Forward to the Past: Next Stop, the 19th Century! Rising Inequality and Liberal Myopia

Counterpunch
WEEKEND EDITION NOVEMBER 14-16, 2014

by PETE DOLACK
If capitalism is taking us back to feudalism, we’ll have to pass through the 19th century on our way. In terms of wealth inequality, we’re on course to return to the century of robber barons. Back then, the public-relations industry hadn’t developed, so at least they were called by an honest name, instead of “captains of industry” or “entrepreneurs” as they are today. Although “heir” would frequently be far more accurate than “entrepreneur.”

We’re not at the 19th century yet, but we have arrived at the 1920s on our trip to the past. The level of inequality of wealth in the United States today has not been seen since the decade that led to the Great Depression.

The top 0.1 percent — that is, the uppermost tenth of the 1% — have about as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent of United Statesians. To put it another way, approximately 320,000 people possess as much as do more than 280 million. It takes at least $20 million in assets to be among the top 0.1 percent, a total that is steadily rising.

Emmanuel Saez, an economics professor at the University of California, and Gabriel Zucman, a professor at the London School of Economics, examined income-tax data to reveal these numbers. They write that they combined that data with other sources to reach what they believe is the most accurate accounting of wealth distribution yet, one that shows inequality to be wider than previously imagined. The authors define wealth as “the current market value of all the assets owned by households net of all their debts,” including the values of retirement plans with the exception of unfunded defined-benefit pensions and Social Security. (The reason for that exclusion is that those moneys do not yet exist but are promises to be kept sometime in the future.)

The authors’ paper, “Wealth Equality in the United States since 1913: Evidence from Capitalized Income Data,” reports that, for the bottom 90 percent, there was no change in wealth from 1986 to 2012, while the wealth of the top 0.1 percent increased by more than five percent annually — the latter reaped half of total wealth accumulation.

The 22 percent of total wealth owned by the top 0.1 percent is almost equal to what that cohort owned at the peak of inequality in 1916 and 1929. Afterward, their total fell to as low as seven percent in 1978 but has been rising ever since. At the same time, the combined wealth of the bottom 90 percent rose from about 20 percent in the 1920s to a peak of 35 percent in the mid-1980s, but has been declining ever since. Although pension wealth has increased since then, Professors Saez and Zucman report, the increase in mortgage, consumer-credit and student debt has been greater.

Nonetheless, this might still be an underestimation — the authors write that they “still face limitations when measuring wealth inequality” because of the ability of the wealthy to hide assets off shore or park them in trusts and foundations.

Inequality on the rise

Although rising throughout the developing world, inequality is particularly acute in the United States. Among the nearly three dozen countries that make up the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, only three (Chile, Mexico and Turkey) have worse inequality than does the U.S., measured by the gini coefficient. The standard measure of inequality, the more unequal a country the closer it is to one on the gini scale of zero (everybody has the same) to one (one person has everything).

Of course, were we to measure inequality on a global scale, the results would be more revealing. Even the U.S. gini coefficient of 0.39 in 2012 pales in comparison to the global gini coefficient of 0.52 as calculated by the Conference Board of Canada. To put it another way, global inequality is comparable to the inequality within the world’s most unequal countries, such as South Africa or Uganda.

How to reverse this? Professors Saez and Zucman offer reforms that amount to a return to Keynesianism. They advocate “progressive wealth taxation,” [page 39] such as an estate tax; access to education; and “policies shifting bargaining power away from shareholders and management toward workers.” Such policies would surely be better than the austerity that has been on offer, but the authors’ wish that this can simply be willed into existence is quite divorced from capitalist reality.

Indeed, the authors go on to lament that one factor in stagnant incomes is that “many individuals … do not know how to invest optimally.” It is difficult to believe that these two learned economists are unaware of the relentless chicanery of the financial industry. How does one invest “optimally” in a rigged casino stacked against you?

The past is not the future

Fond wishes for the return of Keynesianism will not bring those days back. (And, of course, if you weren’t a white male those days weren’t necessarily golden anyway.) The Keynesian consensus of the mid-20th century was a product of a particular set of circumstances that no longer exist. Keynesianism then depended on an industrial base and market expansion. A repeat of history isn’t possible because the industrial base of the advanced capitalist countries has been hollowed out, transferred to low-wage developing countries, and there is almost no place remaining to which to expand. Moreover, capitalists who are saved by Keynesian spending programs amass enough power to later impose their preferred neoliberal policies.

Capitalists tolerated such policies because profits could be maintained through expansion of markets and social peace bought. This equilibrium, however, could only be temporary because the new financial center of capitalism, the U.S., possessed a towering economic dominance following World War II that could not last. When markets can’t be expanded at a rate sufficiently robust to maintain or increase profit margins, capitalists cease tolerating paying increased wages.

And, not least, the massive social movements of the 1930s, when communists, socialists and militant unions scared capitalists into granting concessions and prompted the Roosevelt administration to bring forth the New Deal, were a fresh memory. But the movements then settled for reforms, and once capitalists no longer felt pressure from social movements and their profit rates were increasingly squeezed, the turn to neoliberalism was the response.

Nobody decreed “We shall now have neoliberalism” and nobody can decree “We shall now have Keynesianism.” Capitalist market forces — once again, simply the aggregate interests of the most powerful industrialists and financiers — that are the product of relentless competitive pressures have led the world to its present state and the massive inequality that goes with it.

Even if mass social movements build to a point where they could force the imposition of Keynesian reforms, the reforms would eventually be taken back just as the reforms of the 20th century have been taken back. The massive effort to build and sustain movements capable of pushing back significantly against the tsunami of neoliberal austerity would be better mobilized toward a different economic system, one based on human need rather than private profit.

Reforming what is ultimately unreformable is Sisyphean. Going back to the mid-20th century Keynesian era, even were it possible, would be no more than a detour on the way to the 19th century. Building a better world beats nostalgia.

Pete Dolack writes the Sys

H.L. Menken: "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people"

NOVEMBER 10, 2014
from Counterpunch


The Decline of Civic Literacy
Higher Education in Crisis: the 2014 Elections
by ANTHONY DiMAGGIO
I’ve had days to think through the 2014 midterms and their implications. I thought I should weigh in on this election season and its relevance for education in the United States. The main problem with this election season, as I see it, is the large-scale failure of critical thought among the American people and voters. Election outcomes seldom match up with public preferences when it comes to politics. There are two main reasons for this: one is electoral manipulation, as seen in the ways in which candidates falsely portray themselves and project false images into the minds of prospective voters. The second reason for mass ignorance is the laziness of the typical American, as evident in their unwillingness to do a little research and find out exactly what it is that candidates really stand for. Both conditions make for a toxic electoral environment, in which the American voter is susceptible to a rabid false consciousness.

On the national level, disconnect between what Americans say they want, and what they actually got in the 2014 midterms is pronounced. Most Americans claim in surveys that they want an end to gridlock in Washington. Republican voters were more likely to turn out this time around, but according to a 2013 Pew Research Center poll, most Republicans (68 percent) say they “like political leaders who are willing to make compromises to get the job done.” If this is true, it’s evidence of profound ignorance on the part of conservative voters who turned out to grant Republicans control of the Senate. In reality, they just voted for two more years of gridlock by giving control of the Senate to the most obstructionist political party in U.S. history. These officials have shown literally no interest in “working with” President Obama, and they are not going to do so in the next two years. For those not familiar with reality, the Republican Party has been responsible for a record number of filibusters of legislation in the last six years, essentially grinding legislative productivity to a halt. As of the 113th Congress, the party is on pace to have used the filibuster more than 200 times to block majority votes on pieces of legislation. This far outstrips the previous record, also held by Republicans, of nearly 140 filibusters in the 111th Congress.

Reliance on the filibuster used to be relatively uncommon prior to the 1970s, when a member of the Senate had to actually talk for an extended period of time to block a final vote on a piece of legislation. Since then, and as a result of rule change pushed through the chamber in the 1970s, Senators can now simply indicate intent to block a vote (without the pesky speeches previously required) and this prohibits voting on any piece of legislation without a vote for cloture to end debate on a legislative item (cloture requires an elusive 60 supermajority vote, which is non-existent in current Senate politics). Congressional Republicans cynically took advantage of this filibuster, under the assumption that if they could make the country ungovernable for long enough, people would turn away from the Democratic Party in disgust come re-election time. That plan has apparently worked to a significant extent, judging from the 2010 and 2014 midterm election results. It’s easy for the average (under-informed) voter to blame the president for gridlock, however, since he is the highest profile political leader in American politics. This tendency is unfortunate considering that Republicans are the real driving force behind obstructionism.

Whatever one thinks of the Democratic Party, and I don’t think much of it, it’s clear to anyone who is paying attention that the Republican Party has been the almost sole source of legislative gridlock in recent years. As an American voter, why reward that party for such destructive behavior in the name of promoting legislative compromise – a value most Americans say they cherish in political leaders? The answer is relatively simple: Americans are ignorant as to what they actually voted for in these midterms. Most Americans are unhappy (understandably) with the rapid decline of well-paying occupations and career-oriented jobs in the last few decades, and especially in the last six years. Low-pay and part-time jobs are easy enough to find today, but no one I know looks forward to a lifetime of poverty wages. Most people are also still reeling from the massive decline in median family wealth following the 2008 housing collapse. The typical family lost at least 40 percent of their wealth since 2008, much of which was in their home. These developments have predictably hurt Democratic voter turnout, since the Democrats get significant support from less affluent and lower income Americans.

In light of these negative macro-economic developments, it’s not surprising that many Americans chose to sit out the 2014 midterms. Midterm elections have historically been dominated by older, white, conservative and Republican voters, and that was even more the case this time around. The problem with this mindset (sitting out elections) is that it makes the problems we endure today even worse. Without accountability for political leaders, bad behavior in Washington gets worse, not better. What disillusioned prospective voters should have done is mobilize behind a viable third party candidate in their communities and states, or pressure the Democratic Party to better represent their interests. Many on the left will no doubt oppose the latter option, claiming that there is no hope for the Democrats as a viable option for progressives. I would agree when it comes to the current crop of Democrats and their sorry “liberal” credentials, but it’s at least worth asking: why couldn’t the party be forced to represent progressive interests if new candidates are brought in? The Republican right spent the last three decades pulling the Republican Party in a reactionary, corporatist direction, with great effectiveness through the primary process and mobilization of conservative voters. Why couldn’t liberals and leftists do the same with the Democratic Party? Whether one supports third party candidates or Democratic ones (I’ve personally supported both historically, depending on the electoral race in question), it seems clear that the American public is part of the problem when it comes to lousy representation in this country. Lack of participation in the political realm is basically a concession to the powers that be. Apathy guarantees business and plutocratic domination of politics and society. We as citizens share much of the blame for allowing this to happen.

If Americans can’t bring themselves to vote Democratic (a point I understand), they should be turning out to vote for third party candidates. This will do nothing but help improve democratic representation in the U.S. political process over time. Historically third parties have played a significant role in American electoral politics, not so much in terms of replacing the major parties, but in terms of punishing the major parties for ignoring public opinion. The Free Soil Party (during the 1860s) and the Progressive Party (in the early 1900s) are two great examples of parties that pressured the two major parties to become more representative of the public. Democrats and Republican candidates realized they would continue to lose out on a large number of votes so long as citizens voted for third party candidates that better represented the public interest.

In terms of spotlighting public ignorance, the election results are particularly sobering for Illinois, where I currently live. The reactionary billionaire gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner prevailed over Democratic incumbent Pat Quinn. I can’t say I’m surprised, in light of the backhand that Quinn applied to organized labor in the last year. Quinn pushed through a reactionary pension reform, which state officials claimed was necessary after decades of state incompetence and fiscal mismanagement of the pension fund. The reform mandated significant cuts in pay for state retirees and reduction in health care benefits. From what I’ve been able to gather, significant contingents of organized labor in Illinois (particularly throughout the central to southern regions) failed to put up much of a fight in terms of mobilizing and organizing for Quinn. One can hardly blame them considering his actions and his spit in the face to state workers – historically a strong force in Illinois electoral politics. At my current teaching institution (located in central Illinois), there was scarcely a word uttered among union representatives about organizing for Quinn. I get the impression it was much the same elsewhere, as people feel like there is little reason to support a candidate who does not fight for workers.

The biggest problem with political apathy and weak voter turnout is that they play into the hands of corporatist, reactionary forces. Whatever one thinks of Quinn, and I don’t think much of him, Rauner was a significantly worse political candidate. He’s gone on record not only opposing a minimum wage increase, but supporting a cut in the minimum wage by $1. This cut would amount to a double cut after taking into account inflationary pressures. Rauner quickly backpedalled on a minimum wage cut after receiving a lot of negative press, but his track record to date on this issue shouldn’t inspire confidence from working class citizens. Furthermore, Rauner has been clear that he’ll seek to roll back the temporary income tax increase introduced a few years ago. That increase was intended to help close the budget deficit that the state has been running for years, and has helped in moving toward this goal up to this point.

Promising to compensate for the loss of revenues that would result from income tax cuts, Rauner wants to increase the state sales tax, which would undoubtedly be a burden imposed overwhelmingly on the states working class and poor. State taxes, because they rely so much on sales taxes, are notoriously regressive, meaning the less income an individual earns, the higher percent of their income they pay into taxes. By cutting the income tax to the previous level and raising the sales tax, Rauner will subsidize wealthier state residents – who pay a larger percent in taxes toward the income tax than they do the sales tax.

It’s fascinating to look at the utter contradictions expressed by Illinois voters in this last Tuesday’s election. On the one hand, 51 percent of voters chose Bruce Rauner, while just 46 percent voted for Quinn. On the other hand, a number of “advisory” questions placed on the ballot, meant to gauge public opinion on prospective policies that could be introduced in the state, found the following: 1. 66 percent of voters supported raising the state’s minimum wage from $8.25 an hour to $10.10, compared to just 34 percent who opposed the raise; 2. 64 percent of voters supported introducing a “millionaire’s tax” to take money from the wealthy and apply it toward under-performing schools in poorer cities and school districts throughout the state. Comparatively, just 36 percent opposed the millionaire’s tax. These results are interesting, if for no other reason than because they demonstrate the complete contradiction and ignorance in most voters’ minds. A majority of voters chose a billionaire right-wing candidate with a history of wanting to cut the minimum wage and cut taxes on the affluent, while raising them on the working class and poor. Simultaneously, those very same voters want a political system that raises the minimum wage and increases taxes on the wealthy. This stark contradiction is madness, but can easily happen when voters make little to no effort to actually find out what candidates really stand for. Rauner ran a campaign that outspent the Quinn campaign by approximately $30 million, essentially buying the race through greater public exposure via ads. He relied on bland platitudes and clichés, promising to “shake up Springfield” and “take on” the “Springfield gang” of politicians that has long been known for patronage-based scams (a la George Ryan, Rod Blagojevich, and other current officials like Democratic House Speaker Mike Madigan).

The Rauner victory is unlikely to exert much of an impact on Illinois politics, as Democrats in the state retain veto-proof majorities in the House and Senate that have the power to override any policy opposed by Rauner. But this is beside the point. The main concern is that working class residents of the state (and the country more broadly) should have become more vigilant in the face of the Democratic Party’s transformation into a spineless, tepid, neoliberal force in American politics. Citizens should have placed more pressure on the Democratic Party or on a third party to represent their interests, not less pressure. And there is certainly no excuse for actively voting against your own interests, as in the case of Illinois. The minimum wage and taxes were arguably the two biggest issues in that state’s gubernatorial race, so there’s no legitimate reason for people to plead ignorance on where Quinn and Rauner stood on these issues. Despite Quinn’s reluctance to embrace progressive values, one can at least say with confidence that he supported a sizable minimum wage increase (to $10.10/hour) and that he opposed cutting income tax revenues in a state with a history of under-funding public programs and pensions. These two reasons alone distinguished him from Rauner’s reactionary proposals.

Both the national midterm election results and those in Illinois speak to the crisis in education in the United States. To put it bluntly, teachers – at the K-12 level and in higher education – need to do a much better job promoting basic civic competence and political literacy among students. This has not been the priority at the K-12 level, after more than a decade of lobotomizing students with standardized testing, performance-based funding, and teaching to the test. None of those things have objectively increased academic performance, and they’ve significantly harmed teacher efforts to promote critical thought in the classroom. At the higher education level, there has been a wholesale movement away from prioritizing teaching in the social sciences. From my experiences, those job candidates with a passion for teaching are rarely hired, and seldom elevated to the status of “ideal” applicants in most social science job searches. Rather, factors such as pedigree (the prestige of the graduate school one attends) and research record (whether one publishes in esoteric peer-reviewed social science journals that no one reads) are the primary factors that influence hiring. In light of these changes to elementary and higher education, there is little emphasis placed on teaching critical thought and inquiry. Promoting critical thought has always been the Achilles heel of education in America, but it’s got noticeably worse in recent years.

The decline of civic literacy is also enabled by fundamental transformation in the mass media. Decades ago – prior to the rise of cable, the Internet, satellite TV, and other digital television options – the average American was much more likely to be confronted with nightly news casts and politics than they are today. The news was nearly impossible to avoid with only a few channels to choose from in decades past. As a result, more citizens thought and cared about politics than is the case today. Media scholars have increasingly documented a significant decline in attentiveness to news among younger American demographic groups in light of the explosion of media choices and the fragmentation of television audiences between hundreds of new channels. To put it simply, Americans no longer have to pay attention to the news, and many no longer do. This decline in attentiveness was instrumental in fostering the system of civic illiteracy we have today.

I don’t know that teachers by themselves can overcome the shifting informational and media environment that has pushed entire generations away from paying attention to the world around them and re-focused their attention toward mindless consumerism via mass advertising. The organized apathy that’s emerged due to growing media corporatization is a pervasive force in modern America. However, it seems increasingly clear that teachers are also making less of an effort to overcome growing public apathy and illiteracy. We need more teachers today who are willing to passionately challenge political propaganda and manipulation, rather than retreating from the task of promoting critical thought. Many teachers prefer to maintain a façade of “objectivity,” refraining from challenging obvious falsehoods and propaganda perpetuated by the political parties and media. Obviously this has to stop if we are to increase public civic literacy and knowledge.

Simply stated, Americans need to learn how to think again and mobilize for change. They need to learn how to question the political rhetoric and official misinformation around them. Gutless apathy is not an enduring trait for a country claiming to be the “leader of the free world.” Americans need to challenge official misinformation in a pro-active way, so as to become more involved in the political world, rather than less. Much of public anger today is of a fake, pseudo-populist variety. Many people simply assume, before even trying to educate themselves or participate in politics, that whatever they do won’t make a difference and that nothing really matters. If these things are true, why even bother to pay attention to the news, protest, or vote in elections? This mindset reflects an intellectual neutering of Americans, and much of it is the product of a “mainstream” political culture driven by official propaganda. This culture stresses the idea that government and Washington are “part of the problem,” rather than part of the solution for improving people’s lives. This cynical, neoliberal message threatens to destroy what little is left of American democracy. When people become convinced that government can do nothing to help them, the resulting apathy frees up political leaders of both parties to ignore public interests even further. Officials will simply intensify efforts to serve affluent, wealthy constituents – those who do pay attention to politics, lobby, offer campaign contributions, and vote. We desperately need a revolution in American culture and thinking. Apathy is the major roadblock preventing the emergence of democratic governance.

Anthony DiMaggio holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Illinois, Chicago. He has taught U.S. and global politics at numerous colleges and universities, and written numerous books, including Mass Media, Mass Propaganda (2009), When Media Goes to War (2010), Crashing the Tea Party (2011), and The Rise of the Tea Party (2011). He can be reached at: anthonydimaggio612@gmail.com.

New York/New Jersey Speaking Schedule of Dr. Stephen Salaita

Four Key Reasons to Understand the Irresistible Attraction of Radical Islam

from Human Wrongs Watch

By Roberto Savio

There are four historical reasons to understand how the anger and frustration now all over the Muslim world leads to attraction to the Islamic State (IS) in poor sectors.

3 November 2014 - The 23 October 2014 attack on the Canadian Parliament building by a Canadian who had converted to Islam just a month earlier should create some interest in why an increasing number of young people are willing to sacrifice their lives for a radical view of Islam.

Until now, this was dismissed as fanaticism, but when you have over 2,000 people who blow themselves up, it is time to look to this growing reality and put stereotypes to the side.

Let us recall that there are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, with Indonesia the world’s largest Muslim country followed by India. The entire Middle East-North Africa region has 317 million, compared with 344 million in Pakistan and India alone.

There are 3.4 million Muslims in the United States and 43.4 million in Europe, making perhaps one jihadist for every 100,000 Muslims.

It is worth noting that there are a growing number of voices arguing that the Muslim world and its values are intrinsically against the West. Well, basic data do not support that theory, even although it is being used by all xenophobic parties which have sprung up everywhere in Europe.


Four Historical Reasons

There are four historical reasons for jihadism that are easily forgotten.

First of all, all the Arab countries are artificial. In May 1916, Monsieur Picot for France and Lord Sykes for Britain met and agreed on a secret treaty, with the support of the Russian Empire and the Italian Kingdom, on how to carve up the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War.

Thus the Arab countries of today were born as the result of a division by France and Britain with no consideration for ethnic and religious realities or for history. A few of those countries, like Egypt, had an historical identity, but countries like Iraq, Arabia Saudi, Jordan, or even the Emirates lacked even that.

It is worth remembering that the Kurdish issue of 30 million people divided among four countries was created by European powers.

As a consequence, the second reason. The colonial powers installed kings and sheiks in the countries that they created. To run these artificial countries, strong hands were required. So, from the very beginning, there was a total lack of participation of the people, with a political system which was totally out of sync with the process of democracy which was happening in Europe.

With a European blessing, these countries were frozen in feudal times.

As for the third reason, the European powers never made any investment in industrial development, or real development. The exploitation of petrol was in the hands of foreign companies and only after the end of the Second World War, and the ensuing process of decolonisation, did oil revenues really come into local hands.

When the colonial powers left, the Arab countries had no modern political system, no modern infrastructure, no local management. When Italy left Libya (it did not know that there was petrol), there were only three Libyans with university degree.

Finally, the fourth reason, which is closer to our days. In states which did not provide education and health for their citizens, Muslim piety took on the task of providing what the state was not. So large networks of religious schools and hospital were created, and when elections were finally permitted, these became the basis for legitimacy and the vote for Muslim parties.

This is why, just taking the example of two important countries, Islamist parties won in Egypt and Algeria, and how with the acquiescence of the West, military coups were the only resort to stop them.

This compression of so many decades into a few lines is of course superficial and leaves out many other issues. But this brutally abridged historical process is useful for understanding how anger and frustration is now all over the Muslim world, and how this leads to attraction to the Islamic State (IS) in poor sectors.

We should not forget that this historical background, even if remote for young people, is kept alive by Israel’s domination of the Palestinian people.

The Blind Support of the West

The blind support of the West, especially of the United States, for Israel is seen by Arabs as a permanent humiliation. The July-August bombing of Gaza, with just some noises of protest from the West but no real action, is for the Arab world clear proof that the intention is to keep Arabs down and seek alliances only with corrupt and delegitimised rulers who should be swept away.

Not many decades ago, a modernised school system started to produce local cadres, with many at university level. But the lack of political modernisation, combined with the lack of economic development, has led to a generation of disaffected and educated young people, who made their voices heard during what was called the Arab Spring.

But that was an outburst, which did not lead to the creation of a vibrant civil society or real grassroots movements. The only grassroots movement remains the Muslim network of mosques, religious schools and assistance structures.

Besides, there are no modern political parties in Arab countries – this is the difference with the large Muslim countries of Asia, like Indonesia and Malaysia, with Pakistan half way between.

Lack of Perspectives on the Future

Unemployment is a great habitat for frustration with its lack of perspective on a future, especially when you have no participation and no voice in the political system.

Rich countries, like Saudi Arabia, can buy people’s allegiance by offering them a generous subsidy system, but other countries cannot. And the fact that the Arab Spring did not bring any tangible change in economic terms has exacerbated frustration into rage or resignation.

It is highly instructive to read David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times in Tunisia ( from where the majority of jihadists come), Steven Erlanger, also of the New York Times, in London (on the phenomenon of women joining the ranks of IS as fighters or as the wives of fighters) or Ana Carbajasa from Melilla, the Spanish enclave in Morocco (onIslam in Melilla and the radicalisation of women). Few newspapers have given a voice to young Arabs, despite the need to understand them.

Kirkpatrick, Erlanger and Carbajasa found that, for many, the Islamic State has an image of historical revenge against the past, a place free from corruption, It is a beacon for the many young people who have no way to study or find a job, and have nothing to lose.

Those interviewed declared that to join the radical movement – in the Middle East, in Paris or in Manchester – is to become part of an international moral elite, of a global and magnetic movement. It means having a life project and passing from frustrated anonymity to glorious recognition.

What is creating this mobilisation is that IS is a state, not a secret organisation like Al-Qaeda. And its unprecedented use of social media is attracting hundreds of new recruits every week, who feel that they can escape from their daily frustrations to enter a world of dignity and fairness.

Ahmed, a young Tunisian supporter of the Islamic State who did not want to give his family name for fear of the police, told the New York Times: ”The Islamic State is a true caliphate, a system that is fair and just, where you don’t have to follow somebody orders because he is rich or powerful. It is action, not theory, and it will topple the whole game”.

“It is the only way to give people back their true rights…”

Another Tunisian, 28-year-old Mourad, with a master’s degree in technology but unemployed, called the Islamic State the only hope for “social justice”, because it would absorb the oil rich monarchies and redistribute their wealth. He said: “It is the only way to give people back their true rights, by giving the natural resources back to the people. It is an obligation for every Muslim.

This dream of a different Muslim world of identifying with the fight to get there finds an easy echo in the European ghettos where a large proportion of the young unemployed is Arab. We should not forget the Parisian banlieu violence of 2005 or the riots in Birmingham, England, in the same year.

Meanwhile, the French police estimate that there are now at least 1,200 French citizens in the IS, and the British police estimate an equivalent number of British citizens. Those numbers will grow, as long ISIS can show in its efficient social media campaign that it is a successful reality.

So now we have the phenomenon of disaffected Westerners who have drifted away because they feel rejected by the society they live in and are joining Islam, as a radical change to their lives, and the armed struggle as a way to be part of a tidal change.

In their time, European anarchists were not drifters – they were convinced that to have a new world of social justice and human dignity, it was necessary to destroy the present one – and they were part of a very large political movement.

If some in Europe were able to a dream with violence as a necessary instrument, why can the Muslim world not have a similar dream, with much more justification? The attraction of radical Islam is destined to continue, especially if the Islamic State is destroyed by the West.

Roberto Savio
Roberto Savio

Israel moves to outlaw Palestinian political parties in the Knesset

OPINION/EDITORIAL

Jonathan Cook The Electronic Intifada Nazareth 4 November 2014
141103-haneen-zoabi.jpg

Haneen Zoabi argues with Israeli police as she attempts to enter al-Aqsa mosque during a protest outside Jerusalem’s Old City on 15 October. (Oren Ziv / ActiveStills)
The Israeli parliament voted overwhelmingly last week to suspend Haneen Zoabi, a legislator representing the state’s large Palestinian minority, for six months as a campaign to silence political dissent intensified.

The Israeli parliament, or Knesset, voted by 68 to 16 to endorse a decision in late July by its ethics committee to bar Zoabi from the chamber for what it termed “incitement.”

It is the longest suspension in the Knesset’s history and the maximum punishment allowed under Israeli law.

At a press conference, Zoabi denounced her treatment as “political persecution.”

“By distancing me from the Knesset, basically they’re saying they don’t want Arabs, and only want ‘good Arabs.’ We won’t be ‘good Arabs,’” she said.

The Knesset’s confirmation of Zoabi’s suspension comes as she faces a criminal trial for incitement in a separate case and as the Knesset considers stripping her of citizenship.

But Zoabi is not the only Palestinian representative in the firing line. Earlier this year the Knesset raised the threshold for election to the parliament, in what has been widely interpreted as an attempt to exclude all three small parties representing the Palestinian minority. One in five citizens of Israel belong to the minority.

In addition, it emerged last week that a bill is being prepared to outlaw the northern branch of the Islamic Movement, the only extra-parliamentary party widely supported by Palestinian citizens.

Along with Zoabi, the Islamic Movement’s leader, Sheikh Raed Salah, has been among the most vocal critics of Israeli policies, especially over the al-Aqsa mosque compound in occupied Jerusalem.

Death threats

Zoabi was originally suspended after legislators from all the main parties expressed outrage at a series of comments from her criticizing both the build-up to Israel’s summer assault on Gaza, dubbed “Operation Protective Edge,” and the 51-day attack itself, which left more than 2,100 Palestinians dead, most of them civilians.

In particular, fellow members of Knesset were incensed by a radio interview in which she expressed her disapproval of the kidnapping of three Israeli youths in the occupied West Bank, but refused to denounce those behind it as “terrorists.” The youths were later found murdered.

Zoabi faced a wave of death threats and needed to be assigned a bodyguard for public appearances.

During the Knesset debate on her appeal against the suspension, Zoabi said: “Yes, I crossed the lines of consensus — a warlike, aggressive, racist, populist, chauvinist, arrogant consensus. I must cross those lines. I am no Zionist, and that is within my legal right.”

Under attack

Zoabi, who has come to personify an unofficial political opposition in the Knesset against all the main parties, is under attack on several fronts.

Last week she was informed that the state prosecution service had approved a police recommendation to put her on trial for criminal incitement for “humiliating” two policemen.

She is alleged to have referred to the policemen, who are members of the Palestinian minority, as “collaborators” as she addressed parents of children swept up in mass arrests following protests against the Israeli assault on Gaza over the summer.

Faina Kirschenbaum, the deputy interior minister in the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, has also drafted two bills directly targeting Zoabi.

The first would strip someone of the right to stand for the Knesset if they are found to have supported “an act of terrorism,” while the second would strip them of their citizenship.

Because ministers are not allowed to initiate private bills, the task of bringing the measures to the floor of the parliament has been taken up by the Knesset’s Law, Constitution and Justice Committee.

Intentional subversions

Zoabi further infuriated fellow members of Knesset this month when she compared the Israeli army to the Islamic State, the jihadist group that has violently taken over large parts of Syria and Iraq and has become notorious for kidnapping westerners and beheading them.

In an apparently intentional subversion of Netanyahu’s recent comparison of the Islamic State and Hamas, the Palestinian resistance movement, Zoabi described an Israeli Air Force pilot as “no less a terrorist than a person who takes a knife and commits a beheading.” She added that “both are armies of murderers, they have no boundaries and no red lines.”

Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister, was among those who responded by calling Zoabi a “terrorist.”

“The law must be used to put the terrorist — there is no other word for it — the terrorist Haneen Zoabi in jail for many years,” he told Israel Radio.

A poll this month found that 85 percent of the Israeli Jewish public wanted Zoabi removed from the Knesset.

“There is a great deal of frustration among Israeli politicians and the public at their army’s failure to defeat the Palestinian resistance in Gaza,” said Awad Abdel Fattah, the secretary general of Balad, a political party representing Palestinians in Israel. “At times like this, the atmosphere of repression intensifies domestically.”

Silencing all political dissent

The initiatives against Zoabi are the most visible aspects of a wider campaign to silence all political dissent from the Palestinian minority.

Last week, Lieberman instructed one of his members of Knesset, Alex Miller, to initiate a bill that would outlaw Salah’s Islamic Movement.

The legislation appears to be designed to hold Netanyahu to his word from late May. Then, the Israeli media revealed that the prime minister had created a ministerial team to consider ways to ban the movement.

At the same time, the Israeli security services claimed that Salah’s faction was cooperating closely with Hamas in Jerusalem.

After Israel barred the Palestinian Authority from having any presence in Jerusalem more than a decade ago and expelled Hamas legislators from the city, Salah has become the face of Palestinian political activism in Jerusalem.

Under the campaign slogan “al-Aqsa is in danger,” he has taken a leading role in warning that Israel is incrementally taking control of the most sensitive holy site in the conflict.

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Sheikh Raed Salah in Umm al-Fahm earlier this year. (Omar Sameer / ActiveStills)
Last month it emerged that the Knesset is to vote on legislation to give Jewish religious extremists greater access to the mosque compound. Already large numbers of Jews, many of them settlers, regularly venture on to esplanade backed by armed Israeli police.

They include Jewish extremists that expressly want to blow up the al-Aqsa mosque so that a replica of a Jewish temple from 2,000 years ago can be built in its place.

Last week, Yehuda Glick, a leader of one of these extremist groups, was shot and wounded in Jerusalem. In response, Israel shut down al-Aqsa for the first time since the outbreak of the second intifada fourteen years ago. Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, called it a “declaration of war.”

According to the text of Lieberman’s bill, the northern wing of the Islamic Movement “subverts the State of Israel’s sovereignty while making cynical use of the institutions and fundamental values of the Jewish and democratic state.”

It also blames the movement for “an eruption of violence and unrest among the Arab minority in Israel, while maintaining close relations with the terrorist organization Hamas.”

Raising the threshold

The attacks on Zoabi and the Islamic Movement come in the wake of legislation in March to raise the electoral threshold — from 2 percent to 3.25 percent — for a party to win representation in the Knesset.

The new threshold is widely seen as having been set to exclude the three Palestinian parties currently in the Knesset from representation. The minority’s vote is split almost evenly between three political streams.

Zoabi’s Balad party emphasizes the need for the Palestinian minority to build its own national institutions, especially in education and culture, to withstand the efforts of Israel’s Zionist institutions to strip Palestinian citizens of their rights and erase their identity. Its chief demand has been for “a state for all its citizens” — equal rights for Jewish and Palestinian citizens.

Balad’s chief rival is the joint Jewish-Arab party of Hadash, whose Communist ideology puts a premium on a shared program of action between Jewish and Arab citizens. However, its Jewish supporters have shrunk to a tiny proportion of the party. It too campaigns for equal rights.

And the final party, Raam-Taal, is a coalition led by prominent Islamic politicians.

The three parties have between them eleven seats in the 120-member Knesset, with one held by a Jewish member of Knesset, Dov Chenin, for Hadash.

Abdel Fattah said his Balad party had been urging the other parties to create a coalition in time for the next general election to overcome the new threshold.

So far it has faced opposition from Hadash, which is worried that an alliance with Balad would damage its image as a joint Jewish-Arab party. A source in Hadash told Israeli daily Haaretz in late September: “Hadash is not an Arab party, and there’s no reason it should unite with two Arab parties.”

Abdel Fattah said Hadash’s objections were unreasonable given that both Balad and the Islamic faction believed it was important to include Jewish candidates on a unified list. “Eventually they will have to come round to a joint list unless they want to commit political suicide,” he remarked.

Falling turnout

Balad has been under threat at previous general elections. The Central Elections Committee, a body representing the major political parties, has repeatedly voted to ban it from running. Each time the decision has been overturned on appeal to the Supreme Court.

In 2007 the party’s former chairman, Azmi Bishara, was accused of treason while traveling abroad and has been living in exile ever since.

But the representation of all the parties is now in danger from the raised threshold. Over the past thirty years, turnout among Palestinian citizens has dramatically fallen to little more than half of potential voters, as the minority has seen its political demands for equality greeted with a wave of laws entrenching discrimination.

Among the anti-democratic measures passed in recent years are laws that penalize organizations commemorating the Nakba, the Palestinians’ dispossession of their homeland in 1948; that provide a statutory basis to admissions committees, whose function is to prevent Palestinian citizens living on most of Israel’s territory; and that make it impossible for most Palestinian citizens to bring a Palestinian spouse to live with them in Israel.

Uncompromising stance

Last week, Balad MKs boycotted the opening ceremony of the Knesset, following the summer recess, in protest at Zoabi’s treatment.

At a press conference in the parliament, her colleague, Basel Ghattas, warned: “The day is approaching when Arab MKs will think there is no use participating in the political sphere. We are discovering more and more that we are personae non gratae at the Knesset.”

On Facebook, Lieberman responded that he hoped the Arab MKs would “carry out this ‘threat’ as soon as possible.”

The increasingly uncompromising stance towards all the Palestinian minority’s political factions marks a shift in policy, even for the right.

Although no Israeli government coalition has ever included a Palestinian party, and the Nasserist al-Ard movement was banned in the 1960s, Jewish politicians have generally viewed it as safer to keep the Palestinian parties inside the Knesset.

Analyst Uzi Baram observed in Haaretz that even Menachem Begin, a former hardline prime minister from Netanyahu’s Likud party, believed it would be unwise to raise the threshold to keep out Arab parties. If they were excluded, Baram wrote, it was feared “they would resort to non-parliamentary actions.”

“Paving the way toward fascism”

Zoabi petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court against her suspension from the Knesset in early October. However, the judges suggested she first use an arcane appeal procedure before the Knesset’s full plenum to demonstrate she had exhausted all available channels for lifting the suspension.

Israeli legal scholars have noted the irregularities in the ethics committee’s decision to impose a record-long suspension on Zoabi. The committee’s task is to regulate parliament members’ behavior inside the Knesset, not political speech outside it.

Aeyal Gross, a constitutional law professor at Tel Aviv University, warned that the Knesset’s treatment of Zoabi was “paving the way towards fascism and tyranny.”

Gross noted the extreme severity of the committee’s punishment of Zoabi, contrasting it with that of another MK, Aryeh Eldad. In 2008 he called for Ehud Olmert, the prime minister at the time, to be sentenced to death for suggesting that parts of the occupied territories become a Palestinian state.

Eldad was suspended for just one day, even though it was a clear example of incitement to violence in a country where a former prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, was murdered by a right-wing extremist, citing similar justification for his actions.

Tyranny of the majority

The Supreme Court, which has shifted rightwards in recent years, may not be sympathetic to Zoabi’s appeal against her suspension.

In September the court jailed Said Nafaa, a former MK from her Balad party, for one year after he was convicted of visiting Syria in 2007 with a delegation of Druze clerics and meeting a Palestinian faction leader in Syria.

The crime of making contact with a foreign agent is the only one in Israeli law in which the defendant must prove their innocence.

The court may also be wary of making unpopular rulings at a time when it is under concerted attack from the Israeli right for being too liberal.

Ayelet Shaked, of the settler Jewish Home party, which is in the government coalition, has introduced a bill that would allow a simple majority of the Knesset to vote to override Supreme Court rulings.

Human rights lawyers warned that the bill would further erode already limited protections for minority rights.

Debbie Gild-Hayo, a lawyer with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, warned that protections for minorities from the tyranny of the majority would be in severe jeopardy as a result. “These proposals wish to break down the checks and balances that are fundamental to democracy,” she said.

Zoabi remained defiant. She noted that, while she was being hounded, the legal authorities had ignored genocidal remarks made by Jewish politicians against Palestinians during the summer attack on Gaza.

“They’re putting me on trial over a trivial, meaningless matter, while ministers and MKs who incited to racism and incited to violence and even to murder aren’t being investigated, even after complaints were filed against them.”

She added: “If I am indicted, I’ll turn the hearings into the most political trial in Israel’s history.”

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilizations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is jonathan-cook.net.

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Israel’s Knesset upholds longest suspension in state’s history against Haneen Zoabi

Israel/Palestine Allison Deger on November 2, 2014

For the next three months Knesset member Haneen Zoabi (of the Balad party) will not be allowed to speak on the parliament floor or introduce discussions in committee. Though she will be allowed to enter the building of Israel’s Knesset in Jerusalem, and sit quietly. Last Wednesday her peers confirmed her suspension from office, the longest in Israel’s history.

Zoabi’s sanction was originally imposed by the Knesset on July 29th, days after a police investigation was launched against her and almost a week before that investigation closed. Zoabi appealed that vote. Indeed, since taking office in 2009, maintaining her seat has been an enduring battle. She’s been physically assaulted while speaking in the Knesset by another government representative, labeled a terrorist for being aboard the Mavi Marmara in 2010 as passenger in an activist flotilla to break Israel’s marine siege on Gaza, and faced petition drives to remove her name from the list of candidates in two election cycles.

The offenses that led to Zoabi’s temporary removal and latest bout to keep her seat are as follows: she has been accused of lauding the June kidnapping of the three Israeli settler teens who were then killed by their Palestinian abductors, and for speaking unkindly to police. They are matters of taste rather than matters of illegality. Still when Knesset was tasked with reviewing her appeal last week, 68 cast ballots in favor of maintaining her suspension while only 16 voted to keep her in office, most of them from Arab parties.

The row with Zoabi began when she was interviewed in June on an Israeli radio station regarding the kidnapping and killing of Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Sha’er, and Eyal Yifrah. At the time Larry Derfner cataloged that nearly every Israeli outlet that reported on Zoabi’s remarks truncated them or outright misquoted her. This rendered the impression that Zoabi not only refused to condemn the act as “terrorism,” but that she supported the kidnapping of the three Israeli teenagers. “Only in Haaretz did anyone read that Zoabi said from the beginning that she disagreed with the kidnappers and their deed,” wrote Derfner. However, a later Haaretz piece by Jonathan Lis also fell into the excerpt trap, “she told a radio interviewer that those who kidnapped three teenagers in Gush Etzion last week ‘are not terrorists,’” wrote Lis.

In fact the full quote, which Derfner republished in +972 Magazine days after the interview aired, showed that Zoabi was describing the kidnappings as blowback—and an act of blowback that she said she did not support. Here’s the relevant section:

‘Is it strange that people living under occupation and living impossible lives, in a situation where Israel kidnaps new prisoners every day, is it strange that they act this way? They are not terrorists. Even if I do not agree with them, they are people who do not see any way open to change their reality, and they are compelled to use means like these until Israel wakes up and sees the suffering, feels the suffering of the other.’

Still the damage was done. Israeli media featured pieces like Lis’s piece and more damning reports such as NRG’s article, which Derfner pointed out states, “Zoabi: Even if the youths are murdered, that’s not terror.”

Israeli government officials lambasted her. Foreign Minister Avigdor Leiberman said she should be killed: “The fate of the kidnappers and the fate of Zoabi, who incites and encourages the terrorists, ought to be the same.” And Minister of Housing and Construction Uri Ariel said she has a “consistent tradition of supporting terrorists” and was not fit for Israeli citizenship “let alone a Knesset member.”

Coincidentally, Ariel is one of two current members of the Israeli government who have an actual track record of “terrorism,” or at least that’s how then-Minister of Defense Ehud Barak described a 2011 attack Ariel helped orchestrate. He and the former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Ze’ev Elkin turned over Israeli Defense Forces troop movements to a gang of 100 settlers who used the information to strike an army base. At the time Ariel was unapologetic. “If a person who transfers information about IDF movements is a spy, then I am a spy,” he said. “If others were arrested, I should be arrested as well.”

Ariel also took a shot at Zoabi during that investigation. He said, “Apparently, sending text messages is more serious than the seditious and dangerous activities of Haneen Zoabi.” He continued, “I hope there are enough prison cells for all of the residents of Judea and Samaria that send text messages occasionally.”

As a result of pressure from the likes of Lieberman and Ariel, a formal investigation was launched against Zoabi on July 25th. Police also looked into a separate incident that at the time they refused to disclose. Through media reported that Zoabi was being scrutinized for alleged incitement over allegedly calling police “traitors” outside of a courtroom where Palestinian citizens of Israel were on trial for demonstrating.

“The real incitement has been a flood of ugly statements from senior government figures since the summer – as well as regular acts of violence they have provoked on the street – against Palestinian citizens,” said Zoabi in a press release issued on Wednesday following her appeal. “No one is being suspended from the Knesset for that, nor investigated.”

In early August the probe concluded with police recommending that Zoabi be prosecuted for “incitement.” Again, this means Zoabi’s colleagues in Knesset ordered the six-month suspension before the matter was adjudicated. Zoabi has yet to be prosecuted in court for the original charge. And, even if Zoabi actually did call police “traitors,” it is dumbfounding that such a statement could be labeled incitement, especially when set against Lieberman’s response calling for her murder. It would seem then that Zoabi is being kept from her duties as public servant over a charge where there has been no conviction, and for an offense that is based on rumor and misquote.

- See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2014/11/suspension-history-against#sthash.jT1JVLAU.dpuf

PA spokesman: 'Israel has an Islamic State-like government'

PA spokesman: 'Israel has an Islamic State-like government'
Maj. Gen. Yoav "Poli" Mordechai, coordinator of government activities in the territories, decided Oct. 28 to revoke the VIP pass that Israel had given Gen. Adnan al-Damiri, the Palestinian Authority (PA) security services' spokesman. This pass, which Israel confers on high-level PA officials, enables them to enter Israel from the PA side.

Summary⎙ Print In an interview with Al-Monitor, Adnan al-Damiri, the Palestinian Authority security services' spokesman, reacts to the Israeli decision revoking his VIP border pass.
Author Shlomi EldarPosted October 31, 2014
Translator(s)Sandy Bloom
It guarantees them a speedy, unimpeded entrance, bypassing inspections at the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) barriers scattered throughout the West Bank. Mordechai made his decision after Damiri’s statements in recent months against Israel’s policies in the territories and especially against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Damiri convened a news conference in Ramallah on Oct. 23 after the hit-and-run terror attack in Jerusalem in which two Israelis were killed. Damiri remonstrated against the killing by Israel of the driver Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi (according to Damiri), even before it had been proven beyond a doubt that Shaludi intended to kill Israelis. Furthermore, Damiri said that the Palestinian security services would sooner or later track down the people who sold their houses in Arab Jerusalem neighborhoods to right-wing activists. He emphasized that the sellers would not escape their punishment. But what really infuriated Israel was Damiri’s comparison of Netanyahu to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Damiri’s position is parallel to that of an IDF spokesman. His position is considered a senior one, carrying much influence within the PA. By virtue of this position, Damiri enjoys access to all the security mechanisms' centers in the authority; he is also the one in charge of their coordination. Damiri’s position is particularly charged and sensitive, in light of the close security cooperation between the PA and Israel. This cooperation continues to exist despite the great tension between the sides, and despite that the very existence of the security cooperation is much criticized by Palestinian public opinion.

True, Mordechai’s decision to revoke the VIP pass from Damiri probably won't jeopardize continued cooperation between the sides. However, it did create tension and a crisis atmosphere in a period when cooperation is critical, in light of the violent incidents in Jerusalem and the concern that the violence will boil over and extend into the PA territories as well.

This is not the first time that Israel has revoked or frozen a VIP pass from a PA official. However, it is the first time that the reason for the revocation of the coveted pass is not because of terror acts or suspicion of involvement in terrorist activities, but instead, for statements that Israel views as crossing a line.

“Many people in Israel say worse things about Netanyahu than I did,” said Damiri in an interview with Al-Monitor, “but when the incumbent Israeli government is such an extreme right-wing one, they are not willing to tolerate even the kinds of statements made in press conferences.”

The text of the interview follows:

Al-Monitor: You don’t think that your words were too scathing?

Al-Damiri: No, not at all. Israel’s incumbent right-wing government commits racist acts against Palestinians in Jerusalem and in all of Palestine, and I said that these acts lead to escalation. That’s why I said that Netanyahu’s acts are no different than those of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and that Israel has an Islamic State-like government.

Al-Monitor: Were you surprised that the Israelis responded by revoking your pass?

Al-Damiri: No, they are not doing us a favor with the VIP pass, it is part of the Oslo Accord. The Netanyahu government hasn’t left a thing from the Oslo Accord.

Al-Monitor: How did you find out that your pass had been revoked?

Al-Damiri: Through the District Coordination Liaison Offices.

Al-Monitor: Did you receive prior warnings?

Al-Damiri: Yes, but I cannot remain silent in light of the acts that I see. The Israeli decision is mistaken and provocative, it is an escalation, but if someone thinks that this is the way to pressure us, he’s mistaken.

Al-Monitor: Will revocation of the pass have any effect on security coordination?

Al-Damiri: The security coordination is part of the Oslo Accord and it is not a security decision. The military leadership in the [PA] must carry out whatever the political leadership decides. Those of us in security do not decide policy, our job is to apply the law. Therefore, public opinion pressure is not supposed to influence us.

Al-Monitor: Do the violent incidents in Jerusalem have an effect on the security coordination?

Al-Damiri: I repeat, Israel is run by a radical right-wing government whose acts influence our lives and also affect the security coordination. This is a government that builds settlements and destroys homes; it executes a driver who was involved in a traffic accident [the hit-and-run driver in the East Jerusalem light rail incident], and two minutes after the incident it announces that it was a terror act. The Palestinian nation is sick and tired of our pleasant behavior toward the Israelis. That’s why the Palestinian leadership decided to go to the UN. There is no one to talk to in Israel’s extreme right-wing government, and nothing to talk about with them.

Al-Monitor: In your estimation, do you think we are facing a third intifada?

Al-Damiri: In my opinion, the Palestinian nation will not sit by quietly; instead, it will find all kinds of ways to respond. For example, look at how many Palestinians were killed since the beginning of the year and how many olive trees were maliciously uprooted by the settlers. From the beginning of 2014, nine Palestinian children were killed and eight mosques were torched. No one was brought to trial over these deeds. No one settled accounts with the settlers who cut down thousands of olive trees belonging to Palestinians. How can we explain to the Palestinian nation that this is a government that wants peace and that has chosen the route of peace? I repeat and say, what we witness today is a government that I can’t help but describe it as a clone of Islamic State.

Al-Monitor: These are exactly the words that infuriated the Israelis and led to the sanctions against you.

Al-Damiri: True, but Maj. Gen. Mordechai is only the one who executes the government’s decisions. The one who gave this order was Benjamin Netanyahu, who is incapable of accepting criticism.

Response of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories:

Damiri’s statements bordered on incitement and, as a result, Maj. Gen. Mordechai decided to revoke the pass he carries. Furthermore, it was notified that a warning was delivered to Damiri a few months ago via sources in the authority, that he must halt his scathing statements. Damiri did not heed the warnings and the low point was, as aforesaid, at the press conference last week in Ramallah.



Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/10/al-damiri-security-cooperation-pa-israel-netanyahu-vip-pass.html#ixzz3I1yimZJD