Why is the West praising Malala, but ignoring Ahed?
Shenila Khoja-Moolji by Shenila Khoja-Moolji

Ahed Tamimi, a 16-year-old Palestinian girl, was recently arrested in a night-time raid on her home. The Israeli authorities accuse her of "assaulting" an Israeli soldier and an officer. A day earlier she had confronted Israeli soldiers who had entered her family's backyard. The incident happened shortly after a soldier shot her 14-year-old cousin in the head with a rubber bullet, and fired tear-gas canisters directly at their home, breaking windows.

Her mother and cousin were arrested later as well. All three remain in detention.

There has been a curious lack of support for Ahed from Western feminist groups, human rights advocates and state officials who otherwise present themselves as the purveyors of human rights and champions of girls' empowerment.

Ahed, like Malala, has a substantial history of standing up against injustices.


Their campaigns on empowering girls in the global South are innumerable: Girl Up, Girl Rising, G(irls)20 Summit, Because I am a Girl, Let Girls Learn, Girl Declaration.

When 15-year-old Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by a member of Tehrik-e-Taliban, the reaction was starkly different. Gordon Brown, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, issued a petition entitled "I am Malala." The UNESCO launched "Stand Up For Malala."

Malala was invited to meet then President Barack Obama, as well as the then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and addressed the UN General Assembly. She received numerous accolades from being named one of the 100 Most Influential People by Time magazine and Woman of the Year by Glamour magazine to being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2013, and again in 2014 when she won.

State representatives such as Hillary Clinton and Julia Gillard as well as prominent journalists such as Nicholas Kristof spoke up in support of her. There is even a Malala Day!

But we see no #IamAhed or #StandUpForAhed campaigns making headlines. None of the usual feminist and rights groups or political figures has issued statements supporting her or reprimanding the Israeli state. No one has declared an Ahed Day. In fact, the US in the past has even denied her a visa for a speaking tour.

Ahed, like Malala, has a substantial history of standing up against injustices. She has been protesting the theft of land and water by Israeli settlers. She has endured personal sacrifice, having lost an uncle and a cousin to the occupation. Her parents and brother have been arrested time and again. Her mother has been shot in the leg. Two years ago, another video featuring her went viral - this time she was trying to protect her little brother from being taken by a soldier.

Why isn't Ahed a beneficiary of the same international outcry as Malala? Why has the reaction to Ahed been so different?

There are multiple reasons for this deafening silence. First among them is the widespread acceptance of state-sanctioned violence as legitimate. Whereas hostile actions of non-state actors such as the Taliban or Boko Haram fighters are viewed as unlawful, similar aggression by the state is often deemed appropriate.

This not only includes overt forms of violence such as drone attacks, unlawful arrests, and police brutality, but also less obvious assaults such as the allocation of resources, including land and water. The state justifies these actions by presenting the victims of its injustices as a threat to the functioning of the state.

Once declared a threat, the individual is easily reduced to bare life - a life without political value. Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has described this as a time/place sanctioned by sovereign power where laws can be suspended; this individual can therefore now be made a target of sovereign violence. Terrorists often fall within this category. Thus, the execution of suspected terrorists through drone attacks without due judicial process ensues without much public uproar.


11-year-old Ahed cries during the funeral of her relative Rushdi Tamimi, who was shot by Israeli forces during a protest in November 2012 [Reuters/Mohamad Torokman]
The Israeli police have deployed a similar strategy here. They have argued for extendingAhed's detention because she "poses a danger" to soldiers (state representatives) and could obstruct the functioning of the state (the investigation).

Casting unarmed Palestinians like Ahed - who was simply exercising her right to protect her family's wellbeing with all the might of her 16-year-old hand - in the same light as a terrorist is unfathomable. Such framings open the way for authorising excessive torture - Israel's education minister Naftali Bennett, for instance, wants Ahed and her family to "finish their lives in prison."

Ahed's suffering also exposes the West's selective humanitarianism, whereby only particular bodies and causes are deemed worthy of intervention.

Anthropologist Miriam Ticktin argues that while the language of morality to alleviate bodily suffering has become dominant in humanitarian agencies today, only particular kinds of suffering bodies are read as worthy of this care.This includes the exceptionally violated female body and the pathologically diseased body.


Ahed's father Bassem Tamimi stands inside a waiting cell ahead of the verdict in his trial at Israel's Ofer military court near the West Bank city of Ramallah on May 20, 2012 [AP/Diaa Hadid]
Such a notion of suffering normalises labouring and exploited bodies: "these are not the exception, but the rule, and hence are disqualified."

Issues of unemployment, hunger, threat of violence, police brutality, and denigration of cultures are thus often not considered deserving of humanitarian intervention. Such forms of suffering are seen as necessary and even inevitable. Ahed, therefore, does not fit the ideal victim-subject for transnational advocacy.

Relatedly, girls like Ahed who critique settler colonialism and articulate visions of communal care are not the empowered femininity that the West wants to valourise. She seeks justice against oppression, rather than empowerment that benefits only herself.

Her feminism is political, rather than one centred on commodities and sex. Her girl power threatens to reveal the ugly face of settler-colonialism, and hence is marked as "dangerous". Her courage and fearlessness vividly render all that is wrong with this occupation.

Ahed's plight should prompt us to interrogate our selective humanitarianism. Individuals who are victims of state violence, whose activism unveils the viciousness of power, or whose rights advocacy centres communal care, deserve to be included in our vision of justice.

Even if we don't launch campaigns for Ahed, it is impossible for us to escape her call to witness the mass debilitation, displacement and dispossession of her people. As Nelson Mandela said, "We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians."

Roswell Rudd, RIP

FORGET COATES VS. WEST — WE ALL HAVE A DUTY TO CONFRONT THE FULL REACH OF U.S. EMPIRE

from The Intercept
Naomi Klein, Opal Tometi

December 21 2017, 11:18 a.m.

SO, WHICH SIDE are you on? #TeamWest or #TeamCoates?

Choose fast, preferably within seconds, and don’t come to this gunfight with a knife. No, like some nerdy Rambo, we want you greased up and loaded with ammo: your most painful character smears, your most “gotcha” evidence of past political infractions, a blitzkrieg of hyperlinks and, of course, an aircraft carrier of reaction GIFs.

That’s pretty much how the online debate has played out ever since Cornel West published his piece in The Guardian challenging Ta-Nehisi Coates, an article you either regard as an outrageous injustice or an earth-shattering truth bomb, depending on which team you have chosen.

We see it differently. We see this debate as a political opportunity, one that has far less to do with either of these brilliant men and everything to do with how, at a time of unfathomably high stakes, we are going to build a multiracial human rights movement capable of beating back surging white supremacy and rapidly concentrating corporate power. As women, both Black and white, both American and Canadian, we see the question like this: What are the duties of radicals and progressives inside relatively wealthy countries to the world beyond our national borders? A warming world wracked by expanding and unending wars that our governments wage, finance, and arm — a world scarred by unbearable poverty and forced migration?

Though West directed his criticisms at Coates, these are by no means questions for Coates alone. They are urgent challenges for all of us who see ourselves as part of social movements and intellectual traditions that yearn for a world where justice and dignity abound.

What are the duties of radicals and progressives inside relatively wealthy countries to the world beyond our national borders?
So before this goes any further, let’s yank this fight away from the poisonous terrain on which it is currently unfolding — that of two famous men with healthy egos duking it out while the Twitterverse divides into warring camps — and instead dig into the substance.

Let’s also take it as a given that West’s piece was flawed and painted Coates with too broad a brush. It accuses him of silence on some subjects where he has, in fact, been vocal (like the financial sector’s role in entrenching Black poverty). And as the New Yorker’s Jelani Cobb pointed out, the man who has done more to revive the debate about Black reparations than any writer of his generation cannot blithely be written off as a neoliberal tool.

But that does not change the fact that West raises crucial points when he critiques Coates for having too little to say about the impact of U.S. military and economic policies abroad, for failing to place U.S. experiences in a broader context of U.S. imperial power, and for casting Barack Obama as the continuation of the legacy of Malcolm X (whom West describes as “the greatest prophetic voice against the American Empire,” while Obama is “the first Black head of the American Empire”).

Where we differ is that we don’t think these criticisms apply just (or even especially) to Coates. Nor do we think this debate should be viewed as an exclusively Black discussion, as some have argued (which is why we decided to write this together). Rather, these questions about our relationship to empire and transnational capital are ones that every progressive movement and intellectual across North America should urgently confront, and we are convinced that if we do, we will be stronger for it.

To be clear, we are not saying that every writer has a duty to write about everything. No one does. Nor do we think that the subject matter for which Coates is known — Black life in the United States — is somehow insufficient. It isn’t. And yet hard questions remain that cannot be dismissed simply become some dislike the messenger or the form of the message.

Such as: Is it even possible to be a voice for transformational change without a clear position on the brutal wars and occupations waged with U.S. weapons? Is it possible to have a credible critique of Wall Street’s impact on Black and other vulnerable communities in the U.S. without reckoning with the predatory and neocolonial impacts of the global financial system (including Washington-based institutions like the International Monetary Fund) on the debt-laden economies of African countries?

Is it even possible to be a voice for transformational change without a clear position on the brutal wars and occupations waged with U.S. weapons?
Even when our work is primarily focused nationally or hyperlocally, as it is for most organizers and writers, there is still a pressing need for an internationalist conception of power to inform our analysis. This is not a contradiction. In fact, it used to be foundational to all major radical and progressive movements, from the socialist internationals to Pan-Africanism and the global campaign to end apartheid in South Africa, from the “alter-globalization” movement to the international women’s movement. All understood that resistance needed to be global in order to win. Marcus Garvey, for instance, drew ideas and inspiration for Black liberation from the Irish struggle for independence. And Malcolm X famously observed that when racial minorities in the U.S. saw their struggle in a global context, they had the empowering realization that they were, in fact, part of a broad and powerful majority.

We are not saying that this internationalist tradition is entirely absent in contemporary North American movements — there have been Black activist delegations to Colombia, Brazil, and Palestine in recent years. The climate justice movement is linked to frontline fights against fossil fuel extraction in every corner of the globe. And the immigrant rights movement is internationalist by definition. So are parts of the movement confronting sexual violence. We could go on.

But it is also true that the atmosphere of intense political crisis in the United States is breeding a near myopic insularity among progressives and even some self-described radicals, one that is not just morally dangerous but strategically shortsighted. By defining our work exclusively as what goes on inside our borders, and losing touch with the rich anti-imperialist tradition, we risk depriving our movements of the revolutionary power that flows from cross-border exchanges of both wisdom and tactics.

For instance, if U.S. President Donald Trump is seen in isolation from the rise of far-right forces around the world, we lose opportunities to learn from people in Brazil, Argentina, the Philippines, South Africa, India, Turkey, and Togo about how they are resisting their various strongmen. Because if we have learned anything over the past years of left-wing setbacks and disappointments, from Syriza in Greece to Maduro in Venezuela to the dashed dreams of the Arab Spring, it should be that the forces shaping national destinies are global. International lenders, Western military support for despots, or even a sudden drop in oil prices can all thwart or derail a liberation project that has defined itself too narrowly.

Which is why it’s high time to change the subject from West vs. Coates, and begin the much more salient debate about what we all can do to rediscover the power of a genuinely internationalist, anti-imperialist worldview. A power that our movement ancestors well understood.

Because there is simply no way to fight for a world in which Black lives truly matter without reckoning with the global forces that allow Black lives to disappear under waves in the Mediterranean, or to be mutilated and enslaved in countries like Libya, or to be snuffed out by debt imposed by Washington-based financial institutions.

The same is true of climate change, which is hitting people in the global south first and worst. It has been reported that of the top 10 nations most impacted by climate change, six are on the continent of Africa. Similarly, there is no way to fight for the full funding of public schools and free universal health care inside the United States without confronting the vastly expanding share of the budget that goes to feeding the war machine.

The immigrant rights movement is the most internationalist of our movements, but we still need to do more to connect the dots between rights and justice for migrants within countries like the United States and Canada, and the drivers of migration in places like Mexico and Ghana, whether it is pro-corporate trade and economic policies that destabilize domestic industries, or U.S.-backed wars, or drought deepened by climate change.

Our movements simply cannot afford to stick to our various comfort zones or offload internationalism as someone else’s responsibility.
The unending misery in Haiti may be the most vivid illustration of how today’s crises are all interrelated. On the island, serial natural disasters, some linked to climate change, are being layered on top of illegitimate foreign debts and coupled with gross negligence by the international aid industry, as well as acute U.S.-lead efforts to destabilize and under-develop the country. These compounding forces have led tens of thousands of Haitians to migrate to the United States in recent years, where they come face-to-face with Trump’s anti-Black, anti-immigrant agenda. Many are now fleeing to Canada, where hundreds if not thousands could face deportation. We can’t pry these various cross-border crises apart, nor should we.

IN SHORT, THERE is no radicalism — Black or otherwise — that ends at the national boundaries of our countries, especially the wealthiest and most heavily armed nation on earth. From the worldwide reach of the financial sector to the rapidly expanding battlefield of U.S. Special Operations to the fact that carbon pollution respects no borders, the forces we are all up against are global. So, too, are the crises we face, from the rise of white supremacy, ethno-chauvinism, and authoritarian strongmen to the fact that more people are being forced from their homes than at any point since World War II. If our movements are to succeed, we will need both analysis and strategies that reflect these truths about our world.

Some argue for staying in our lane, and undoubtedly there is a place for deep expertise. The political reality, however, is that the U.S. government doesn’t stay in its lane and never has — it spends public dollars using its military and economic might to turn the world into a battlefield, and it does so in the name of all of U.S. citizens.

As a result, our movements simply cannot afford to stick to our various comfort zones or offload internationalism as someone else’s responsibility. To do so would be grossly negligent of our geopolitical power, our own agency, as well as our very real connections to people and places throughout the world. So when we build cross-sector alliances and cross-issue solidarity, those relationships cannot be confined to our own nations or even our own hemisphere — not in a world as interconnected as ours. We have to strive for them to be as global as the forces we are up against.

We know this can seem overwhelming at a time when so many domestic crises are coming to a head and so many of us are being pushed beyond the breaking point. But it is worth remembering that our movement ancestors formed international alliances and placed their struggles within a global narrative not out of a sense of guilt or obligation, but because they understood that it made them stronger and more likely to win at home — and that strength terrified their enemies.

Besides, the benefit of building a broad-based, multiracial social movement — which should surely be the end goal of all serious organizers and radical intellectuals — is that movements can have a division of labor, with different specialists focusing on different areas, united by broad agreement about overall vision and goals. That’s what a real movement looks like.

The good news is that grassroots internationalism has never been easier. From cellphones to social media, we have opportunities to speak with one another across borders that our predecessors couldn’t have dreamed of. Similarly, tools that allow migrant families to stay connected with loved ones in different countries can also become conduits for social movements to hear news that the corporate media ignores. We are able, for instance, to learn about the pro-democracy movements growing in strength across the continent of Africa, as well as efforts to stop extrajudicial killings in countries like Brazil. Many would not have known that Black African migrants are being enslaved in Libya if it had not been for these same tools. And had they not known they wouldn’t have been able to engage in acts of necessary solidarity.

So let’s leave narrow, nostalgic nationalism to Donald Trump and his delusional #MAGA supporters. The forces waging war on bodies and the planet are irreversibly global, and we are vastly stronger when we build global movements capable of confronting them at every turn.

Yes, America, There Is a Class War, and You Just Lost It

from truthdig

DEC 20, 2017JUAN COLE

The Republican Party did not just overhaul the tax code and they did not cut “your” taxes. They engineered a coup against the middle and working classes and they threw enormous amounts of public money to private billionaires and multi-millionaires.

Americans do not understand this sort of con game because mostly they don’t understand social class. They often don’t even believe in the latter. But really, not all households in the US are equal. Some have more income than others. Some have more power than others. And as with the Trumps, that wealth and power can be passed on to the next generation.

We’re not all middle class. That would make a mockery of the word “middle,” which implies that there are lower and upper classes. Some of us are working class, some are middle class, some are upper middle class, and some are rich. Policies that help the rich by cutting their taxes do not help the working and middle classes. They actively harm the latter by making less money available for government services and by devaluing the dollar.

The Republican Party mainly represents the rich. It also reaches out to rural people and claims to help them, but it is all lies. It mainly represents the rich.

Alabama routinely votes Republican. Alabama is one of the poorest states in the country. The Republicans aren’t actually doing anything for Alabama, except maybe making them feel good about themselves by buttering them up, or indulging them in their weird idea that fundamentalist Christianity should dictate social policy to 320 million Americans, who do not share those values.

The rich in the United States use American highways, and American wifi, and depend on the FBI to keep them from getting kidnapped. But they don’t want to pay for those things. They want you to pay for them even though they use them much more. I get angry when I see those trucks on the highway with the sign that they payed $9277 in tolls and fees last year to be on the highway. Trucks are the ones that tear up the highways and force us to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild. Their fees and tolls don’t come close to paying for the damage they do. So the costs are offloaded.

Onto us?

Onto us.

There are about 126 million households in the United States. One percent of them would be 1.26 million households. That is about the size of the city of Los Angeles. There are one hundred groups of 1.26 million households in the US, i.e. 100 Los Angeleses worth of households. Those one hundred groups are not equal in wealth. The bottom 100th of American households doesn’t have a pot to pee in.

The Republican Party slavishly serves the top 1.26 million households. That’s who they report to. That’s who sent them to Congress, through their campaign donations. They don’t care about you and they did not just now do you any favors.

The wealthiest one percent owns about 38 percent of the privately held wealth in the United States. In the 1950s, the top 1% only owned about 25 percent of the privately held wealth. A Republican was in the White House, Dwight Eisenhower. He was not a left wing guy. But he worried about corporations combining with government officials to become way more powerful. The last time wealth inequality was this high was just before the Great Depression. Think about that.


h/t Center for Budget & Policy Priorities

Americans’ wealth amounts to about $88 trillion. If you divided up all the privately held wealth equally, every household in the US would be worth $698,000. That is, they’d all have their own home plus substantial investments.

But needless to say, the wealth isn’t divided up equally. The top ten percent of households, 12.6 million households own 76% of the privately held wealth. That is, 10 of our notional 100 Los Angeleses own three-fourths of the wealth.

So just to be clear, of our 100 Los Angeleses worth of households, 90 of them own only 24 percent of the wealth.

So how did the top one percent go from having 25% of the privately held wealth to having 38%?

In some large part, it was tax policy. In the Eisenhower administration the top marginal tax rate was 91%, and the highest bracket of earners paid 90% in income tax. Progressive income tax was intended to keep the society from getting too out of kilter and to prevent wealth from becoming concentrated in a few hands.

h/t Fact and Myth.

There is no evidence, zero, that these tax policies hurt economic growth or hampered job creation.

Eisenhower’s tax policy was repealed over time, especially by Ronald Reagan. Reagan pulled the familiar scam of promising that tax cuts would pay for themselves by encouraging entrepreneurs to invest and to hire.

Instead, the government deficit ballooned (that’s what happens if you cut taxes but leave spending programs in place) .

And not only were all boats not lifted by Reagan’s rising tide, most of them were sunk. The average wage of an average worker is not higher now than it was in 1970.

The economy has grown enormously since 1970. So if workers did not get a share in the newly created wealth, who has it?

The 1%?

The 1%.

Think about tax policy as a snowblower aimed a a single point. Snow builds up at the point where the snowblower is facing. If you keep aiming at that point as you clean the snow, you’ll get an enormous hill of snow. There will be no snow to speak of on the driveway. There will just be an artificial mounta

So that is what the Republican Congress just did. They revved up the snowblower and they pointed it at a small mountain of already-accumulated snow, so that they will make the mountain larger.

This tax bill won’t create jobs, won’t spur investment, and won’t bring companies back home. It will make the 1.26 million households even more fabulously wealthy than they already are, and ensure that the rest of us get poorer.

When you cut taxes, you are cutting government services. There will be less money for the things the government does– education, funding science, dealing with national health crises, road building, dealing with interstate crime, etc.

And the super-wealthy who bought the politicians and made them pass this law? They just got ‘way richer and have every reason to be jubilant.

New York students ask court to end ban on Palestine club

from the electric intifada
Nora Barrows-Friedman Activism and BDS Beat 13 December 2017


Students are fighting the Fordham University administration in court and in the streets over its decision to ban Students for Justice in Palestine. (Fordham SJP Facebook)
Students at Fordham University in New York have taken a new step in a legal battle to lift a ban on a Palestine solidarity group.

In a lawsuit filed with the New York state supreme court, activists at the Jesuit college are demanding that it overturn a unilateral decision by the dean of students, Keith Eldredge, to ban Students for Justice in Palestine in December 2016.

His decision, which students and lawyers say was based on the students’ political views, vetoed the student government’s approval of an SJP chapter a month earlier.

During the year-long application process, students seeking to found the club were questioned repeatedly about their personal political opinions, affiliations with outside human rights and Jewish organizations and their views on the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

Students sued the university in April of this year, alleging that the private university violates its own free expression policies and is engaged in viewpoint discrimination.

In June, the university tried to block the students’ lawsuit, prompting students to file a motion weeks later in opposition.

The new order, which was filed in early November, seeks to force the university to recognize SJP as an official club. It also asks the court to allow the students’ legal team to gather testimonies from Eldredge and other administrators, and to have administrators disclose documents, including emails and notes, related to their decision to deny SJP its club status.

Unless the court overturns the ban, students will graduate “before their right to advocate for Palestinian human rights on campus can be vindicated,” states Palestine Legal, a firm which is representing the students along with the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Prevented from making flyers
While the SJP chapter is banned, students cannot organize speaking events, reserve meeting spaces, distribute or post materials or solicit potential members through group fairs, the legal group adds.

“We’ve been fighting so hard to become a club,” student Julie Norris told The Electronic Intifada. “All we’re trying to do is be able to invite a speaker to campus, or make a flyer.”

The court filing reasserts that the Fordham administration’s veto of the student government’s approval of SJP was “arbitrary and capricious,” say the attorneys.

The university has attempted to justify its ban on the club by claiming that SJP’s existence could lead to “disruptive” conduct.

Fordham “disregarded evidence” that countered these claims, the attorneys say, “instead basing its decision on materials from individuals hostile to SJP’s views.”

“Last resort”
“Filing a lawsuit is definitely a last resort,” attorney Radhika Sainath of Palestine Legal told The Electronic Intifada.

Students would much rather “go forward and be organizers and activists and put on their educational programming. No one wants to be in court,” she said. “But Fordham gave these students no choice.”

Sainath explained that the legal filings send a strong message to the Fordham authorities to show that they cannot violate their own rules just because they don’t like the message of students’ speech, and to other universities considering similar measures against SJP chapters.

“Students supporting Palestinians’ rights are going to take their rights seriously and they’re going to enforce them in court if their rights are violated,” Sainath said.

Norris said that despite the legal hurdles, the students remain optimistic. “I think about the way that Palestinians have had to have that optimistic spirit for so long – where they know that Palestine will be free eventually and they’re not giving that up for anything,” she said.

“No matter how many classes of students it takes, we’re going to eventually win. If the majority of us have graduated or not, we will make it.”

A hearing on the court order is set for early January.

ACLU files suit against Arizona anti-BDS law

from the electric intifada
Nora Barrows-Friedman Activism and BDS Beat 12 December 2017

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a second federal suit challenging state law which seeks to repress the Palestinian-led movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) measures against Israel.

A 2016 law in Arizona creates a blacklist of companies, organizations and other entities which boycott Israel and bans the state from contracting with them.

The lawsuit, which asserts that the Arizona anti-boycott law violates the First Amendment, was filed last week on behalf of an attorney who contracts with the government to provide legal advice to incarcerated persons in Coconino County Jail, according to the ACLU.

The attorney, Mikkel Jordhal, told the ACLU that he is an active participant in a consumer boycott of Israeli goods and wishes to “extend his boycott to his solely owned law firm” and provide legal services to organizations engaged in boycotts.

First Amendment violation
When Jordhal renewed his contract with the county in October last year, “it included an extra form that he had to sign to certify that the firm ‘is not currently engaged in a boycott of Israel,’” according to the ACLU.

He signed the form under protest and has excluded his boycott activities from his business. He was asked to sign the form once again in order to renew his contract this year.

“If he agrees, Jordahl will have to limit his boycott participation,” the ACLU stated. “If he refuses, he will put a great deal of his income at risk.”

Jordahl said that the state has no business telling private companies how to act when it comes to boycotts.

“Whatever your stance on the boycott issue, everyone has a right to express their opinions on it and act accordingly,” Jordahl stated.

The ACLU says Arizona’s anti-boycott law violates the First Amendment and is calling for the legislation to be stricken down.

“The First Amendment squarely protects the right to participate in political boycotts,” ACLU attorney Brian Hauss stated.

Arizona is one of more than 20 states to adopt measures condemning or attempting to restrict the BDS movement.

The US Congress is meanwhile considering the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, which opposes a United Nations database of companies involved in Israel’s settlement colony enterprise.

The bill would allow the government to impose sanctions on companies complying with calls from the UN Human Rights Council to boycott Israeli settlement goods.

The Israel Anti-Boycott Act currently has 268 cosponsors in the House and 51 in the Senate.

Kansas lawsuit
In October, the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit against the state of Kansas on behalf of Esther Koontz, a public high school math teacher who boycotts Israeli goods.

Koontz is a member of the Mennonite Church USA, which passed a resolution in July in support of divestment from companies that profit from Israeli violations of Palestinian rights.

When seeking to renew a state teaching contract, Koontz refused to sign a form certifying that she does not participate in a boycott of Israel, as required by state law passed earlier this year.

Attorneys for the state of Kansas failed to provide arguments defending the constitutionality of the law during a federal court hearing earlier this month.

The judge remarked that “I didn’t see, in all candor, that [the Kansas law] is constitutional.”

A ruling has not yet been made in the Kansas suit to block the anti-BDS legislation.

Legal advocates say that the right to boycott remains a protected form of political expression, despite state and federal attempts at silencing Palestine rights activism.

“Anti-BDS laws don’t have a bright future,” said Dima Khalidi, director of Palestine Legal, a US firm supporting activists who advocate for Palestinian rights.

The world’s anger toward Trump gives Palestinians a clear path for action

from mondoweiss
Haidar Eid on December 9, 2017

US president Donald Trump has taken a decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Forget about international law, UN and Security Council Resolutions, Arab and Muslim reaction! The President of the United of Sates of America does not give a damn. If the world doesn’t like it, it can bang its head against the “wailing wall!”

What is Jerusalem?

Jerusalem is Zarnouqa, the village from which my family together with thousands of villagers, were ethnically cleansed in 1948 in order to make room for Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe, a pure Jewish state, similar to Apartheid South Africa and other settler-colonies, one that does not grant you citizenship unless you are born to a Jewish mother.

Alas, my mother was not Jewish and, therefore, I am expected to live in a refugee camp, accept my low status, and never think of praying in one of the holiest sites of Islam, Christianity and Judaism.

President Trump, with all sincerity, believes that we are biologically born different and, therefore, some of us have no right to exist and survive on this piece of land unless we choose to be slaves and be grateful for that!

What should we do?

First, we must not seek the consent of Zionist Israelis. More than 23 years of negotiations, ala Oslo, have led us nowhere. Rather, these so-called negotiations have prolonged the occupation and given Israel every opportunity to make the establishment of even a semi-Bantustan an impossibility.

In fact, we want to work hard to isolate Israel through resistance and the demand that the international community implement the resolutions of international legitimacy, and force Israel to respond to these international decisions. Therefore, we must not take into account the demands of the colonizer because, unfortunately, they are even more than the white demands of South Africa during the Apartheid era. They ultimately will lead to the total elimination of the indigenous population in Palestine. This is a systematic ethnic cleansing process that has been taking place since 1948.

So, we must work on making this moment our South African turning point by intensifying #BDS. We must translate all this anger worldwide into a plan of action that takes Boycott, Divestment and sanctions as its leading torch towards peace with justice in Palestine.

It is time to get rid of the racist two state solution, renounce the Oslo Accords, and come up with a democratic alternative, one that does not deny the humanity of the inhabitants of historic Palestine regardless of their religion, race and gender!

President Trump is not expected to agree with those democratic ideals, but who cares? Weren’t those the ideals for which Nelson Mandela was prepared to die, as he made it absolutely clear at the Rivonia trial? We have 12 million Mandela’s in Palestine.

From one coup to another: Honduras under siege

from Investigative action
04 Dec 2017 ALEX ANFRUNS



What happened to the democratic rights of the Hondurans who voted in the presidential elections on November 26th? The country is now in the hands of the armed forces. Human rights groups on the ground speak of murders, disappearances and many wounded as a result of the brutal repression at the hands of the police and the military.



The first results published by the Electoral Court on Monday, November 27, gave a clear lead to opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla. Then a second count radically inverted this tendency, putting incumbent Juan Orlando Hernández as the victor. With protests of fraud, the court decided to suspend the final publication of the results. Both candidates called on their supporters to defend victory on the streets.


Voting tendency change: the plot shows Nasralla’s lead as the votes were being tallied

But in the following days, Nasralla denounced that opposition protests were being infiltrated by outside elements, thus creating an image of a country in chaos. It was the perfect excuse for minister Jorge Ramón Hernández, who took no time in announcing the suspension of constitutional rights on Friday night, for a period of 10 days. However, as constitutional law experts have stressed, this decree could only be approved by the President in a cabinet meeting.

The curfew specifically forbids people from going out on the streets between 6PM and 6AM. Soon after the images of the first dead people started circulating on social media. But that is not enough for some people to lose sleep…



The long road towards democracy


As soon as the Electoral Court announced the vote swing favouring Juan Orlando Hernández, Nasralla announced that the elections were “being stolen” and that this time he would not allow it, referring to the 2013 elections in which he also ran, garnering 13% of the vote. Nasralla was then the candidate for the Anti-Corruption party that he had co-founded.

In September 2014, the director of the Honduran Institute for Social Security was seized by the police for a theft estimated at 335 million dollars. The government of Juan Orlando Hernández declared that fighting corruption was to become a priority and signed agreements with several international organisations dedicated to transparency.

Meanwhile, the period after the 2009 coup has been extremely hard on Hondurans, who have valiantly resisted against the repression and the impunity of state agents. In 2015, the Honduran people marched every week with torches to protest against the dictatorship they faced, but the state carried on assassinating social leaders. The Honduran people have been subjected by the system to extreme violence, but there seem to be no alternative sight, as an opposition movement had yet to be unified.


Nasralla next to Manuel Zelaya, who was ousted after a coup in 2009

In early July 2017, after months of waiting and only a day before the deadline, the Electoral Court registered the candidacy from the Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship. This coalition, coordinated by the ousted former president Manuel Zelaya, rallies multiple political forces around a social and democratic program: transparency and rooting out corruption; an alternative economic system with restructured productive sectors; investment in public services such as education, healthcare and housing; environmental protection, etc.

In the elections inside the Anticorruption Party earlier this year, the party did not choose its co-founder Salvador Nasralla as general secretary. Then Nasralla became the candidate for the Opposition Alliance due to his popularity as a former sports journalist.



Are democracy and impunity compatible?


It is important to take into account the difficulty in mobilising voters in a country immersed in extreme, structural violence. Honduras is one of the most dangerous countries in the world. Its murder rate is only comparable to the situation of countries during wars, such as Iraq! In the run-up to the elections there has been an escalation of violence. In the weeks leading to the November 26 poll, activists from both Opposition Alliance and the governing party were attacked.

The murder of activist Berta Cáceres in March 2015 became engraved in the minds of an entire generation. Since then, banners, murals and posters have multiplied to commemorate the courage she showed in her struggle against all odds. The slogan “Berta lives, she has multiplied” has spread beyond the borders of this small country. Berta had become renowned around the world for her role in the struggles of her organisation, COPINH. Her case is far from unique: for years, environmental activists have been harassed and attacked with impunity.

In this context, the daughters of Cáceres, Laura and Bertha Zúñiga, quickly moved to the spotlight and denounced the responsibility of Juan Orlando Hernández’s government: “the oligarchic groups have great influence, they mobilize the army to repress people. We should point out that since the 2009 coup many military people have become shareholders in extractive industry projects (hydroelectric, mining, and others). But the corrupt mafias also allow for the organization of criminal groups that work in coordination with major corporations…”.

In early November, an independent report rattled a lot of cages. Finally the complicity of the state in Berta Cáceres’ assassination was confirmed, in line with the strong suspicions held by relatives and friends from the very beginning. The report’s authors are adamant:

“Among the chat exchanges between DESA staff members, the experts could detect that there was permanent contact between the company and state security forces, such as the Seguridad y Policía Preventiva. For example, only 14 hours after Berta’s murder, there were messages between DESA managers and staff members revealing that they had asked public officials for help in being shielded from any investigation”

Consequently Juan Orlando Hernández had every interest in hiding the incestuous links between the state and multinational corporations. It is no coincidence that during his term the security budget was increased and special military forces were created. The $17.3 million provided in security aid by the United States seem to pose no problem to our democracies.

But the plot thickens: the president of the Constitutional Court, David Matamoros, is a relative of Dennis Matamoros Batson, a legal counsel of a company that provides services for DESA, the company accused of playing a role in the assassination of Berta Cáceres.

One of the things at stake in the current Honduran elections is to get rid, once and for all, of this culture of political impunity.



Venezuela, an ever present scarecrow in elections all over the world


The media campaign for the Honduran elections was another opportunity to attack Venezuela. The Spanish CNN channel posed the crucial question of our time to Nasralla: “What is your position concerning Venezuela?”. And he responded “the Venezuelan problems should be solved by Venezuelans, just like Honduran problems should be solved by Hondurans” … and adding that should Venezuela sell oil at low prices Honduras would not complain…

To prove Venezuelan interference in the electoral process, secretary of the right-wing National Party Juan Diego Zelaya showed in the same program a photo of Manuel Zelaya, now coordinator of the Opposition Alliance, in a car next to Nicolás Maduro. But he did not mention the context of said photo, which is almost 10 years old! After the coup against Zelaya in 2009, Maduro was one of the few Latin American foreign ministers who committed personally to taking Zelaya to the Honduran border and risking his life to defend democracy in Honduras. But this is about taking advantage of the media propaganda of him being a dictator to demonise the Opposition Alliance…


The National Party tried to use Venezuela as a scarecrow

For the dominant ideology, raising the Venezuelan scarecrow is a tactic to draw attention away from the shortcomings of governments that embrace economic policies that hinge on the almighty “free market”. Cultivating amnesia and distorting the historical examples of social achievements that challenge powerful elites is a tried and tested propaganda technique, which in this case has the virtue of ignoring the needs of the Honduran population! The most surreal moment happened when the government of Juan Orlando Hernández expelled the Venezuelan band Los Guaragaos, who were going to play at an opposition rally. Has Latin American folk music become a weapon of mass destruction against elites in power? (1)



The lesson of the Honduran people


The Opposition Alliance had demanded total transparency in the special tallying process announced by the Electoral Court, and sent a letter detailing 11 necessary conditions for them to accept the result. But the Court did not respect these conditions, and the Alliance has called on people to defy the curfew and defend the victory stolen via electoral fraud. Nasralla has pointed the finger at president Juan Orlando Hernández and Electoral Court president David Matamoros as the ones responsible for the situation.

It is true that elections are just a single moment in people’s lives. But in Central America, where institutions have done nothing to defend quality public services, representatives have destroyed whatever was left by raiding social security funds, there are crucial matters at stake. People would have plenty of reasons to adhere to fatalist ideas of “all politicians are the same”. If we add to this the trivialisation of violence and judicial impunity, we would believe that nothing could be done. But this is a vision that underestimates people.

History has shown, in contrast, that resistance is necessary and inevitable. The day after the 2009 coup, in spite of their suffering, the Honduran people did not sit idly by. First it created a Resistance Front against the coup government. Then it focused efforts in the struggle against corruption and continuity, especially since Juan Orlando Hernández bypassed the law to run for re-election, something that is illegal under the current Constitution. Finally, it is equally important to emphasise that these movements have understood that struggles, in order to be effective, also should bring about a change of government, even if that is not the final goal. As such, they have formed an Opposition Alliance to take on the current political opponent, and not shying away from openly describing the government of Juan Orlando Hernández as a dictatorship.


Hondurans protesting against fraud and the imposed curfew

From Saturday, December 3rd, to Sunday, Hondurans again protested against electoral fraud, the curfew and repression by banging pots and pans. In this context, the announcement of new results by an Electoral Court which is suspected of colluding with the government offers no prospects of exiting this deep political and institutional crisis. Only adhering to the conditions demanded by the main opposition party and putting a stop to repression will do.

In light of the challenges posed by Honduran events, the reactions from international bodies such as the OAS (whose president Almagro is obsessed exclusively with Venezuela) and the media have been timid or non-existent. This shows that the big powers are more than comfortable with failed states so long as they help advance their geopolitical interests.

The Honduran people are providing a brave lesson of hope for the oppressed peoples of the world. Let us join them in their struggle.



Note:

(1) The group Los Guaragaos became known by their rendition of Ali Primera’s “Casas de Cartón”, a song that denounces structural poverty in Latin America.

Photos: La Prensa de Honduras, El Tiempo de Honduras



Source: The Journal of Our Americas (to appear) / Investig’Action

Trump intends to move US embassy to Jerusalem, Palestinian president says

from Mondoweiss Allison Deger on December 5, 2017

This morning President Donald Trump called Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to notify him of his intention to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, according to a spokesperson for President Abbas. Trump also called Jordan’s King Abdullah to notify him, according to reports out of Jordan.


Israeli press is also reporting Trump made additional calls to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi and Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, to relate his plans.

Trump is expected to announce his plans tomorrow.

Channel 2’s Dana Weiss, the reporter who broke the story that Trump plans to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital this week, commented on social media that Trump and Netanyahu coordinated the move in advance, intentionally leaving Abbas and Arab heads of state in the dark until today.

Late this afternoon, Netanyahu’s office emailed reporters that the Israeli prime minister will make a speech at Jerusalem’s Waldorf Astoria tomorrow, immediately following Trump’s remarks.

Responses from Ramallah reflect shock. Abbas had a frenzied morning after his talks with Trump, reaching out to U.S. allies and foreign influencers, including Vladimir Putin, in a last-ditch effort to change the course of U.S. policy. The Palestinian leader also phoned pleas to Morocco and Jordan, according to the Palestinian outlet Wafa.

Earlier today, Wafa reported details about Trump’s call to Abbas stating his intention to move the embassy. Abbas “warned of the dangerous repercussions of such step on the [long-stalled] peace process, security and stability in the region and the world,” according to his spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeineh.

The PLO’s Hanan Ashrawi said moving the embassy would “guarantee the destruction of the two-state solution.” She chided Trump for ignoring “repeated words of advice and caution from all concerned and from global leaders.” She went on:

“President Trump seems to be hell-bent on annihilating the chances of peace and destroying the stability and security of the entire region and beyond, provoking violence and playing into the hands of extremists and terrorists around the world. He is willfully committing an act of the utmost folly which is not only illegal but also designed to inflame religious and spiritual sentiments, and raise the specter of sectarianism and religious strife.”

For the Palestinian leadership, Trump’s Jerusalem gambit would constitute a betrayal of agreements signed during the Oslo peace process in the 1990’s. Palestinians were promised that the status of the capital, Jerusalem, was part of negotiations that would ultimately give them sovereignty.

With the exception of Russia, which recently recognized West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, no country acknowledges Israel’s claim to sovereignty over Jerusalem. No country has an embassy in Jerusalem.

That U.S. commitment on Jerusalem was circulated on social media in the hours after Trump and Abbas’ call by spokesperson for the PLO, Xavier Abu-Eid, who posted a copy of a 1991 letter from James Baker that has guided American policy for nearly three-decades in brokering Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

“The United States understands how much importance Palestinians attach to the question of east Jerusalem,” Baker wrote, “Thus, we want to assure you that nothing Palestinians do in choosing their delegation members in this phase of the process will affect their claim to east Jerusalem, or be prejudicial or precedential to the outcome of negotiations. It remains the firm position of the United States that Jerusalem must never again be a divided city and that its final status should be decided by negotiations.”

Baker also said in no uncertain terms that the U.S. does “not recognize Israel’s annexation of east Jerusalem” and encouraged “all sides to avoid unilateral acts that would exacerbate local tensions or make negotiations more difficult or preempt their final outcome.”

Today in Washington State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert declined to state Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s position on moving the embassy and skirted questions about a travel warning issued by the U.S. Consul-General in Jerusalem barring government employees from visiting Jerusalem’s Old City and the West Bank, in anticipation of “widespread calls for demonstrations.”

Many journalists posited that Trump will not move the embassy, and instead through a statement will recognize it as Israel’s capital. Although, no sources are on the record to confirm this.

On MSNBC, White House correspondent Michelle Kosinski reported that Trump will sign the latest waiver, meaning that the U.S. Embassy will stay in Tel Aviv for another six months, but that he will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and announce his intention to move the embassy there ultimately. Bloomberg is reporting the same.

Aaron David Miller described such an outcome as disastrous: it will “set the stage perhaps for violence” and undermine the U.S. role as a broker in a peace process that is “comatose” anyway.

“Jerusalem is a tinderbox waiting for a match,” Miller said. The President could seek to balance his announcement by saying that the U.S. intends to recognize a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem, but “that would drive the Israelis crazy” and antagonize the political forces Trump is seeking to placate with the announcement.

Martin Indyk postulated that Trump’s strategy is to: “sign waiver for last time; order relocation of embassy in next 6 months; recognize J’m as Israel’s capital; and recognize Pal aspiration to have east J’m as their capital, to be decided in negotiations.”

The liberal Zionist group J Street issued an alarmed statement saying the reported plan is a “profound mistake” that reverses longstanding U.S. policy, and only 20 percent of US Jews support the idea.

The effect of moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem or of declaring that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital prior to a negotiated agreement will be to anger key Arab allies, foment regional instability and undermine nascent US diplomatic efforts to resolve the larger conflict.

Americans for Peace Now has called the plan “pyromaniacal” and a gift to those looking “to blow up a peace process before it begins.”

The Republican Jewish Coalition is excited by the news.

Obama’s ambassador to Israel approved the plan but said Trump should use the shift to “make clear the context in which our (still-delayed, but impending) embassy move will take place: US determination to achieve a conflict-ending two-state solution in which both parties have capitals in a unified city of Jerusalem.”

This article was updated at 5:30 p.m.