward Said was the keynote speaker. In 2000, when Obama unsuccessfully ran for Congress I heard him speak at a campaign fundraiser hosted by a University of Chicago professor. On that occasion and others Obama was forthright in his criticism of US policy and his call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The last time I spoke to Obama was in the winter of 2004 at a gathering in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. He was in the midst of a primary campaign to secure the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat he now occupies. But at that time polls showed him trailing.

As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, "Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front." He referred to my activism, including columns I was contributing to the The Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and US policy, "Keep up the good work!"

But Obama's gradual shift into the AIPAC camp had begun as early as 2002 as he planned his move from small time Illinois politics to the national scene. In 2003, Forward reported on how he had "been courting the pro-Israel constituency." He co-sponsored an amendment to the Illinois Pension Code allowing the state of Illinois to lend money to the Israeli government. Among his early backers was Penny Pritzker -- now his national campaign finance chair -- scion of the liberal but staunchly Zionist family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain. (The Hyatt Regency hotel on Mount Scopus was built on land forcibly expropriated from Palestinian owners after Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967). He has also appointed several prominent pro-Israel advisors.


Michelle Obama and Barack Obama listen to Professor Edward Said give the keynote address at an Arab community event in Chicago, May 1998. (Photo: Ali Abunimah)

Obama has also been close to some prominent Arab Americans, and has received their best advice. His decisive trajectory reinforces a lesson that politically weak constituencies have learned many times: access to people with power alone does not translate into influence over policy. Money and votes, but especially money, channelled through sophisticated and coordinated networks that can "bundle" small donations into million dollar chunks are what buy influence on policy. Currently, advocates of Palestinian rights are very far from having such networks at their disposal. Unless they go out and do the hard work to build them, or to support meaningful campaign finance reform, whispering in the ears of politicians will have little impact. (For what it's worth, I did my part. I recently met with Obama's legislative aide, and wrote to Obama urging a more balanced policy towards Palestine.)

If disappointing, given his historically close relations to Palestinian-Americans, Obama's about-face is not surprising. He is merely doing what he thinks is necessary to get elected and he will continue doing it as long as it keeps him in power. Palestinian-Americans are in the same position as civil libertarians who watched with dismay as Obama voted to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act, or immigrant rights advocates who were horrified as he voted in favor of a Republican bill to authorize the construction of a 700-mile fence on the border with Mexico.

Only if enough people know what Obama and his competitors stand for, and organize to compel them to pay attention to their concerns can there be any hope of altering the disastrous course of US policy in the Middle East. It is at best a very long-term project that cannot substitute for support for the growing campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions needed to hold Israel accountable for its escalating violence and solidifying apartheid.

Ali Abunimah is the co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse


Related Links:
The senator, his pastor and the Israel lobby , Ali Abunimah (31 March 2008)
Obama and the Jews, The Jewish Journal (9 March 2007)
Obama Pivots Away from Dovish Past, The Jewish Week (9 March 2007)



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Obama and the Jews
Harold Brackman, The Jewish Journal, 9 March 2007




One of the many paradoxes of contemporary American politics involves the Democratic Party's two most loyal constituency groups: African Americans and Jews. They have managed to stay under the same political tent even as their historic relationship has continued the long descent from the heights reached when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched side-by-side in Selma, Ala.

In the decade or so since Louis Farrakhan's 1995 Million Man March, the best -- or worst -- that can be said about the relationship is that it has pretty much moved from mutual alienation to mutual indifference as black newspapers rarely mention Jews except to take potshots at Israel, and Jewish papers can be relied on only to ritually invoke King on his birthday.

Bill Clinton, the ultimate political empath, became a favorite of both groups without really bridging the growing rift between them. A crowning irony of the next presidential sweepstakes is that the contender who may have the best chance of restoring Black-Jewish enthusiasm for the same candidate has the middle name "Hussein," after his paternal grandfather.

Everybody by now knows the outlines of Barack Obama's odyssey as the Hawaiian-born son of a white Kansas mother and a Kenyan father who was educated early on in Indonesia (the home of his Muslim stepfather) as well as Honolulu, worked as a community organizer in Chicago (his real political education), graduated from Columbia University, became president of the Harvard Law Review and spent six years in the Illinois State Senate before his nationally acclaimed speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention and election that same year to the U.S. Senate.

As Obama hires an operative to prepare the groundwork for a major Mideast policy speech, perhaps before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, his less-known Jewish connections are beginning to surface in the media: Gerald Kellman ("Marty Kaufman" in Obama's semi-autobiographical "Dreams From my Father"), a practitioner of Saul Alinsky-style community organizing, was Obama's first mentor in Chicago. Jay Tcath, director of Chicago's Jewish Community Relations Council; Robert Schrayer, a leading Chicago Jewish philanthropist; and Judge Abner J. Mikva are among Obama's fans. David Axelrod, his media maven, lost relatives in the Holocaust.

Those looking for Obama's views on the Mideast won't find a great deal. In 2004, he disappointed Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada by giving a speech to Chicago's Council on Foreign Relations endorsing the U.S. alliance with Israel. Speaking before Jewish audiences during his Senate campaign, he reassured them that his Swahili first name, Barack ("Blessed"), is a close relation of Baruch in Hebrew.

His current bestseller, "The Audacity of Hope" -- a carefully crafted manifesto positioning him for his 2008 run -- has a page on a recent trip to the Mideast, where he talked to both Holocaust survivors and Palestinian villagers. The book emphasizes the need for enhanced homeland security while offering sensible suggestions for a comprehensive approach, including carrots as well as sticks, to wean the Arab and Muslim world from Islamic extremism.

A reading of Obama's remarkably candid and insightful "Dreams from my Father," written in 1995, suggests his ultimate appeal for Jewish voters may not be ideology but temperament and sensibility. One telling moment in the book comes in 1992 with Obama, in his early thirties around the time of his marriage, joining Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, a congregation popular with upwardly-mobile black professionals.

One can't escape the impression that getting married and joining the church were both the politic thing for him to do. Regarding religion and politics, Obama emerges as a man wise beyond his years, with a deep appreciation of human frailties (including his own) and a profound aversion to fanaticism in any form. As a community organizer in Chicago, he learned the social importance of the black church and pulpit rhetoric.

Yet it is impossible not to be struck by temperamental affinities between Obama and earlier great Illinoisans -- not only Abe Lincoln, also a lanky, big-eared agnostic who married late -- but wryly wise Adlai Stevenson. Conversion or not, Obama remains deeply skeptical of religious dogma -- as was Old Abe (who never joined a church), despite his political mastery of biblical cadence and imagery. His careful, skeptical frame makes for a chilly relationship between Obama and demagogues like Al Sharpton and others who view Obama as inauthentically "black."

Another critical point in Obama's moral self-education, dramatized in "Dreams," comes during an interlude in New York when he was dating a white, apparently Jewish girl. He took her to a play, shot through with anti-white humor, at which the mostly black audience laughed and clapped, almost like in church.

"After the play was over, my friend started talking about why black people were so angry all the time. I said it was a matter of remembering -- nobody asks why Jews remember the Holocaust, I think I said, and she said that it was different, and I said it wasn't, and she said the anger was just a dead end."

The night ended with the girl crying that "she couldn't be black.... She would if she could, but she couldn't. She could only be herself, and wasn't that enough."


Relating the story a few years later to a friend, Obama said "whenever I think back to what my friend said to me, that night outside the theater, it somehow makes me ashamed."


Like other Americans, Jews who support Obama will be making a bet that -- despite his limited national political experience (another similarity with Lincoln, who served only one term in Congress before his election to the presidency) -- he has what it takes to move America beyond multicultural cliches to engaging real 21st century challenges, including our inescapable post-Iraq War responsibilities in the Mideast.

Like Stevenson, he will have to "talk sense to the American people," especially the left wing of his own party.

Like Lincoln, he will have to harness "the better angels of our nature" to reconcile Americans with each other, and challenge them to intelligently engage the rest of the world.

Harold Brackman, a historian who has written extensively on the history of Black-Jewish relations, lives in San Diego.