Robert Hicks, 81, Founding member of Deacons for Defense

REFLECTIONS UPON AN OBITUARY IN THE NYT...Deacons for Defense, ML King, Malcolm X, Bhagat Singh, Ghandhi & Armed Peasant Rebellion in India

 Rick Congress

Robert Hicks, one of the few surviving members of the Deacons for Defense, died April 13 in Bogalusa, LA. A black paper mill worker, his home was threatened with attack by the KKK in February of 1965 because he was providing housing for two white civil rights workers. This was just six months after the murder of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi.

After moving his wife and child out of the house he called upon neighbors for help and soon they came armed with rifles and shotguns. The Klan didn't show up. Hicks was visited by members of the newly organized black armed self-defense group, that had begun in Jonesboro, Louisiana, and agreed to start a chapter in Bogalusa. The Deacons grew to have chapters in more than two dozen communities in the deep south. Hicks was a leader of the Deacons and also was know for his activism demanding and litigating that the voting rights act of 1964 be put into effect by local officials.

Martin Luther King was not comfortable with the Deacons for Defense's stand on the right of armed self-defense and publicly criticized them. James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) defended the Deacons as a "partnership of brothers" who did not "lynch people or burn down houses" like the KKK.

I was active in the civil rights movement during that time (I still have my 1961 NAACP membership card autographed by John Coltrane, Elvin Jones and McCoy Tyner). I participated in starting a CORE chapter in Indianapolis in 1964 and avidly followed what was happening in the movement around the country.

While seeing the importance of Dr. King and the SCLC in inspiring masses into action: marches, sit-ins picket lines, boycotts of businesses that practiced segregation, and so on, I and others in the movement joined in these actions, but also looked favorably upon the more radical Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and Malcolm X as pointing the way towards a deeper social change in the USA.

At that time, King cautiously avoided making an issue out of the growing US war in Vietnam. In fact most of the civil rights establishment were "patriotic" and supported the war and other imperial polices of the White House (against Cuba, for example). When King came out against the war in his famous Riverside Church speech in 1967, he was reviled by the media and the pro-Vietnam war civil right establishment. When he was killed in Memphis he was helping a strike by black sanitation workers.

One vivid memory of those times I can relate: In 1965 I was involved in organizing the first anti-Vietnam rally at Indiana University in Bloomington. We started the event after there had been an earlier march in support of the civil rights movement in Selma, Alabama where they had been set upon by dogs and beaten by the police. When I got up to speak and mentioned that James Farmer, the leader of CORE and a well-known major leader of the civil rights movement, opposed the Vietnam war, I was booed by some of the campus civil rights marchers who had come to the rally. One professor shouted "how dare you use James Farmer's name to speak against the War!"

While King was marching in the South, Malcolm X spoke for the differently situated blacks of the Northern ghettos. His spellbinding orations related their plight to the anti-colonial struggles of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, and the FLN of Algeria.

In the days of Selma, the Watts ghetto rebellion (and Detroit and Newark, etc) I looked on non-violence as a tactic (as I do now). It was obvious that a mass movement to eliminate the Jim Crow system in the South and racial discrimination should be peaceful. But what to do about violent attacks? Were the Deacons for Defense wrong? Their methods were successful...at the time and in their specific context.

Their actions for self-defense against violent KKK attacks were right and deserve to be respected as part of the whole, broad 1960s civil rights movement. The Deacons were the best known black armed self-defense force, but there were others around the South.

Were the violent and sometimes armed (gunfire from blacks citizens actually stopped the initial National Guard incursion into the Detroit ghetto in the summer of 1967) rebellions "wrong?" They were social uprisings caused by intolerable conditions, racism and everyday police harassment. Often a gross act of police brutality detonated a social explosion.

When looking at social gains or the social legislation of the 60s and early 70s, you have to keep in mind that violent social unrest played its part.

Ideological pacifists don't seem to take into account the role the ruling classes fear of violent revolution plays in their willingness to make concessions to mass peaceful movements. They are not being moral or changing their ways, they are picking the lesser of two evils and biding their time until they have an advantage and can strike back.

And strike back they have. Much has been rolled back from the 60s. Reagan's proclaiming "the South will rise again" at a campaign speech in Meridian, Mississippi (near the murder site of Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney) in 1980 illustrated the consolidation of the Republican's "Southern Strategy." The roll backs of the '80s and '90s skipped past the 60s and included rolling back constraints upon rampant capitalism instituted in the 1930s, including the right of workers to have union representation.

The passive resistance movement of Ghandi, from today's vantage point, can arguably be said to be a failure. Independence was achieved, but what else? One million died in the transfer of populations in 1948 between the newly partitioned Pakistan and India. India boasts a new affluent class and rising high tech industries, but India and Pakistan are now aiming nuclear weapons at each other and sporadically at war over Kashmir. Most Indians are still impoverished village dwellers. There is more than one vigorous armed peasant rebellions in India today. It has been the only recourse for desperately oppressed poor farmers who face displacement and starvation (see Arundati Roy's article "with the comrades").

Actually there was an armed resistance to the British occupation that went on parallel to Ghandi's movement. Bhagat Singh was a martyr to millions of Indians.In the 1920s He was hanged by the British for the killing of a hated British official who had troops fire on demonstrators. Indian students in my ESL class at the Technical Institute where I teach taught me about Bhagat Singh and brought videos about Singh and his influence (for educational purposes only, of course) to class. One is "Rang De Bisanti" another is "The Legend of Bhagat Singh."

Anyway, I don't want to push a point too far. But seeing the obituary of Robert Hicks brought back some memories and made me reflect upon what has happened over the last few decades.

Columbia Professor Joseph Massad on Colonialism as Peace

Professor Joseph Massad of Columbia University spoke Wednesday evening, April 28 at a well-attended meeting sponsored by the Columbia-Barnard Students for Justice in Palestine.

His topic was "Colonialism as Peace"

I'm not going to reconstruct his entire talk, I was too mesmerized to take notes. But my aging brain did retain the main points. So the following is an enthusiastic paraphrase.
--Rick Congress

According to the Zionist dictionary colonialism is defined as peace. Thus, when Israel expands its West Bank colonies (known as "settlements" in the Israeli lexicon -- something that sounds peaceful, calming and, well, settled) it is practicing peace. If colonialism is peace then anti-colonialism is war and resistance to colonialism is terrorism.

The acts of aggression come when the Palestinians, mistakenly seeing the places where they and their ancestors have lived for centuries -- if not longer -- as their rightful home, resist, and thereby practice terrorism. This terrorism requires the Zionist state to practice self-defense to safeguard their security.

Now we see the problem is really one of translation, the Palestinians need to understand the true meaning of peace, terrorism, self-defense and security. If they would only willingly surrender to anything and everything the Israeli government does and might do in the future, then everything would be nice and peaceful.

Their lack of a sophisticated grounding in semantics, syntax and grammar has brought about the situation of Israel not finding a reliable negotiating partner to join Israel in the peace process. This is a truly lamentable situation for the peaceful, self-defending government and armed forces of Israel to be in.

Netanyahu, Leiberman et al are doing their best to practice peace and all they get in return is terrorism, which necessitates self-defense. Israel knows, as do all modern, western people know: that when colonial stealing of land takes place (peace) this is a benign act of compassion. If this good deed is opposed, then there is no alternative except to fight terrorism.

Israel needs for the Palestinians to take part in the peace process so they can be demobilized, demoralized and tied up in endless windbaggery. This is known as being a trustworthy partner in peace. Cynics might call this being tied up like a sheep for shearing, but cynicism is a bad thing.

Now that this topic is finished we can go on to the real meaning of the term West Bank.


When the Zionist state talks about the West Bank what they really mean is half of the West Bank. Their definition of the whole West Bank does not include East Jerusalem, or an expanded area of control around East Jerusalem, or other areas that they really don't want to give back.

So when then Prime Minister Barack met with Yassir Arafat at Camp David in 2000 and offered him 91 per cent of the West Bank for a Palestinian state what he really was saying is that Arafat could have 91 per cent of 50 per cent. How could Arafat have turned down such a generous offer? The proposed Palestinian state would also have been contiguous! How about that for generosity?

When the Zionists say a contiguous state what they mean is a noncontiguous state on the West Bank divided into three cantons (and Gaza would be the fourth canton) criss crossed by Jews-only roads and surrounded by IDF bases. One of the problems that caused Arafat to reject such a good deal is that he didn't understand the real meaning of the words West Bank and contiguous. He didn't consult a Zionist dictionary for these terms.

LET'S HEAR IT FOR GIL SCOTT HERON WHO CANCELLED HIS GIG IN ISRAEL IIN SUPPORT OF BDS

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

SUPPORT BOYCOTT, DIVEST AND SANCTIONS AGAINST ISRAEL: End the occupation, dismantle the illegal (meaning all of them) colonies (settlements)

Ze'ev Jacobtinsky's vision of 1923 is today's reality

Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jacobtinsky was the leader of Revisionist Zionism in Palastine in the early pre and post Balfor Declaration days. As the leader of the politically rightist Revisionists (who claimed all land on both sides of the Jordan River) he was David Ben Gurion's (the leader of the social democratic Labor Zionists) arch rival. They both wanted an exclusively Jewish state, but differed on how to get one and on internal social-economic policy. Likud prime ministers Menachum Begin and Itsak Shamir Were followers of Jacobtinsky in the British Mandate days. Begin was part of the Irgun, a Jewish terrorist group that assasinated British Mandate officials and soldiers and later became its commander. The Irgun merged with the regular Zionist army in 1948.

This essay is remarkable for it's honesty and plain spoken nature. Jaobtinsky (revered in Israel and the spiritual father of Netanyahu) envisioned an apartheid "bi-national" situation in Palestine. I use the term "situation" because the state was to be for Jews only.
--Rick Congress

The Iron Wall (We and the Arabs)
by Ze'ev Jabotinsky

(First published in Russian under the title O Zheleznoi Stene in Rasswyet, November 4, 1923).

Contrary to the excellent rule of getting to the point immediately, I must begin this article with a personal introduction. The author of these lines is considered to be an enemy of the Arabs, a proponent of their expulsion, etc. This is not true. My emotional relationship to the Arabs is the same as it is to all other peoples -- polite indifference.

My political relationship is characterized by two principles. First: the expulsion of the Arabs from Palestine is absolutely impossible in any form. There will always be two peoples in Palestine. Second: I am proud to have been a member of that group which formulated the Helsingfors Program. We formulated it, not only for Jews, but for all peoples, and its basis is the equality of all nations. I am prepared to swear, for us and our descendants, that we will never destroy this equality and we will never attempt to expel or oppress the Arabs. Our credo, as the reader can see, is completely peaceful.

But it is absolutely another matter if it will be possible to achieve our peaceful aims through peaceful means. After this introduction I can now get to the point. That the Arabs of the Land of Israel should willingly come to an agreement with us is beyond all hopes and dreams at present, and in the foreseeable future. This inner conviction of mine I express so categorically not because of any wish to dismay the moderate faction in the Zionist camp but, on the contrary, because I wish to save them from such dismay.
Apart from those who have been virtually “blind” since childhood, all the other moderate Zionists have long since understood that there is not even Land of Israel to “Palestine” becoming a country with a Jewish majority.

Every reader has some idea of the early history of other countries which have been settled. I suggest that he recall all known instances. If he should attempt to seek but one instance of a country settled with the consent of those born there he will not succeed. The inhabitants (no matter whether they are civilized or savages) have always put up a stubborn fight. Furthermore, how the settler acted had no effect whatsoever. The Spaniards who conquered Mexico and Peru, or our own ancestors in the days of Joshua ben Nun behaved, one might say, like plunderers. But those “great explorers,” the English, Scots and Dutch who were the first real pioneers of North America were people possessed of a very high ethical standard; people who not only wished to leave the redskins at peace but could also pity a fly; people who in all sincerity and innocence believed that in those virgin forests and vast plains ample space was available for both the white and red man. But the native resisted both barbarian and civilized settler with the same degree of cruelty.

Another point which had no effect at all was whether or not there existed a suspicion that the settler wished to remove the inhabitant from his land. The vast areas of the U.S. never contained more than one or two million Indians. The inhabitants fought the white settlers not out of fear that they might be expropriated, but simply because there has never been an indigenous inhabitant anywhere or at any time who has ever accepted the settlement of others in his country. Any native people -- its all the same whether they are civilized or savage -- views their country as their national home, of which they will  always be the complete masters. They will not voluntarily allow, not only a new master, but even a new partner. And so it is for the Arabs. Compromisers in our midst attempt to convince us that the Arabs are some kind of fools who can be tricked by a softened formulation of our goals, or a tribe of money grubbers who will abandon their birth right to Palestine for cultural and economic gains. I flatly reject this assessment of the Palestinian Arabs. Culturally they are 500 years behind us, spiritually they do not have our endurance or our strength of will, but this exhausts all of the internal differences. We can talk as much as we want about our good intentions; but they understand as well as we what is not good for them. They look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true fervor that any Aztec looked upon his Mexico or any Sioux looked upon his prairie. To think that the Arabs will voluntarily consent to the realization of Zionism in return for the cultural and economic benefits we can bestow on them is infantile. This childish fantasy of our “Arabo-philes” comes from some kind of contempt for the Arab people, of some kind of unfounded view of this race as a rabble ready to be bribed in order to sell out their homeland for a railroad network.

This view is absolutely groundless. Individual Arabs may perhaps be bought off but this hardly means that all the Arabs in Eretz Israel are willing to sell a patriotism that not even Papuans will trade. Every indigenous people will resist alien settlers as long as they see any hope of ridding themselves of the danger of foreign settlement.

Some of us imagined that a misunderstanding had occurred, that because the Arabs did not understand our intentions, they opposed us, but, if we were to make clear to them how modest and limited our aspirations are, they would then stretch out their arms in peace. This too is a fallacy that has been proved so time and again. I need recall only one incident. Three years ago, during a visit here, Sokolow delivered a great speech about this very “misunderstanding,” employing trenchant language to prove how grossly mistaken the Arabs were in supposing that we intended to take away their property or expel them from the country, or to suppress them. This was definitely not so. Nor did we even want a Jewish state. All we wanted was a regime representative of the League of Nations. A reply to this speech was published in the Arab paper Al Carmelin an article whose content I give here from memory, but I am sure it is a faithful account.

Our Zionist grandees are unnecessarily perturbed, its author wrote. There is no misunderstanding. What Sokolow claims on behalf of Zionism is true. But the Arabs already know this. Obviously, Zionists today cannot dream of expelling or suppressing the Arabs, or even of setting up a Jewish state. Clearly, in this period they are interested in only one thing -- that the Arabs not interfere with Jewish immigration. Further, the Zionists have pledged to control immigration in accordance with the country's absorptive economic capacity. But the Arabs have no illusions, since no other conditions permit the possibility of immigration.

The editor of the paper is even willing to believe that the absorptive capacity of Eretz Israel is very great, and that it is possible to settle many Jews without affecting one Arab. “Just that is what the Zionists want, and what the Arabs do not want. In this way the Jews will, little by little, become a majority and, ipso facto, a Jewish state will be formed and the fate of the Arab minority will depend on the goodwill of the Jews. But was it not the Jews themselves who told us how pleasant‚ being a minority was? No misunderstanding exists. Zionists desire one thing -- freedom of immigration -- and it is Jewish immigration that we do not want.”

The logic employed by this editor is so simple and clear that it should be learned by heart and be an essential part of our notion of the Arab question. It is of no importance whether we quote Herzl or Herbert Samuel to justify our activities. Colonization itself has its own explanation, integral and inescapable, and understood by every Arab and every Jew with his wits about him. Colonization can have only one goal. For the Palestinian Arabs this goal is inadmissible. This is in the nature of things. To change that nature is impossible.

A plan that seems to attract many Zionists goes like this: If it is impossible to get an endorsement of Zionism by Palestine's Arabs, then it must be obtained from the Arabs of Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and perhaps of Egypt. Even if this were possible, it would not change the basic situation. It would not change the attitude of the Arabs in the Land of Israel towards us. Seventy years ago, the unification of Italy was achieved, with the retention by Austria of Trent and Trieste. However, the inhabitants of those towns not only refused to accept the situation, but they struggled against Austria with redoubled vigor. If it were possible (and I doubt this) to discuss Palestine with the Arabs of Baghdad and Mecca as if it were some kind of small, immaterial borderland, then Palestine would still remain for the Palestinians not a borderland, but their birthplace, the center and basis of their own national existence. Therefore it would be necessary to carry on colonization against the will of the Palestinian Arabs, which is the same condition that exists now.

But an agreement with Arabs outside the Land of Israel is also a delusion. For nationalists in Baghdad, Mecca and Damascus to agree to such an expensive contribution (agreeing to forego preservation of the Arab character of a country located in the center of their future “federation”) we would have to offer them something just as valuable. We can offer only two things: either money or political assistance or both. But we can offer neither. Concerning money, it is ludicrous to think we could finance the development of Iraq or Saudi Arabia, when we do not have enough for the Land of Israel. Ten times more illusionary is political assistance for Arab political aspirations. Arab nationalism sets itself the same aims as those set by Italian nationalism before 1870 and Polish nationalism before 1918: unity and independence. These aspirations mean the eradication of every trace of British influence in Egypt and Iraq, the expulsion of the Italians from Libya, the removal of French domination from Syria, Tunis, Algiers and Morocco. For us to support such a movement would be suicide and treachery. If we disregard the fact that the Balfour Declaration was signed by Britain, we cannot forget that France and Italy also signed it. We cannot intrigue about removing Britain from the Suez Canal and the Persian Gulf and the elimination of French and Italian colonial rule over Arab territory. Such a double game cannot be considered on any account.

Thus we conclude that we cannot promise anything to the Arabs of the Land of Israel or the Arab countries. Their voluntary agreement is out of the question. Hence those who hold that an agreement with the natives is an essential condition for Zionism can now say “no” and depart from Zionism. Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population -- an iron wall which the native population cannot break through. This is, in toto, our policy towards the Arabs. To formulate it any other way would only be hypocrisy.

Not only must this be so, it is so whether we admit it or not. What does the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate mean for us? It is the fact that a disinterested power committed itself to create such security conditions that the local population would be deterred from interfering with our efforts.

All of us, without exception, are constantly demanding that this power strictly fulfill its obligations. In this sense, there are no meaningful differences between our “militarists” and our “vegetarians.” One prefers an iron wall of Jewish bayonets, the other proposes an iron wall of British bayonets, the third proposes an agreement with Baghdad, and appears to be satisfied with Baghdad's bayonets -- a strange and somewhat risky taste -- but we all applaud, day and night, the iron wall. We would destroy our cause if we proclaimed the necessity of an agreement, and fill the minds of the Mandatory with the belief that we do not need an iron wall, but rather endless talks. Such a proclamation can only harm us. Therefore it is our sacred duty to expose such talk and prove that it is a snare and a delusion.

All this does not mean that any kind of agreement is impossible, only a voluntary agreement is impossible. As long as there is a spark of hope that they can get rid of us, they will not sell these hopes, not for any kind of sweet words or tasty morsels, because they are not a rabble but a nation, perhaps somewhat tattered, but still living. A living people makes such enormous concessions on such fateful questions only when there is no hope left. Only when not a single breach is visible in the iron wall, only then do extreme groups lose their sway, and influence transfers to moderate groups. Only then would these moderate groups come to us with proposals for mutual concessions. And only then will moderates offer suggestions for compromise on practical questions like a guarantee against expulsion, or equality and national autonomy.

I am optimistic that they will indeed be granted satisfactory assurances and that both peoples, like good neighbors, can then live in peace. But the only path to such an agreement is the iron wall, that is to say the strengthening in Palestine of a government without any kind of Arab influence, that is to say one against which the Arabs will fight. In other words, for us the only path to an agreement in the future is an absolute refusal of any attempts at an agreement now.

The Jim Crow legal status of Palestinian Citizens of Israel

From The Palestine Chronicle, more documentation of Apartheid in Israel				Why There Are No 'Israelis' in the Jewish State
By Jonathan Cook - Nazareth A group of Jews and Arabs are fighting in the Israeli courts to be recognised as 'Israelis', a nationality currently denied them, in a case that officials fear may threaten the country’s self-declared status as a Jewish state. Israel refused to recognise an Israeli nationality at the country’s establishment in 1948, making an unusual distinction between “citizenship” and “nationality”. Although all Israelis qualify as “citizens of Israel”, the state is defined as belonging to the “Jewish nation”, meaning not only the 5.6 million Israeli Jews but also more than seven million Jews in the diaspora. Critics say the special status of Jewish nationality has been a way to undermine the citizenship rights of non-Jews in Israel, especially the fifth of the population who are Arab. Some 30 laws in Israel specifically privilege Jews, including in the areas of immigration rights, naturalisation, access to land and employment. Arab leaders have also long complained that indications of "Arab" nationality on ID cards make it easy for police and government officials to target Arab citizens for harsher treatment. The interior ministry has adopted more than 130 possible nationalities for Israeli citizens, most of them defined in religious or ethnic terms, with “Jewish” and “Arab” being the main categories. The group’s legal case is being heard by the supreme court after a district judge rejected their petition two years ago, backing the state’s position that there is no Israeli nation. The head of the campaign for Israeli nationality, Uzi Ornan, a retired linguistics professor, said: “It is absurd that Israel, which recognises dozens of different nationalities, refuses to recognise the one nationality it is supposed to represent.” The government opposes the case, claiming that the campaign’s real goal is to “undermine the state’s infrastructure” -- a presumed reference to laws and official institutions that ensure Jewish citizens enjoy a privileged status in Israel. Mr Ornan, 86, said that denying a common Israeli nationality was the linchpin of state-sanctioned discrimination against the Arab population. “There are even two laws -- the Law of Return for Jews and the Citizenship Law for Arabs -- that determine how you belong to the state,” he said. “What kind of democracy divides its citizens into two kinds?” Yoel Harshefi, a lawyer supporting Mr Ornan, said the interior ministry had resorted to creating national groups with no legal recognition outside Israel, such as “Arab” or “unknown”, to avoid recognising an Israeli nationality. In official documents most Israelis are classified as “Jewish” or “Arab”, but immigrants whose status as Jews is questioned by the Israeli rabbinate, including more than 300,000 arrivals from the former Soviet Union, are typically registered according to their country of origin. “Imagine the uproar in Jewish communities in the United States, Britain or France, if the authorities there tried to classify their citizens as “Jewish” or “Christian”,” said Mr Ornan. The professor, who lives close to Haifa, launched his legal action after the interior ministry refused to change his nationality to “Israeli” in 2000. An online petition declaring “I am an Israeli” has attracted several thousand signatures. Mr Ornan has been joined in his action by 20 other public figures, including former government minister Shulamit Aloni. Several members have been registered with unusual nationalities such as “Russian”, “Buddhist”, “Georgian” and “Burmese”. Two Arabs are party to the case, including Adel Kadaan, who courted controversy in the 1990s by waging a lengthy legal action to be allowed to live in one of several hundred communities in Israel open only to Jews. Uri Avnery, a peace activist and former member of the parliament, said the current nationality system gave Jews living abroad a far greater stake in Israel than its 1.3 million Arab citizens. “The State of Israel cannot recognise an ‘Israeli’ nation because it is the state of the ‘Jewish’ nation … it belongs to the Jews of Brooklyn, Budapest and Buenos Aires, even though these consider themselves as belonging to the American, Hungarian or Argentine nations.” International Zionist organisations representing the diaspora, such as the Jewish National Fund and the Jewish Agency, are given in Israeli law a special, quasi-governmental role, especially in relation to immigration and control over large areas of Israeli territory for the settlement of Jews only. Mr Ornan said the lack of a common nationality violated Israel’s Declaration of Independence, which says the state will “uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of religion, race or sex”. Indications of nationality on ID cards carried by Israelis made it easy for officials to discriminate against Arab citizens, he added. The government has countered that the nationality section on ID cards was phased out from 2000 -- after the interior ministry, which was run by a religious party at the time, objected to a court order requiring it to identify non-Orthodox Jews as “Jewish” on the cards. However, Mr Ornan said any official could instantly tell if he was looking at the card of a Jew or Arab because the date of birth on the IDs of Jews was given according to the Hebrew calendar. In addition, the ID of an Arab, unlike a Jew, included the grandfather’s name. “Flash your ID card and whatever government clerk is sitting across from you immediately knows which ‘clan’ you belong to, and can refer you to those best suited to ‘handle your kind’,” Mr Ornan said. The distinction between Jewish and Arab nationalities is also shown on interior ministry records used to make important decisions about personal status issues such as marriage, divorce and death, which are dealt with on entirely sectarian terms. Only Israelis from the same religious group, for example, are allowed to marry inside Israel -- otherwise they are forced to wed abroad – and cemeteries are separated according to religious belonging. Some of those who have joined the campaign complain that it has damaged their business interests. One Druze member, Carmel Wahaba, said he had lost the chance to establish an import-export company in France because officials there refused to accept documents stating his nationality as “Druze” rather than “Israeli”. The group also said it hoped to expose a verbal sleight of hand that intentionally mistranslates the Hebrew term “Israeli citizenship” on the country’s passports as “Israeli nationality” in English to avoid problems with foreign border officials. B Michael, a commentator for Yedioth Aharonoth, Israel’s most popular newspaper, has observed: “We are all Israeli nationals -- but only abroad.” The campaign, however, is likely to face an uphill struggle in the courts. A similar legal suit brought by a Tel Aviv psychologist, George Tamrin, failed in 1970. Shimon Agranat, head of the supreme court at the time, ruled: “There is no Israeli nation separate from the Jewish people. … The Jewish people is composed not only of those residing in Israel but also of diaspora Jewries.” That view was echoed by the district court in 2008 when it heard Mr Ornan’s case. The judges in the supreme court, which held the first appeal hearing last month, indicated that they too were likely to be unsympathetic. Justice Uzi Fogelman said: “The question is whether or not the court is the right place to solve this problem.” - Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Visit: www.jkcook.net. (A version of this article originally appeared in The National, www.thenational.ae, published in Abu Dhabi.)

Elie Wiesel is a lying, racist schmuck

Wiesel  is simply “a terrible fraud.”  
-- Noam Chomsky

 by Rick Congress
 The professional holocaust salesman is at it again. This time in a full-page ad in today's New York Times (Sunday, April 18, 2010) about Jerusalem.

He's been out there guarding the status of world's greatest sufferers and victims for the Jews (Armenians, pfttt! Five milliion Congolese killed in ongoing massacres as we speak...kid stuff!) We, the Jews are the only ones who know about suffering...and I, that is, we, get a free pass to do anything we want.

Putting in his own two sheckels about objections to the accelerated ethnic cleansing carried out by Israel in Jerusalem, he rants about Jerusalem being only for Jews and no one else (here's a thumb in your eye Christians!).

He repeats the fake zionist historical narrative of exclusivity; and the outright lie that Palestinians have the right to live anywhere in east or west Jerusalem. Palestinians are being evicted from their homes, Palestinian neighborhoods are being claimed as Jewish based on forged deeds and fake archeology (look! we excavated a 3,000 year old can of King David Beer! This area is ours!).

And he lies about Muslims and Christians having access to their places of worship under Israeli rule. The opposite is happening with curfews, check-points, designation of Muslim shrines as being Jewish holy places, etc. Access is being made more difficult. But leave it to Weisel, he loves to make the victim the criminal.

This shameless reactionary has been a cheerleader for Bush's invasion of Iraq, he's waving the flag for attacking Iran, and can be expected to continue to crudely trade on the holocaust as an excuse to cover up any and all crimes committed by Israel, and also make a lot of money in the process.

Remembering Booker White, aka "Bukka" White