No justice. No peace.

“Palestinians and foreign activists on Tuesday attacked Israeli settlers who had seized a disputed house in mostly Arab east Jerusalem armed with an Israeli court order, an AFP photographer said.” – AFP

One of the BNPs main activists in 1985 was Tony Lecomber. Lecomber was sent to prison for attempting to detonate explosives at the offices of a rival political organization. He was also caught with hand-grenades and was jailed for three years for assaulting a Jewish teacher (12). He was propaganda director at the time of the latter conviction (13).

Lecomber is not alone:  Many other BNP members  have been convicted for racially-motivated violence.  Kevin Scott, the BNP’s North East regional advisor, for example, has two convictions for assault and using threatening words and behaviour against ethnic minorities (14). In addition, Joe Owens, a former BNP candidate, has served eight months in prison for sending razor blades to Jewish people in the post, and another term for carrying CS gas and knuckledusters (15).

Other BNP members and supporters, that include Stephen O’Shea and Simon Briggs, have been convicted for violent racist attacks (16). In 1998, Nick Griffin received a nine-month prison sentence for inciting racial hatred (17). Griffin subsequently became leader of the party in 1999.

During the early 1990s, much of the BNP”s activities were focused on East London, where, in 1993, it secured a council by-election victory in the Tower Hamlets ward of Millwall. The price to pay was a massive rise in racial attacks (18).

At about the same time, the BNP spawned the violent Combat 18 (C18) as its security force. C18 later emerged as a Nazi terror group, responsible for a letter bomb campaign and a series of murders. C18 thugs, made up of football hooligans and Nazi skinheads, protected both BNP meetings and the BNP leadership during party marches.

In 1993, the BNP became increasingly embarrassed by Combat 18 violence. After its victory in Millwall, it decided it no longer needed the street thugs and banned dual membership. However, most BNP members ignored this plea. In September 1995, four of the five London BNP branch organizers attended a C18 meeting (19).

The Millwall seat was lost eight months later. The BNP lost momentum, with younger members going over to C18. Tyndall reversed the slide by adopting a more hardline strategy, which included bringing veteran US Nazi leader, William Pierce, to London.

William Pierce

Pierce penned the tract, The Turner Diaries, which inspired both the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and the politicised BNP supporter, David Copeland, who was convicted for the bombing of a London pub (20).

During this period in the mid-1990s, the organization began to adopt a more respectable image:

It campaigned on rural issues and, publicly at least, watered down some of its more overt racism, co-opting many of the policies which have traditionally been the domain of the political left (21).

In 1999, it  exploited the debate in relation to proportional representation as an opportunity to begin the biggest racist recruitment drive ever to have taken place in Britain, launching a new party political broadcast and delivering 15 million leaflets (22).

Since this apparent surface shift in strategy in the mid 1990s, the BNP’s support has relatively increased, albeit intermittently. In 2002, for example, the BNP won three council seats in Burnley, and averaged 28 per cent of the town-wide vote. In Oldham, the party came second in four of the five wards it contested, and took an average 27 per cent.

Across the country, the BNP averaged 16 per cent in the council wards it contested – the best election results in its history. However, this must be offset against the fact that it only challenged less than one per cent of all seats up for election. Since then, they have added further seats, a total that currently stands at 46 out of around a possible total of some 21,000.

In the 2005 General Election, the BNP stood 119 candidates across England, Scotland and Wales. Between those candidates, they polled 192,850 votes, gaining an average of 4.2 per cent across the several seats it stood in and 0.7 per cent nationwide – more than three times its percentage at the 2001 election (23). Of these votes, half originated from disaffected New Labour voters (the governing party) consisting of semi-skilled manual workers, pensioners and the unemployed (24).

However, it is important not to exaggerate the overall reach of the BNP: It did not stand nationwide, meaning its national share of the vote was substantially lower than that of other minor parties and exit poll predictions of 3 per cent (25).

Still, indications are that relatively the BNP is increasing its support amongst sections of the UK voting population (26) (27), against a background and climate of increasing racism (28). Consequently, the ugly face of racially-motivated violence appears to be never far away.

In October 2006, for example, Robert Cottage, an BNP candidate to represent Colne and Pendle Council earlier that year, was arrested under the Explosives Act on suspicion of possessing chemicals that may be capable of making an explosion (29).

Cottage was also reported has having in his possession the largest quantity of explosives of its kind found in the country (30).

On 31st of July 2007, Cottage was sentenced to two and a half years imprisonment for the charge of possessing explosives (31).

Electorally, the European elections of 2009 resulted in the BNP attracting one million votes, which translated into them winning two seats in the European parliament. One of these seats was won by Griffin, who was elected for the North West region with 8 per cent of the vote (32).

So, how can the current growing relative popularity amongst sections of the British people for the BNP, be reconciled with the organizations historical tendency for racially-motivated violence?

For the answer to that question we need to examine the specific socioeconomic circumstances and conditions which arguably provide the catalyst for such violence.

Historically speaking, the defining characteristic of fascist parties has been their apparent propensity to be able to exploit prevailing unstable economic conditions. To a large extent, fascism thrives on the support it receives from what are frequently perceived as the disenfranchised in society, who suffer disproportionately from any global downturn in the economic cycle.

Thus, the uneven growth or decline in the fortunes of fascist political parties such as the BNP, is mirrored by the economic conditions in society at any given time. In short, during periods of low unemployment and relative economic stability, workers are less likely to vote for, and support, fascist political parties. On the other hand, when workers feel socially and economically vulnerable during periods of economic downturn, then some people are prone to translate their internal frustrations and anger in an external way by terrorizing minority and immigrant communities and/or towards supporting fascist political parties who cynically channel this anger and frustration into violent actions themselves (33) (34) (35).

Moreover, support for parties like the BNP appears to be predicated on the perceived failure of mainstream established political parties in addressing many of the legitimate concerns that working people face in their everyday lives as evidenced by half of the BNP’s support (as of 2005) originating from the New Labour government as highlighted above. One of the main concerns is the lack of availability of affordable social housing in the UK, the construction of which have dropped by 99 per cent in the last 12 years of the New Labour government (36).

The BNP are a major beneficiary of this kind of disaffection which they are able to exploit electorally, as evidenced for example, by their by-election victory in Kent which stemmed from fears over unemployment and issues around immigration and race (37). In this regard, the BNP have been able to play on mainstream concerns about the economy, crime, housing and unemployment, while also exploiting more traditional far right subjects such as immigration and fears about Islamist extremism. Their use of the issue of migrant workers in particular, combines fears about immigration with the reality of rising unemployment (38).

So a direct correlation appears to exist between economic crisis or downturn, the inability of established governing political parties to address the legitimate concerns of a large proportion of the electorate, and the rise of political parties like the BNP. Given that the current global economic downturn is predicted by many experts to be a medium to long-term problem (39), the consequences for ethnic minorities who are the brunt of the BNP’s message (40), appears to be less than a rosy one. The growing popularity for the BNP is echoed in respect to the corresponding mainstream and corporate media coverage and publicity they have increasingly garnered in recent years – coverage that nevertheless, is seemingly disproportionate to the relatively small number of votes they receive (41).

In a democracy, ought not all views, no matter how potentially repugnant, be heard by the population at large, particularly if such views are apparently representative of an increasing amount of people?

If the level of support for the BNP has grown to the extent as to warrant their exposure on the popular television debating programme, Question Time, what possible grounds could there be to censor such views?

This might be a valid argument, if it was the case that the BNP are a political organization whose ideology was not fascist. As distinct from all other UK political parties, the BNP’s leader has denied the reality of the existence of the Holocaust in which 6 million Jews, alongside millions of others, perished (42). Further, unlike any other party, the BNP discriminate against people on the basis of their ethnicity over which they have no control, and openly advocate the repatriation of “non-whites” (43). Up until October, 2009, the BNP required that all members must be of the “Indigenous Caucasian” racial group (44). This requirement was challenged legally by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) who won their case against the BNP. Since October, 2009, ethnic minorities have been allowed to join the party (45).

It is for these, and other reasons, such as their use of intimidation and racial violence, that the claims for the legal legitimization of the BNP have been called into question – the case being that the agenda of the BNP is not a political, but a criminal one. All the evidence points to the fact that where the BNP have been politically active, have targeted its election campaigns or have otherwise had a presence, the resulting publicity has resulted in an increase in the amount of race attacks (46) (47).

In 1993, following their local council by-election victory in the Tower Hamlets ward of Millwall, for example, racial incidents increased by 300 per cent in the three months following the election (48). Barking in East London, has seen a 30 per cent rise in racist attacks since the BNP’s successful campaign in the borough (49). Two years ago, Griffin generated a significant amount of publicity following the controversy surrounding Oxford universities decision to allow him a public platform to address students at the universities campus. In the days following his speech, racist attacks in the Oxford area increased significantly (50).

At the time of  Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time, the BBC attracted an audience of almost 8 million viewers, three times its average (51). Following the publicity generated by Griffin’s appearance, The Daily Telegraph newspaper revealed the results of a UK Gov opinion poll which indicated that 22 percent of British people would “seriously consider” voting for the BNP (52). Moreover, the BNP claimed that 9,000 people applied to join them after the programme aired (53).

It is usual for the BBC to announce the line-up of the show one or two days prior to broadcast, but on this occasion it stated that Griffin would be appearing many months in advance of it going to air. This generated further interest from amongst others, BBC Radio One and Channel 4 News.

Was this a deliberate cynical attempt by the BBC to increase their viewing-figure ratings in the almost certain knowledge that such an increase would by turn increase the profile of the BNP?

What does appear inconceivable, is that BBC management would have been unaware of the consequences for Britain’s ethnic minority population of granting the BNP this “gift horse” amount of public exposure.

Was the decision by the BBC to invite Griffin on to the show based partly on the shared professional and educational backgrounds of those concerned?

Many of the individuals who were directly responsible for overseeing Oxbridge-educated Griffin’s appearance, had themselves been educated at one of two of Britain’s elite educational establishments – Oxford and Cambridge. For example, BBC director-general, Mark Thompson was educated at Oxford, where Griffin was granted a public platform to speak. Following his appearance on the show, Griffin, who graduated in law, told the Guardian newspaper that he admired Thompson’s “personal courage” by inviting him (54).

Nicholas Kroll, director of the BBC Trust – an organization that supposedly represents the interests of the viewing public – was educated at Oxford. At least three of the 12 members of the government-appointed trustees, were educated at either Oxford or Cambridge, while the remainder have a background in either law, business or economics (55).

So what were the grounds for the BBC inviting Griffin on the the Question Time programme?

BBC deputy director-general Mark Byford defended the BBC’s decision on the grounds of impartiality, insisting that Griffin’s invitation was not based on boosting viewing figures. Byford said it was “not for the BBC” to engage in censorship, echoing the views of his boss, Thompson, by saying that such issues were a matter for government (56). The Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who was also educated at an elite university, Edinburgh, responded that the responsibility to allow Griffin on to the programme was the BBC’s (57).

In words that would have been music to the ears of Griffin, Brown said:

“I think the days of Britain having to apologize for our history are over….I think we should celebrate much of our [imperialist] past rather than apologize for it, and we should talk, rightly so, about British values” (58).

The “values” that Brown was referring to were not made clear.

After having the ’buck’ passed back to them by Brown, the BBC were effectively compelled to pass the issue over to the government-appointed business-friendly and Oxbridge-educated BBC Trust, after cabinet minister Peter Hain and others, appealed against the decision to allow Griffin on to the programme (59).

Although in principle the BBC Trust is able to intervene in cases like this, in practice the body never interferes in individual programme content prior to transmission. A BBC Trust spokeswoman told MediaGuardian:

“The trust is the sovereign body of the BBC and could, in principle, intervene before a programme is broadcast. However, there is a long-established convention that it does not take a view on the editorial content of individual programmes before transmission, but only reviews them after transmission” (60) – cold comfort for Britain’s ethnic minorities, many of whom would have been verbally and racially assaulted as a direct result of the programme airing.

Does the decision to allow Griffin on to the programme on the grounds that not to do so, would break the corporation’s alleged impartiality guidelines, stand up to scrutiny?

The BBC frequently break their “impartiality” guidelines. This often takes the form of  BBC journalists  accepting the views and pronouncements of those in political power uncritically and as a given. In 2007, for example, Justin Webb, then the BBC’s North America editor, rejected the charge that he is a propagandist for US power, saying:

“Nobody ever tells me what to say about America or the attitude to take about the United States. And that is the case right across the board in television as well” (61).

Webb began a radio programme from the Middle East thus:

“June 2005. US Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice flies to Cairo and at the American University makes a speech that will go down in history: “For sixty years my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region, here in the Middle East; and we achieved neither. Now we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people.”

Webb told his listeners in all seriousness:

“I believe the Bush administration genuinely wanted that speech to be a new turning point; a new start” (62).

Nobody had to tell Webb to say these words; he genuinely believed them.

Consider too, the pronouncements of one BBC correspondent, reporting from Iraq:

“This is not promising soil in which to plant a Western-style open society.”

And:

“The coalition came to Iraq in the first place to bring democracy and human rights” (63).

When investigative journalists challenged BBC news director Helen Boaden on whether she thought this version of US-UK intent perhaps compromised the BBC’s commitment to impartial reporting, she replied that such “analysis of the underlying motivation of the coalition is borne out by many of the speeches and remarks of both Mr Bush and Mr Blair” (64).

In March, 2009, BBC reporter Reeta Chakrabarti was asked why she had claimed that Tony Blair had “passionately believed” that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. After all, an alternative thesis – based on a mountain of compelling evidence – is that Blair was lying. Chakrabarti responded:

“I said Mr Blair passionately believed Iraq had wmd because he has consistently said so” (65).

In other words, for the BBC it appears to be a given that the unchallenged pronouncements of Western political leaders who speak on behalf of powerful economic interests, are the truth.

In 1999, the BBC  made the clear political decision to allow its own high-profile newsreader, Jill Dando, to present a DEC appeal for Kosovo at the height of NATO’s 78-day bombing campaign against Serbian “genocide” in Kosovo (claims that have since been quietly abandoned). Shortly after broadcasting the appeal, with bombing still underway, the BBC reported:

“Millions of pounds of donations have been flooding in to help the Kosovo refugees after a national television appeal for funds” (66).

This article linked to related reports on the conflict, which included comments from the Prime Minister, Tony Blair:

“This will be a daily pounding until he [the Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic] comes into line with the terms laid down by NATO” (67).

This contrasts with the BBC’s decision not to broadcast the Gaza Charity Appeal in response to Israel’s violent 22-day attack on Gaza late last year. The attack resulted in the killing of a minimum 1,300 people and the wounding of 4,200 others. Israeli forces repeatedly bombed schools, medical centres, hospitals, ambulances, UN buildings, power plants, roads, bridges and civilian homes. The BBC’s refusal to broadcast a national humanitarian appeal for Gaza, breached an agreement that dates back to 1963 and left “aid agencies with a potential shortfall of millions of pounds in donations” (68).

The BBC apparently had no concerns that this might damage its alleged reputation for impartiality. The BBC argument is made absurd by its consistent and very obvious pro-Israeli bias. An early version of January 28 BBC online article (since amended) commented:

“Israel has carried out an air attack in the Gaza strip and launched an incursion with tanks and bulldozers across the border….The incursion follows a bomb attack which killed one Israeli soldier and wounded three near the Gaza border” (69). As usual, the BBC presented the Israeli attack as a response to Palestinian violence in which it was falsely claimed that they (the Palestinians) had broken an earlier ceasefire. In fact, Israel forces had already violated the ceasefire at least seven times (70).

The BBC’s claims of impartiality, are further compromised in relation to the nature of their senior management appointments. These are made by the government of the day. At the time of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, both the BBC chairman, Gavyn Davies and his director-general, Gregg Dyke, were supporters of, and donors to, the Labour Party. Davies’s wife ran Gordon Brown’s office; his children served as pageboy and bridesmaid at the Brown wedding. Tony Blair has stayed at Davies’s holiday home. “In other words”, noted columnist Richard Ingrams, “it would be harder to find a better example of a Tony crony” (71).

BBC journalist, Andrew Gilligan lost his job after intense government flak in response to Gilligan’s report that the Blair regime had manipulated intelligence over Iraq’s supposed WMD (72).

Consider too, the establishment links of the members of the BBC Trust whose duty it is to uphold its public obligations, including impartiality. Notwithstanding the unrepresentative nature of the trust, as reflected in its members educational and professional backgrounds (see above), the BBC’s claim for impartiality cannot be sustained on the grounds of ideology alone.

One of these trustee worthies is Anthony Fry, formerly of Rothschilds and later the ill-fated Lehman Brothers where he was head of UK operations. Fry boasts on the BBC website:

“Having spent my career in the City as an investment banker, for over a decade specializing in the media industry, it’s a great privilege to bring my commercial understanding of the sector to help the BBC deliver value for licence fee payers in today’s rapidly changing broadcasting environment” (73).

Are we to believe that these individuals are independent of the government that appointed them and of the elite corporate and other vested interests in which they are deeply embedded?

Lord Reith, founder of the BBC, was honest in his assessment of the corporation and its relationship to the establishment:

“They know they can trust us not to be really impartial” (74).

What these clear examples of double standards and bias illustrate, is that the notion the BBC were obliged to invite Griffin on to the Question Time programme on the spurious  grounds that to deny him an invitation could conceivably undermine their claims for impartiality, are clearly bogus.

The BBC’s close ties to the British establishment undermines their credibility for impartiality at the first hurdle.

To recap: Many of their top executives were educated at one of the two elite universities Griffin was educated at and allowed to speak at. Moreover, having clearly made contradictory and politically-motivated decisions in the past – the latest of which was to invite the leader of a fascist political organization, whose existence is legally open to question, on to one of their flagship-political debating programmes - further undermines the BBC’s credibility.

The kind of cosy relationship the corporation has with the government of the day and with people like Nick Griffin and the BNP, makes sense when one considers the British establishments well documented historical links with the political far-right. The Daily Mail newspaper, for example, whose then owner Lord Rothermere, was both a supporter and friends of Hitler and Mussolini (75), propagated anti-Jewish sentiment at the end of the Second World War, as a catalyst for the then government to stem the flow of Jewish immigration into the country (76) (77).

This is the same establishment newspaper which, under the guise of the “war on terror”, regularly sensationalizes anti-Muslim stories on to its front pages, whilst relegating the relatively higher amount of terrorist activities of the far-right in its inside pages (78) (79).

Were the BBC justified in granting Griffin a slot on the programme on the grounds of freedom of expression?

This brings into sharp focus the concept of freedom in a liberal democracy like Britain. Unlike the First Amendment of the US Constitution, Britain does not regard unconditional freedom of expression as a right. In this sense, Britain (and most of Europe) regards such freedoms as necessarily restricted by the interventions of the state. The aim of such intervention is the restriction of some freedoms which are deemed to undermine the public good and society in general. In this regard, a persons freedom to shout “fire” in a crowded public space like a theatre, is limited by the right of other people not to be crushed to death in the resulting stampede.

In theory, existing UK law is designed to restrict the freedom of individuals like Griffin to publicly use inflammatory language that is intended to incite religious and/or racial hatred and violence. Perhaps the BBC thought Griffin’s arguments would be sufficiently ridiculed by the other panelists on the show?

Indeed, this kind of argument is often used by those who defend the right of people like Griffin to be heard. In theory, this might appear to be a plausible position to take. Clearly though, Griffin’s arguments were not adequately challenged by members of the panel on the Question Time programme (80).

Government minister Jack Straw’s performance, for example - whose position on race relations had itself been compromised by his refusal to meet with a female Muslim constituent at his Blackburn surgery - was regarded by many as inept and ineffectual (81) (82).

This begs the question as why it was the government hierarchy made the decision to use Straw as their representative (and therefore, by extension, the people) on the programme?

Could it of been that in the almost certain knowledge of Griffin’s arguments surviving the programme unscathed, they would have been aware of the likelihood of an increasing potential for racial tension and social conflict in the country?

The social policy objective of  ”divide and conquer” implied by such a strategy, has served various governments both past and present very well (83). Thus, there is no reason to believe why such a strategy would not be repeated.

But Straw was not the only guest on the show who failed to expose the policies of the BNP. Many of the audience would have felt alienated by what seemed to be an attack by the whole establishment on one individual. Griffin was attempting to tap into this alienation. The biggest problem with Question Time was the lack of a genuine workers’ representative that could have punctured this attempt. Instead, Griffin was on a panel with establishment politicians, all of whom support anti-working class and pro-big business policies (84).

Whatever the reasons were for the government and BBC establishment deciding on their choices to confront Griffin, the fact that the latter effectively side-stepped the laws relating to conditional freedom of expression by granting him the platform of Question Time, highlights the limitations of applying existing British law in what clearly is a legal ”grey area”.

Such a controversy would not be an issue in a country like the US, on the basis that one of the principles of the US constitution is the notion of unconditional or unlimited freedom of expression. Many people clearly remain convinced of the merits of unlimited freedom of expression and the First Amendment that overrides it, on the basis that all views in a “free” society, no matter how potentially offensive and repugnant, ought to be heard. The American, Michael Harrison, editor of “Talkers Magazine” is one such person.

When questioned by talk show host and British MP George Galloway on this subject, Harrison defended the rights of Nazis and their supporters to provocatively goose-step up and down the streets of a Jewish community in a major city, openly preach support of Hitler and to deny the Holocaust in which the relatives of the people living their would have probably been gassed to death (85).

For Harrison, the clear potential for civil unrest and violence resulting from the state legitimization of such behaviour, was a price he considered was worth paying in the defence of unconditional unlimited freedom of expression (86).

It is worth remembering that Hitler, under the guise of unlimited freedom of the kind espoused by Harrison, came to power as Chancellor in Germany in 1933 with one-third of the vote, only for him to abolish freedom altogether. Democratic freedom and the right to vote was only restored following the overthrow of the fascist regime by the allies over a decade later.

The philosopher Isaiah Berlin, in countering this unlimited notion of freedom from which emerged Hitler fascism, put it well when he said:

“One is free to move ones fist in the direction of my face, but ones freedom ends at the point at which the fist makes contact with it” (87).

Sadly, for many of Britain’s ethnic minorities, the price to be paid for allowing people like Nick Griffin on to programmes like Question Time, is an increase in the incidence of the fascist fist and jackboot to their faces.

Copyright: Daniel Margrain, 2009.

For details of specific references applicable to the above article, contact the author at: margrain.daniel@yahoo.co.uk

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Human beings tend to behave the worst in groups, especially when they are directing their actions to other despised lesser groups, which they seem compelled to do.

The degradation must be made complete. Somehow by the process of this behavior the dynamics within the privileged group are strengthened, as the individuals within the group. Perhaps not. But group dynamics are extraordinary. Of course, it is disconcerting, when the people engaged in the oppressive behavior would in another historical and social context be the objects of the degradation and violence.

It seems that gestalt is reality, and the action in the reinforcement. In Jerusalem, a city that attracts adherents from diverse religions with the acolytes dressed in different garbs, some have taken upon themselves to set out the order of the social hierarchy.

Larry Derfner, in the Jerusalem Post, via Paul Woodward and War in Conxtext, identifies the rationale for the behavior:

There was a time when priests and nuns in the capital went virtually unmolested. In the first 20 years or so after Israel conquered the Old City in the 1967 Six Day War, spitting incidents did occur, but only once in a very long while. Old City police would lock the offender up for the night, which proved an effective deterrent, said Hintlian. “Whatever problem we had, we could call [mayor] Teddy Kollek’s office, we could call people in the Foreign Ministry, the Interior Ministry, we could call Israeli ambassadors. In those days, Christians in Jerusalem were ‘overprivileged,’” he said.

That era of good feelings came about as a result of two circumstances, continued Hintlian, the leading chronicler of Jerusalem’s Armenian history. For one, he says, Israel in general and Jerusalem in particular were much more liberal in those days, and secondly, Israeli authorities were out to convince the Christian world that they could be trusted with their newly acquired stewardship over the Old City’s holy places.

“Now Israel doesn’t need the world’s approval anymore for its sovereignty over Jerusalem, so our role is finished,” said Hintlian. “Now we don’t have anyone in authority to turn to.”

Yisca Harani, a veteran Jewish interfaith activist who lectures on Christianity to Israeli tour guides at Touro College, likewise says the change for the worse came about 20 years ago. She blames the spitting attacks on the view of Christianity that’s propagated at haredi and national Orthodox yeshivot.

“I move around the Old City a lot,” she said, “I come in contact with these people, and what they learn in these fundamentalist yeshivot is that the goy is the enemy, a hater of Israel. All they learn about Christianity is the Holocaust, pogroms, anti-Semitism.”

Rosen recalls that in 1994, after Israel and the Vatican opened diplomatic relations, he organized an international Jewish-Christian conference in Jerusalem, “and the city’s chief rabbi called me in and said, ‘How can you do this? Don’t you know it’s forbidden for us? How can you encourage these people to meet with us?’

“He told me that when he sees a Christian clergyman, he crosses the street and recites, ‘You shall totally abhor and totally disdain…’ This is a biblical verse that refers to idolatry.” Rosen noted that the Jerusalem chief rabbi of the time, like the more insular Orthodox Jews in general, considered Christians to be idolators.

The people doing the spitting, according to all the Christian victims and Jewish interfaith activists interviewed, are invariably national Orthodox or haredi Jews; in every attack described by Christian clerics, the assailant was wearing a kippa.

The great majority of the attackers were teenage boys and men in their 20s. However, the supposition was that they came not only from the Old City yeshivot but also from outside. Hintlian and Aghoyan noted that the spitting attacks tended to spike on Fridays and Saturdays, when masses of Orthodox Jews stream to the Western Wall.

Anne Barker, the ABC Middle East Correspondent, coped the spitting treatment and other violence, because she sought to record a demonstration against opening a car park on Sunday contrary to their religious beliefs. (I am not sure of the significance of the fact her attackers were speaking in Yiddish, not Hebrew.)

Structural violence, the fences that march the lesser along the paths of diminished possibilities, seems never be unconnected with prejudice, reinforced by frozen emotions, and the failure to perceive the other as a fellow human being. People make the existential choice be violent or nonviolent although the context of that choice is often within an institutional and cultural frameworks that can dispose toward violence.

The deeper truth, I suggest, (with relevance to the problem of climate denial, for example) is that we have understand ourselves as human actors rather than rational players. The faith is that by embracing humanity, we will tend to free to respect evidence and reason and affirm truth and justice. (I am not sure that this formulation fully deals with the frustration caused by the public relations opinion shapers are so adept at exploiting.)

Wow, I slept till 8:30 this morning. It sure is nice being on vacation. I’ve done practically nothing but sleep, read, eat, and surf the ‘net since Tuesday afternoon. Today, I guess I’ll have to get moving and prepared to return to teaching on Monday. I heard a couple of interesting stories on Twitter last night. Did you hear that Amy Goodman was stopped and interrogated at the Canadian border?

Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now , a radio and television show aired by public and college broadcasters across North America, was entering Canada around 6 p.m. Pacific time Wednesday evening, set to speak at the Vancouver Public Library in an event co-ordinated by a campus radio station at Simon Fraser University.

“When I handed our passports over the border guard, they told us to pull over. We had to go over to the border facility. And they started asking me questions about what I was going to be speaking about. I was totally taken aback. They wanted to see my notes,”

Amy Goodman

Goodman was going to Canada to promote her new book. Oddly, the guards kept accusing her of giving a talk about the Vancouver Olympics. She had no clue what they meant by that, but they wouldn’t believe her. They searched all of her notes and her and her colleague’s computers and took photographs. It sounds truly Kafkaesque. Apparently Canada is really worked up about the Olympics. They didn’t care that she was going to talk about opposing wars or the economic meltdown–just whether she would criticize the Vancouver games. Goodman didn’t even know there was a Vancouver Olympics. I didn’t either. Did you?

In another strange story, Tiger Woods left his house in the middle of the night and drove right into a tree and a fire hydrant. He was barely conscious after the accident and his wife had to break open the car window with a golf club to get him out. Did they have a fight or something? Apparently there was no alcohol involved. From the LA Times story:

The initial media reports that instantly spread around the globe sounded dire: Tiger Woods had been “seriously” hurt in a car accident early Friday and was hospitalized.

It turned out the superstar golfer’s injuries, first reported by the Orlando Sentinel, weren’t as dreadful as the word “serious” implied in the police report. But as additional details emerged, it appeared Woods certainly suffered more than a fender bender.

Woods, 33, was backing out of his driveway in the Isleworth community near Orlando, Fla., at 2:25 a.m. when he struck a fire hydrant and then hit a neighbor’s tree, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.

It was almost 12 hours before the police issued an accident report, and it is still unknown why Woods was out driving at that hour and much about the incident remains unclear.

The police plan to question Woods about the incident.

Florida Highway Patrol Sgt Kim Montes said two troopers had attempted to contact Woods on Friday evening, but his wife said he was sleeping and they had agreed to come back on Saturday.

According to the highway patrol, alcohol was not a factor in the incident.

Chief Daniel Saylor of the Windermere Police Department said: “From what we understand, his wife came out of the house when she heard the accident, him hitting the fire hydrant, (and) used a golf club – that’s what we were told – to break out the rear window to gain entrance into the vehicle, removed him from the vehicle and laid him down in the street.

“He was in and out of consciousness with lacerations to his upper and lower lip, with a little bit of blood in his mouth, but he was conscious enough to be able to speak a little bit. According to my officers, it was not life-threatening injuries.”

In comments to the Associated Press news agency, Chief Saylor said his officers found the 33-year-old lying in the street with his wife hovering over him.

This just broke on Google, could explain what happened: Tiger Woods’ Car Crash Came After Explosive Story Claiming Affair

Tiger Woods’ bizarre overnight car crash outside his Florida home came only two days after the National Enquirer publish an article claiming the golf champ was having an affair.

Police said they had no knowledge of a fight between Woods, 33, and his wife, Elin, before Woods left their house at 2:25 a.m. Friday — backing out of his driveway and plowing into a fire hydrant and a neighbor’s tree in a gated community near Orlando.

The Enquirer’s explosive story hit the stands Wednesday contending that Woods has been seeing New York night club hostess Rachel Uchitel and that the pair recently were spotted in Melbourne while Woods was playing in the Australian Masters tournament.

Take it with a grain of salt, since it’s The Enquirer and Fox, but it sounds like a reasonable explanation to me.

There were a few articles yesterday about how the story spread around the world through Twitter and other social media before it could even be reported in any detail by the MSM.

In the Age of Realtime, Twitter is Walter Cronkite

Tiger Woods and Car Accident: CNN and Twitter

This is Why the Internet (and Twitter) Wins

Tongues are still wagging about the couple who supposedly crashed the President’s state dinner the other day. The couple are still claiming they were invited, and it was revealed yesterday that they did meet President Obama.

The White House said late Friday that Michaele and Tareq Salahi, the Virginia couple auditioning for a Bravo reality show, not only got past layers of experienced, executive-branch security but also shook the president’s hand in the Blue Room of the White House during the Obamas’ first state dinner. Late Friday, the White House also released a photo of Michaele Salahi’s audience with the president, with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh smiling nearby.

The security breach has caused hand-wringing inside the White House, bewilderment among Tuesday night’s guests — and late on Friday, prompted an apology from the Secret Service.

From Politico: President Obama Orders Review of Crashers

President Barack Obama has ordered a full review into how a Virginia couple managed to make their way into the White House for last week’s state dinner without an invitation, even getting so far as to meet the president in the official receiving line, according to a White House official.

Three days after a pair of Virginia socialites and reality TV wannabes crashed the administration’s first state dinner, the White House acknowledged for the first time Friday that they met Obama himself at the event – raising even more questions about whether the breach could have posed a security risk.

No kidding.

I saw this on Twitter too: Hillary’s Bombshell: Obama Administration Subtly Launches Dramatic Policy Change on Peace Process

Hillary made a short statement on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and a number of blogs are breaking it down piece by piece to divine it’s true meaning. I don’t know enough about I/P to really understand it, but thought the analysis was interesting just the same. No fighting about this in the comments, please, but if you can make sense of it please discuss politely.

Here’s another analysis of the statement from a Palestinian point of view.

Just breaking news:

Russia train crash ’caused by bomb’

The Nevsky Express derailed in remote countryside on Friday night as the train travelled between the capital Moscow and St Petersburg.

Investigators found “elements of an explosive device” at the scene, the Russia’s federal investigative committee said in a statement.

A senior intelligence official said a bomb had derailed the locomotive.

Dubai World Unit Faces Default Test Monday With Bond Payment

European Stocks Fall for Second Week as Alpha, Compass Decline

HAVE A STUPENDOUS SATURDAY!!!!!

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Does anyone seriously believe that Israel wants peace?

“Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Thursday ordered the IDF to issue a temporary freeze order, but at the same time allowed the construction of 28 new public buildings in settlements.” – Haaretz.com

It’s hard to make me not feel proud about being from New Jersey. But this does:

That’s Robin Benosf of Teaneck, New Jersey (a mere twenty-five minutes from my hometown) laying the cornerstone for a new settlement in East Jerusalem. (Photo from the AP, via Mondoweiss.) As the American president and State Department declare their “dismay,” New Jersey citizens actively take part in expanding the reach of Israeli settlements in occupied land. Luckily, we can still claim Bruce Springsteen.

Meanwhile, the Obama Administration is seen as impotent when it comes to confronting the Israelis. An AFP story yesterday said:

The Obama administration is hardening its tone against Israel, but analysts warned Wednesday the tough talk was mere bluster hiding the lack of a viable plan to revive the Middle East peace process.

“You’ve had three ‘no’s’ to an American president in his first year,” Aaron David Miller, who has served as advisor on Middle East peacemaking to previous US administrations, told AFP.

President Barack Obama is now “faced with the default position, which is words,” said Miller from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

“And the louder they shout, the more there is a paradox. The tougher the words are, the weaker we look.”

But when I read that, I find myself thinking, “Well, if we give them about $3 billion a year, can’t we force them to take the most basic step necessary to keep the possibility of a two-state solution alive?” Obama should have more than “words” to fall back on when dealing with the Israelis. Obama and Hillary just need to kick the Israelis in the ass a little bit and then they’ll be forced to comply with our demands. Indeed, the US uses financial and military aid to impose its agenda all over the world.

But I think that Robin Benosf of Teaneck helps to show why it isn’t that simple. Many Americans (and not only Jews) support the Israeli right-wing’s agenda. A politician from New York was right beside Benosf at the founding of the new settlement. Reuters reports:

Dov Hikind, a member of New York state’s assembly, looked out over Jerusalem’s Old City and dismissed the “extreme” view on the matter taken by his party’s president.

He urged fellow American Jews to buy homes on occupied land rather than in traditional U.S. vacation spots.

“I’m trying to get a whole bunch of my friends to actually buy,” said Hikind during a tour of settlement housing projects for several dozen potential U.S. investors.

“Rather than buying second homes in Florida, we want people to buy in Israel,” he said, having watched a foundation stone laid for an extension to the Nof Zion, or Zion View, settlement.

Palestinians, whose leaders declared this week’s Israeli government approval for more settlement building near Jerusalem a killer blow to peace, reject Hikind’s description of Nof Zion as “Israel,” as it lies on occupied land they want for a state.

But his views, shared by significant numbers of American Jews, many of them Democrat voters, are an indication of Obama’s difficulties in holding to his demands that Israel halt its expansion of settlements in the interests of a peace agreement.

With that kind of attitude holding sway in American politics, it’s understandable that Obama and his team are kind of impotent when it comes to pushing the Israelis. I don’t say this just to defend Obama. I’m generally disappointed in his lack of decisiveness across the board. But I think that this helps to contextualize the lack the of progress.

What does the US get from the financial and military backing of Israel?  In the other case it abundantly clear that the native Palestinians have been dealt ongoing injustice and dispossession.

Jason Koutsoukis reports in The Sydney Morning Herald, Benjamin Nethanyahu as saying that Israel was prepared to make generous concessions for peace, but if the Palestinians declared a separate state, following the Israeli example, Israel threatens to take unilateral action by pulling the plug on previous agreements.

According to the report by AFP, in The Raw Story, the US Government is singing from the same song sheet as the Israeli Government:

The United States voiced opposition Monday to unilateral Palestinian moves to seek recognition for an independent state, saying negotiations with Israel were the best way forward.

A State Department spokesman reiterated US commitment to a future Palestinian state but poured cold water on an initiative to ask the United Nations Security Council to recognize a state unilaterally.

“We support the creation of a Palestinian state that is contiguous…. We are convinced that has to be achieved through negotiations between two parties,” said spokesman Ian Kelly.

Chris Hedges put the counter view. Firstly he observes the historical situation:

The collapse of the Palestinian Authority, the result of Israel’s 42-year refusal to implement a two-state solution, leaves the Palestinians no option but to unilaterally declare an independent state. Israel acted unilaterally when it announced independence in 1948. It is the Palestinians’ turn. It worked in Kosovo. It worked in Georgia. And it will work in Palestine. There are 192 member states in the United Nations and as many as 150 would recognize the state of Palestine, creating a diplomatic nightmare for Israel and its lonely ally the United States. Israel will face worldwide censure if it attempts to crush the independent state by force and very likely be subjected to the kind of divestment campaigns and boycotts that brought down the apartheid government of South Africa.

It is astonishing that the people that suffered the Holocaust have in their turn engaged in systematic cruelty toward another set of people. Chris Hedges notes:

The Israelis have orchestrated acute misery and poverty in the Palestinian territories over the past two decades in an effort to subdue and ethnically cleanse the captive population. They have reduced Palestinians, many of whom now live on less than $2 a day, to a subsistence level. They have created squalid, lawless and impoverished ghettos in the West Bank and Gaza. Israeli soldiers, who ring these ghettos, have the ability to instantly shut off food, medicine and goods to perpetuate the misery. Israel, when the Palestinians grow restive, drops 1,000-pound iron fragmentation bombs and artillery shells-as they did a year ago in Gaza-on the concrete hovels that pack neighborhoods. The Israeli objective is to turn the Palestinian territories into a hell on earth. This policy has, however, swollen the ranks of radical Islamists in the occupied territories and throughout the Middle East.

Nobody has to look very far to see an important contributing factor to asymmetrical conflict and more generally to the cause of terrorism. In this case the fundamental issue is the failure of national states due to perceived advantage and use of threat power and violence to acknowledge justice and to institutionalize injustice through the existing state system, including the UN Security Council.

In the meantime, while the international players did nothing but talk, a new truck convoy is planned to set out for Gaza on 5 December .

ELSEWHERE:

The  EU has decided not to support a Palestinian State.

Ray McGovern supports the conclusion reached here in the context of the proposed trials in the US of those suspected of been associated with the attacks on 11 September, over eight years ago.

BBC reports continuing settlement building in East Jerusalem.

by Mark Harrison (originally written for Manchester Stop the War)

“What do I want from this life? What makes you happy is not enough. All the things that satisfy our instincts only satisfy the animal in us. I want to be proud of myself. I want more. I want to look up to myself and when I die, I want to smile because of the things I have done, not cry for the things I haven’t done.”
Tom Hurndall (2000)

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in the town of Qalandiya in the occupied West Bank, a group of masked activists used a lorry to pull down a two meter cement block from the Israeli separation barrier before Israeli security forces confronted them with tear gas grenades.(1)

In Manchester, activists from across the city gathered at Manchester Metropolitan University for the Fifth Tom Hurndall Memorial Lecture.

Tom, born North London, November 1981, was studying photographic journalism at MMU when he decided to take part in the Human shield action to Iraq whom he had met during the million strong anti war march in London, (promising his faculty head that he would still meet coursework deadlines).(2)

Excerpts from his journal show that he was an internationalist and not a stooge of Saddam, “Things I’ve heard and seen over the last few weeks proves what I already knew; neither the Iraqi regime, nor the American or British, are clean. Maybe Saddam needs to go but … the air war that’s proposed is largely unnecessary and doesn’t discriminate between civilians and armed soldiers. Tens of thousands will die, maybe hundreds of thousands”.(3)

Once war became inevitable he moved to Jordan where he helped build temporary refugee shelters and donated £500 for medical supplies. It was in Jordan that he met the International Solidarity Movement and he decided to travel to Gaza. It was in the border town of Rafah that Tom was killed by Taysir Hayb whilst saving children who were paralysed with fear from IDF gunfire. Tom’s murder provoked international attention, his mother, Jocelyn, has written how in the ‘occupied territories’ different value is attached to life depending if the victim is a Palestinian or a westerner.(4)

I contacted Jocelyn earlier this year and was easily able to persuade her to speak at this year’s lecture, just by talking to her I could feel a sense of kindness that is not in abundance these days, a quality which I am sure would have been passed down to her son and would explain why he gave his life defending others.

During her address she said that ever since April of 2003 there has been a ‘thread’ connecting her from London to Manchester, she remarked that there was a tremendous feeling of warmth within the university and could understand why her son loved the city so much. ‘Joss’ thanked the current students of MMU for continuing to carry out actions of solidarity - last year Man Met was part of the wave of occupations which spread across the country during Israel’s winter offensive in Gaza, members of Communist Students, Permanent Revolution, the Socialist Workers Party, Action Palestine and individual students occupied the very building in which the memorial lecture took place and amongst other things demanded more recognition of Tom’s life from the university. During the occupation, John Brooks the university’s VC had the nerve to warn us against contacting Tom’s family and said they might find it emotionally stressful.

This year’s lecture was presented by Avi Shlaim, one of Israel’s leading ‘New Historians’. He paid tribute to Tom’s actions and contrasted his search for truth and human rights to the cynicism and crass opportunism of Blair, Brown and Jack Straw.

Manchester is a city in which the idea of a one state solution has an unusually high amount of support, an idea which Shlaim described as noble but a, “pie in the sky”.

Professor Shlaim’s lecture focused on the creation of Israel, the war of ‘67 and the Oslo Accords. The professor defendes the right of Israel to her pre-67 borders, in part due to the horrors of the Holocaust, however he described the Balfour Declaration as one of the greatest betrayals of history and uses the term Nakba to describe events of 1948. He went on to call the six-day war a war of defence, however since this time the Israeli government has blocked any path to peace by erecting illegal settlements within Palestine, he also explained how the, “historic compromise” reached in The Oslo Accords made no reference to Jerusalem, an independent Palestinian state or the right of return for 1948 refugees.

Finally, Avi Shlaim spoke of what he calls, “politicide” – denying Palestinians independent existence in Palestine, moreover he elaborated that after Israel’s withdrawl from Gaza they still occupy the area according to international law.

The Tom Hurndall Memorial Lectures are administered by Professor Jules Townshend – author of ‘The Politics of Marxism’, (Leicester University Press, 1996)

1. ‘Palestinians break Israel’s wall’,
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/11/2009119151639325464.html (Accessed 11/11/09)

2. C. Arrindell, ‘Tom Hurndall’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2004/jan/22/guardianobituaries.israel (Accessed 11/11/09)

3. R. Fisk, ‘A brave man who stood alone. If only the world had listened to him’,
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fiskrsquos-world-a-brave-man-who-stood-alone-if-only-the-world-had-listened-to-him-1656067.html (Accessed 11/11/09)

4. J. Hurndall, ‘What price a life?’.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/jan/10/comment/print (Accessed 11/11/09)

For the past 60 years since Israel was founded on an already existing nation to this day when it is at it full power, it has been constantly at war with Arab countries. Israel has amassed it arsenal with the help of the French at first, then with the help of the Americans. The strange thing is that the more Israel grows in military might, the more arrogant it becomes. It defies the U.N and does not listen to allies. It believes that the international laws cannot apply to it so it does whatever it pleases such as making illegal settlements that are making the probability of a two-state solution impossible. Yet, Israel will not accept a one-state solution because it believes that soon after there is a one-state solution, the Jews will become a minority and the Arabs will become the majority.

There have been new insights into the wars that Israel has been in and the brutal occupation of the Palestinian land. The insights have come from the Goldstone Report. The author is Richard Goldstone, who has done investigations into many other human rights violations.

The Goldstone Report which accused Israel and Hamas of war crimes and Israel of crimes against humanity, as well as calling for independent investigations into the Israeli army and into the Hamas group, is largly criticized by the U.S and Israel. It is accused of being bias towards Israel. The truth is that Israel cannot hide this from the world the savagery of the crimes it has committed because of the brutal attack on the Gaza civilians that was shown throughout the world. That Israel should be against independent investigations shows that they know that there is something going on inside.  Luckily the Goldstone Report was passed by the U.N and now it has given Israel and Hamas one month to produce independent reports of the accusations posed by the report.

A Palestinian family after an Israeli missile strike in the Rafah refugee camp, in the southern Gaza Strip, yesterday. Israel’s cabinet has ordered a callup of at least 6,500 reserve soldiers, leading to speculation about a major ground offensive in Gaza. Photograph: Eyad Baba/AP

You Can Help By Going To This Site!

http://www.anera.org/index.php

By  Jean Athey

I read last week that they are burning the olive groves around Nablus, the hills on fire, smoke curling to the sky, the smell of desolation in the air—terrible grief and loss for some, jubilation and triumph for others.  I wonder if any of the burning olive trees are ones that I helped harvest just one year ago.

I went to the West Bank to learn, and volunteering to assist with the olive harvest seemed to offer an excellent educational opportunity. Palestinian farmers like to have internationals accompany them to their groves, believing that the presence of foreigners makes Israeli settlers and soldiers less likely to attack them.  I liked the idea of being, in effect, a human shield to prevent violence.

We international volunteers stayed together in a small apartment in Nablus. Every night, we would call Rabbis for Human Rights, B’Tselem, and Christian Peacemaker Teams.  Farmers who had special cause to fear an attack would contact one of these human rights groups, and based on the information we received from our phone calls, we would decide among ourselves where each of us would go the next day.  Sometimes we went in pairs, sometimes alone. As the sun rose, each of us would head out to meet a farmer from our chosen village, and he would accompany us to his field.  Often, several members of the family would already be in the field when we arrived, working quickly and desperately to get the olives in before anything could happen.

Walking to the Olive Grove

“The olive harvest around Nablus used to be a time of festival,” a Palestinian had explained to me. “It was a celebration. We had special foods and picnics in the groves, with whole families working together. Now, that is over. There is no more joy during harvest time.”

As a volunteer, my role was to be present, a witness with a camera, but it would have felt strange and lazy to watch people work hard and do nothing. Thus, we all helped with the harvest.  I found that families used different methods to gather the olives: some climbed the trees and picked by hand, others struck the trees with sticks to make the olives fall on a tarp, and a few used a tool that they slid over each branch so that the olives fell below.

I’m not in shape. I don’t normally do any physical labor and don’t exercise. My first day as a volunteer, I started off picking olives by hand, standing on the ground under the tree. After a couple of hours of this, sweating profusely in the sun and with my muscles already screaming, I thought to myself, “I absolutely cannot do this for 7 more hours!” Then, I noticed an older woman sitting on a tarp in the shade under a tree, separating the leaves and branches from the olives and putting the olives in a burlap bag. This, I decided, was a much better job for me, so I joined her.  Later, I found that this work is set aside for small children and elderly women—exactly right for me at age 63. When I tired of even this job, I picked up the baby—about a year old—and played with her, enabling the baby’s mother to work and me to goof off.  When the baby fell asleep on my shoulder, of course I couldn’t wake her up! I had to hold her for her entire nap!

Working in the Olive Grove

Most of the olive trees around Nablus are ancient and have been in families for generations, and the groves are typically located some distance from villages.  Each day, after meeting the farmer, we volunteers would walk a mile or two to get to the family field.  All the hills surrounding the city have been confiscated by Israeli settlers–the former Palestinian owners having been dispossessed–and these settler colonies overlook the olive groves.  During harvest time, settlers often invade the farms, destroy property and terrorize people.  Soldiers from the numerous checkpoints and military outposts also harass the farmers, although the soldiers tend to be more predictable with their forms of intimidation.

One night, as usual, we got the names of all the villages where people felt endangered. But for the first time since I had arrived, there were more of us than there were farmers requesting help. So, I offered to stay at the apartment in case something should come up unexpectedly. In all honesty, I was exhausted from my previous day’s work and quite happy to play hooky, assuming I’d have a relaxing day in the apartment. But about 9 a.m. the phone rang:  settlers had invaded Azmut, and I was told that I should get over there right away–foreigners and cameras were needed.

Okay. First problem: find a way to this village I’d never heard of, in a city that I was still unfamiliar with. The caller had suggested I take a service, or shared taxi, informing me that there was a service stand a couple of blocks from the apartment. I grabbed my camera, rushed out the door, and headed for the taxi stand. After four blocks, I hadn’t found it, and my anxiety level was rising. I asked someone on the street—he pointed and said the service was two more blocks. Practically running the two blocks, I still couldn’t find a taxi stand. I asked someone else, “Where can I get a service to Azmut?” He pointed in the direction from which I had come: “That way.”

Shit. I suddenly realized this was silly. I should just get a regular taxi—it would cost a little more, but I could flag one down on the street, and I could get to Azmut much more quickly. Why didn’t I think of that before? It was easy to flag down a taxi and I mentally kicked myself for wasting so much time. How was I going to be any help if I couldn’t even think of the quickest way to get to where I was needed?

“Qaddesh al Azmut?” (How much to Azmut) I asked the taxi driver in my very basic Arabic.

“Ten shekels,” he replied in English.

“Okay, but go quickly,” I said, climbing in.

He was clearly a little puzzled—why did a foreign woman, alone, want to go to a nondescript village and why the big rush?

“Why are you going to Azmut?” he asked pleasantly in excellent English, as he pulled into the traffic.

“I’m a volunteer with ISM,” I replied, “and we got a call that settlers are attacking farmers there.”

“Thank you. We are so happy you are here.  I welcome you to Nablus,” he replied, with genuine warmth.

We sped through Nablus, arriving in Azmut in about ten minutes. It turned out that the village is, in reality, a suburb of Nablus, not particularly distinguishable as a separate place. White cinder block houses, jumbled close together along narrow, winding, hilly streets, were interspersed with small stores selling tobacco, sweets, and other goods.

The taxi driver spotted a couple of local people sitting in one of the small shops, and he stopped to ask them how to get to the village olive groves.  Following their directions, we continued straight on the paved village road for another mile and then turned off onto a dirt road. Dry, dusty and heavily rutted, this road was flanked on both sides by olive trees, with individual parcels demarcated by low stone walls. After a couple of miles we came upon three or four parked cars, all marked “press,” and a few villagers standing around. “Over there,” one of the villagers said, pointing, and the taxi driver and I got out and clambered over boulders, rock walls, and rough terrain, running when the ground was flat enough. Soon we came to a small group of people, including several reporters, but the attackers were gone: they had been scared off by the media cameras.

Olive Harvester Describes Settler Attack

We were told that about a half dozen settlers had come down the hill and begun to curse and threaten several farmers working in their fields, including one old woman whom we saw sitting on the ground under a tree. Waving her arms around wildly, a rock in both hands, her eyes round with fear, she was yelling out the story of the attackers to anyone who would listen, spitting with rage. With the rocks, she seemed to be demonstrating how the settlers had threatened her. I wished I could understand her words to find out the details of the attack, but I didn’t need Arabic to sense her fury and panic.

It was surprising to me that news media had arrived so quickly. Then, I learned why. This was not the first time that people from this village had been attacked recently.  Three days earlier, a family had driven to their field and parked their car on the same dirt road we had driven up.  While they were working in the grove, settlers came down and destroyed the car: theysmashed all the windows, slashed the tires, ripped the upholstery, took bats to the engine.The next day, an old man in his seventies from the same village and his 7-year-old grandson, working together in another, nearby olive field, were attacked. First the settlers terrorized the old man and the little boy, shoving and hitting them, and then they held the old man down, placed his arm on a boulder, and smashed it with a large rock, breaking his bones.

Car Destroyed by Settlers

Because of these two events, the community had obtained phone numbers of reporters and was on alert to call the media as a means of protection.  No police force protects Palestinians from lawless settlers, and since the only thing settlers seem to fear is a camera, Palestinians sometimes try to “shoot back” with film.

The taxi driver, the reporters, some villagers, and I all milled around a while, but it appeared that the settlers had disappeared for the day, and we began to disperse. The taxi driver asked me, “Aren’t you afraid to do this, to go to the places that are most dangerous?”  It seemed a sensible question, but I didn’t feel afraid of being injured. My American passport and Western appearance probably gave me a false sense of invulnerability. I did fear, though, that I might not do the right thing in a moment of peril, that I wouldn’t be brave, and that I would betray my promise to protect.

As the taxi driver started toward his car, I got out ten shekels to pay him, but he refused to accept my money.

With the excitement over, at least for a while, the farmers got back to the harvest, and I was assigned to a family group consisting of a man, his brother, his mother, and his two children–a dark-haired, beautiful girl about ten years old, and her younger brother, maybe eight.  The girl, dressed in an orange tee shirt and jeans, her hair pulled into a pony tail, worked hard all day long, as did her brother, also in jeans and tee shirt. Sometimes they climbed a tree to get access to olives. Other times they struggled to carry heavy, burlap bags full of olives over to the donkey to load it up, or they helped lay out the tarp under a tree.  No whining, no shirking—they knew what needed to be done and they did it without being told.  The girl frequently sneaked glances at me, and if she saw me looking at her she would smile and then hide her face.  Ever so often, she would shyly bring me a treat—a cookie or a cucumber, usually, sometimes a drink of water.

A couple of times I was working in the sun, and the father came over and suggested that I move into the shade where I would be more comfortable. He brought me tea all during the day that his mother brewed in a fire she made in the dirt. At noon, we all sat down together, and the family shared with me their lunch of homemade yoghurt, bread, jam and salad.  Warmed by the kindness of this family, I did my easy, old woman’s job all day, separating olives from leaves, while periodically scouring the grove for possible attackers.  Finally, at 3:00—rather early to stop–the family decided to go home for the day. As we walked down the dirt road back to the village, someone spotted three settlers about 200 yards up in the hills, on their way down.

“Quick—call the media!”  a villager called out.

Reporters arrived within five minutes, before the settlers could get all the way down the hill, and when the invaders saw the reporters and photographers, they turned around and started back up.

One photographer, a little overweight and carrying a large, heavy camera, set off running to try to catch the invading settlers.  Struggling over the rocky terrain through the olive groves, chasing the settlers up the hill, he paused frequently, whether to catch his breath or look for an angle to photograph, I didn’t know.  He pursued the settlers long after those of us on the road could no longer see them, but finally he trudged back, sweaty and exhausted.

My Friends in Azmut

It seemed, finally, that the day was over, and so we all continued walking back to the village, with “my” family and their donkey, laden with the bags of olives we had picked that day, leading the way. I took one last picture in Azmut, of the man I had worked with that day laughing and gently hugging his smiling daughter. Then I cadged a ride with one of the press photographers and returned to the apartment.

I wonder if the little girl who shared her cookies and cucumbers with me last year watched her family’s ancient olive trees burn this week.  And if she did so, I wonder what she was thinking.

Astounding: this piece was in The Guardian, of all places.

A Moral Atrocity: Judge Goldstone has been suckered into letting war criminals use his name to pillory Israel

Tuesday 20 October 2009
Harold Evans

Aren’t the British sickened by the moral confusions of their government? First, we have the weasel words to justify the unjustifiable release of the Lockerbie bomber. Now we have the sickening spectacle of Britain failing to stand by Israel, the only democracy with an independent judiciary in the entire region.

No doubt there were blunders. A defensive war is still a war with all its suffering and destruction. But Hamas compounded its original war crime with another. It held its own people hostage. It used them as human shields. It regarded every (accidental) death as another bullet in the propaganda war. The Goldstone report won the gold standard of moral equivalence between the killer and the victim. Now Britain wins the silver. Who’s cheering?

“The weekly demonstrations against the West Bank separation barrier in the towns of Bil’in and Na’alin, which take place every Friday, reached new heights this week when activists, seeking to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the falling of the Berlin Wall, knocked a part of the barrier over.” – Haaretz.com

There is some talk about the two state solution in Palestine, and some people now are talking about the one state solution, but the policy of the Israeli Government is the continuing zero state solution for the Palestinians.

They are just Arabs who used to live in Palestine. Now many of them don’t. The big problem in for peace in the Middle East is now, and has been the colonialist and the imperialists. As Gandhi observed the Jewish people settled much of Palestine under the guns of the British, who shafted their World War One Arab allies, and have maintained their dominance with the munitions and support of the Americans, who need allies in the region other than corrupt dictatorships and “client” oil shrieks. In the context of the realities of geopolitics the indigenous people can be, as they have been, expropriated and dispossessed. Doh . . . terrorism! The clash of civilizations was always an exaggeration because one side had no pretense to being civilized, that is held a belief combined with a practice of peace, truth and justice.

The events in Germany and Central Europe, and during the course of the Second World War, without making light of the human depravity involved, do not in any way justify what has happened in Palestine, although they do go someway to explaining the determination to hold on to a culture in what was perceived as the homeland of that culture. The problem is compounded in that migration from Eastern Europe is more Russian than ethnically Jewish – if there is such a thing after the centuries of living in Europe, North Africa and other places in the Middle East. The Vatican because of its size is perhaps the only single religion state that can get away with it.

Aside from asking the obvious question as to why would anybody possibly conceive of Mahoud Abbas as a credible person to represent the Palestinian, other than it seems the Washington foreign policy establishment, the BBC reports that the Chief Negotiator, Saeb Erekat holds the view:

Palestinians might have to abandon the goal of an independent state if Israel continues to expand Jewish settlements, the chief Palestinian negotiator said.
At a news conference in the West Bank, Saeb Erekat said it was a “moment of truth” for President Mahmoud Abbas.
He said it might be time for Mr Abbas to “tell the truth” that a two-state solution “is no longer an option”.
But Israel rejects a one-state solution as a demographic time-bomb that would make Jews a minority in the country.
It may be time for President Abbas to “tell his people the truth, that with the continuation of settlement activities, the two-state solution is no longer an option”, Mr Erekat said in Ramallah.

Now that is breakthrough thinking! Ah no. Israel has the zero state solution in mind.

The Gentleman from Ohio had some interesting things to say on the denial by the US House of Reps on the findings of the Goldstone Report, and what is more the Gentleman spoke plainly, via War in Context:

POSTSCRIPT:

Israel was founded on colonial violence beginning in the Nineteenth Century. The violence was an ongoing dispossession of the indigenous people, much like Australia and North America. The state was based on realpolitik, perhaps there is an Prussian influence. At one level the problem is not Israel but the international system. The only way I can think of to get around this problem and set up a new model of how the world works is to establish a form of international democracy, an EU writ large. This would have the added benefits of providing a forum that would focus on global problems, including the climate crisis, an international rule of law and global inequality. If we can apply the principles of peace within our own societies, then it is reasonable to suppose a global democracy might work toward that end. What are the alternatives?

From Haaretz, Nov 3 2009

Comparing Islamic anti-Semitism to Nazi Germany at its worst

Robert S. Wistrich. Dr. Wistrich is the author of A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (Random House, January 2010).

On November 9, 1938, a massive nation-wide anti-Jewish pogrom took place during peacetime across the entire territory of the Third Reich.

In a sinister and sometimes devious manner, the widespread defamation and demonization of Israel has in effect revived fantasies of completing the murderous work of the Third Reich. This is especially palpable in the case of Iran. Hence, the anniversary of ?Crystal Night? raises two fundamental moral questions for the future of human civilization. Are we at all capable of learning from history, and will the Jewish people once again have to stand alone in the face of concrete threats to annihilate it? On the answer to these questions much may depend.