Netanyahu won, so now what?

from mondoweiss.org


So he won and I have to say I am relieved. There wll be no more endless cycles of pointless ‘negotiations’ with Israel pretending that some day it will agree to a two-state solution while continually escalating both settlement (colony) building and the maltreament of the Palestinians. Now everyone will see that the Palestinians were right all along and that Israel has never been a partner for negotiations.

There is no real political Left in Israel and if the other side got to form a government, all we would have seen is more of the same. Now we’ll see if the EU has the decency and conviction to enact proper sanctions. Then of course there is the US. The US Administration might stall for a while, but we’ll see if they have what it takes to do the right thing. Israel is no friend to the US and the sooner they realise it the better.

Israel is on a slippery slope of its own making. Get your popcorn, sit and watch. Israel is becoming more radicalised than ever before. Certainly much more than when I was growing up there. Of course I could be wrong — and I hope I am — but I think Israel’s pathological siege mentality will now become more pronounced and more evident to outsiders. Israel has for a long time been readying itself for when the time comes, to bunker down, live with austerity and give up the fancy lifestyle the country has become increasingly accustomed to in the last 20-25 years. They can do this.

Israel has always prepared itself psychologically and economically to being isolated. All that openness to the rest of the world that Israel has enjoyed increasingly in the last generation or so, and Israel’s acceptance by others, have always been seen as temporary in the eyes of most Israeli Jews. They had always expected it to end and had the mentality of ‘let’s enjoy it while it lasts and make the most of it while we can’. Fundamentally Israeli Jews believe that the world hates them because they are Jewish (in their mind it has nothing to do with colonialism or the Palestinians). So although Israel has brought its own situation upon itself, that is not how Israeli Jews see it. They believe things are ‘happening to them’ for no fault of their own. They expect isolation and have dropped all pretences to pander to the West and are behaving more in line now with their true nature. Even less radical people will become radicalised now in Israel. There will be even more propaganda and more brainwashing than ever before.

Netanyahu really does represent most Israeli Jews even though some of them do not like him. But the reasons they do not like him are not what you expect. Most Israeli Jews identify with Netanyahu’s perception and understanding of what the rest of the world is like and of the world’s relationship with Israel. After all Netanyahu is a product of Israeli society just like I was, and believe me, when you have that kind of psychology and that incredibly effective, powerful propaganda machine all around you, it is easy to believe that what you see is really how it is… Israeli Jews have always lived in a psychological ghetto and it’s that ghetto that I got out of back in 1991.

Life will get very difficult for Jews in Israel soon enough, and many with dual citizenship will abandon ship. Those who remain will be the die-hard fanatics and zealots who are dangerous because they might have the psychology of murder suicide. I believe that before it is over, things will get really bad there and extremely dangerous. Israel will become much more fanatic and extremist than ever before with a lot less inhibitions.

I am therefore worried about the Palestinians and wonder how much more of this they could possibly take and what they can expect in the next few months and years. Israel isolating itself is more dangerous for the Palestinians because world public opinion will no longer be a moderating factor on Israel’s behaviour. And believe it or not, it did have a moderating effect. What you have been seeing so far and what Palestinians have been experiencing is not yet the worst. Gaza gives you the idea of what Israel has in mind for all Palestinians.

So the message to those of us who support the Palestinians is to get ready to escalate our support. It is about to get very very tough. With Netanyahu at the helm the end of colonialism and occupation is nigh, but it is about to get a lot worse before it gets better.


About Avigail Abarbanel
Avigail Abarbanel was born and raised in Israel. She moved to Australia in 1991 and now lives in Scotland. She works as a psychotherapist in private practice and is an activist for Palestinian rights. She is the editor of Beyond Tribal Loyalties: Personal Stories of Jewish Peace Activists (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012).
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The Most Dangerous Woman in America

Posted on Mar 15, 2015

By Chris Hedges

Kshama Sawant outside Seattle City Council chambers shortly before she was elected in November 2013. (AP / Ted S. Warren)

SEATTLE—Kshama Sawant, the socialist on the City Council, is up for re-election this year. Since joining the council in January of 2014 she has helped push through a gradual raising of the minimum wage to $15 an hour in Seattle. She has expanded funding for social services and blocked, along with housing advocates, an attempt by the Seattle Housing Authority to allow a rent increase of up to 400 percent. She has successfully lobbied for city money to support tent encampments and is fighting for an excise tax on millionaires. And for this she has become the bête noire of the Establishment, especially the Democratic Party.

The corporate powers, from Seattle’s mayor to the Chamber of Commerce and the area’s Democratic Party, are determined she be defeated, and these local corporate elites have the national elites behind them. This will be one of the most important elections in the country this year. It will pit a socialist, who refuses all corporate donations—not that she would get many—and who has fearlessly championed the rights of workingmen and workingwomen, rights that are being eviscerated by the corporate machine. The elites cannot let the Sawants of the world proliferate. Corporate power is throwing everything at its disposal—including sponsorship of a rival woman candidate of color—into this election in the city’s 3rd District.

Sawant’s fight is our own.

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I met Sawant in a restaurant a block from City Hall in Seattle. She is as intense as she is articulate. Sawant, born in India, is a leader of the Socialist Alternative Party. She holds a doctorate in economics from North Carolina State University and before her election to the City Council was a professor at a community college. She knows that there will be no genuine reforms, let alone systemic change, without the building of radical mass movements and a viable third party. She is as familiar at Seattle street demonstrations, where she has been arrested, as she is in City Council hearings. If there is any hope left for the absurdist political theater that characterizes election campaigns it is in renegades such as Sawant.

“The idea that things have to get a lot worse to have some sort of awakening and bring about an alternative to this corrupt and defunct corporate political system is inaccurate,” she said to me. “What we need is a big surge for an independent working-class political alternative while people are experiencing a sense of confidence, after decades of bitter defeat. The $15-an-hour victory in Seattle is going nationwide. And while unions are under massive attack, as you see in Wisconsin with Scott Walker, there are also successful labor initiatives getting onto the ballot. Four states—two of them Republican states—increased the minimum wage last year. Occupy and the Black Lives Matter movement have radically shaken U.S. consciousness. Now is the time for us to strike.”

Sawant said it is incumbent upon socialists and the entire U.S. left to swiftly begin the task of building working-class political campaigns independent of the Democratic Party in order to create the space for a viable national party. Efforts to reform the Democratic Party, whose leaders are in the service of the corporate oligarchy, amount to pouring energy into “a black hole,” she said. The Democratic elite dominate Seattle government, and the Democratic elite, as they did with Ralph Nader, have declared war against Sawant. As long as she remains in office she will expose the leaders in the Democratic Party for who they are—corporate puppets.

Sawant believes that because of the presidency of Barack Obama—who has served corporate power, expanded imperial wars, carried out a massive assault on civil liberties and failed to address the needs of the mounting numbers who are unemployed or underemployed—many people, especially young people, are hungry for political alternatives to “the two big business parties.” Poll after poll, she pointed out, shows the American majority to be disgusted with the Congress. And she cited the problems of Chicago Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel in seeking re-election as evidence that even the very beginnings of movements by working people and communities of color can shake and weaken the Democratic Party establishment. “He was considered undefeatable,” she said of Emanuel. “But look now at his vulnerability. Look at the campaign ad he just put out saying, yes, I made mistakes, but I am a human being. Who could have imagined that kind of false humility from him? Even spending $15 million on a mayoral race and having President Obama come and campaign wasn’t enough to buy him an easy victory. This demonstrates the wide opening for the U.S. left to present a principled working-class alternative. This is why we need to begin that project now. It won’t be easy. But this moment is qualitatively different from the period when Ralph Nader ran. The consciousness of the American people has changed. Uprising is in the air.”

Sawant emphasized that the process of building a radical alternative will be long and difficult. The obstacles the Establishment will throw up to prevent such a movement will be numerous, costly and unscrupulous.

“We cannot have illusions,” Sawant said. “We want to win. But we also know that in one year we are not going to vanquish the money machine of the Democratic establishment. The goal of this campaign should be to launch a massive grass-roots effort nationwide, and to build on it after the election, something that Ralph Nader failed to do. We have to provide a place for people looking for something different, especially the younger generation. Any presidential campaign cannot be run as an end in itself. That will dishearten people. People know what is going to happen in 2016. It is going to be Hillary Clinton or some Republican. Our campaign needs to be a launching pad for something bigger. It needs to be about building a mass movement, a viable radical alternative. This is what is happening in Greece and Spain.”

Sawant proposed that the left prepare the ground for a new party that will be “broad-based, organized around democratic principles and have as its fundamental goal the mission of working with the labor movement, nonunionized workers and young activists of color.”

“It has to be 100 percent grass roots,” she said. It must be willing to “use the platform of the presidential campaign and other electoral campaigns to push the message of mass movements.” And, she stressed, it must never accept corporate money. This last condition, she said, “has to be non-negotiable.” The party, she added, “must not bow down to the pressure to endorse Democratic candidates against Republicans, which would completely undermine its independence and ultimately relegate it to the role of an enforcer for the Democrats, as the Working Families Party has become.”

Might there be a role for the Green Party in such a change? Sawant offered this assessment:

The Green Party and its activists need to be part of the effort towards a nationwide party for the working class

The Green Party has made some important contributions to the struggle against the Democrats’ lesser-evil politics. It has raised demands in the interests of workers, against corporate domination, against the war, and against climate change. One outstanding example is Gayle McLaughlin, who as Green Party mayor of the California city of Richmond, invited the fury of Wall Street banks with her valiant fight on behalf of ‘underwater’ homeowners.

But the party for the left, for the American working class, needs to go beyond the electoral arena and lead struggles and movements of low-wage workers, people of color and women. The Green Party has not often sought to do that. The problem is that if a party does not do that, it leaves the various social movements open to misleaders who channel the energy back towards the Democratic Party.

“In Socialist Alternative,” Sawant said, “any elected representative who runs has to pledge to only take the average worker’s wage. The City Council pays me nearly $120,000. I take home $40,000 after taxes. The rest goes into a solidarity fund. This idea should also be taken up in some form by the new party.”

“A campaign cannot be an end in itself,” she said. “If you take office you have to be accountable to the members of the party. You have to have actual meetings. People say they are Democrats, but when was the last time they were invited to a meeting and asked to vote on the policies to be taken up by the Democratic Party? The Democratic Party is utterly undemocratic—the party members and activists have essentially zero say over what their elected officials do once in power.”

A new party, she said, is essential if the corporate coup is to be reversed. And it needs to be formed soon.

“While young radicals correctly see the need for mass action, some have not yet made the vital link between mass movements and the need for alternative political structures,” she said. “We cannot get rid of capitalism without building a mass political organization as a tool to do that.”

“If a genuine alternative is not built,” Sawant said, “the Democratic establishment will continue to co-opt generation after generation of young people who are concerned about the need to fight the Republicans. Even the most radical youths end up implicitly defending capitalism when they accept the parameters of lesser evilism, as so many did with supporting Obama in 2008 and 2012.”

She contends that the end of the Cold War has left younger generations freer to explore and hear radical alternatives.

“Something important has changed,” she said. “The hostility to socialist ideas is not present now because we have a majority of young Americans who are experiencing the deep failures of capitalism. Red-baiting does not work on them. As a socialist, I have never experienced any hostility, except from the Establishment. This does not necessarily mean all those people who support us are socialist. But it means people are infuriated about income inequality, about the pillaging by the big banks. They are burning at the entrenched racial injustice in America. They want a solution to climate change. They are looking for something radically different.”

The call for a national party is, in the end, a call to educate. It is a call to put forth a program that offers an alternative to global capitalism. And it is a call to empower the citizenry to break the corporate stranglehold to make this alternative possible.

“We must convince people that we need an alternative and we must convince them about what that alternative is,” Sawant said. “We need to stand up for the hundreds of millions of lives devastated by global capitalism. The abuses we saw in 2008 will happen over and over again as long as capitalism survives. And it is our job to break the cycle of capitalist exploitation of people and the ecosystem and save ourselves. This will only come about if we organize mass movements, if we build a radical political party and if we refuse to accept a system designed to subject the immense majority to misery so that a minority can pile up untold wealth.”

MAYBE OBAMA’S SANCTIONS ON VENEZUELA ARE NOT REALLY ABOUT HIS “DEEP CONCERN” OVER SUPPRESSION OF POLITICAL RIGHTS

from The Intercept, Glen Greenwald

Photo of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro (Ariana Cubillos/AP).


The White House on Monday announced the imposition of new sanctions on various Venezuelan officials, pronouncing itself “deeply concerned by the Venezuelan government’s efforts to escalate intimidation of its political opponents”: deeply concerned. President Obama also, reportedly with a straight face, officially declared that Venezuela poses “an extraordinary threat to the national security” of the U.S. — a declaration necessary to legally justify the sanctions.

Today, one of the Obama administration’s closest allies on the planet, Saudi Arabia, sentenced one of that country’s few independent human rights activists, Mohammed al-Bajad, to 10 years in prison on “terrorism” charges. That is completely consistent with that regime’s systematic and extreme repression, which includes gruesome state beheadings at a record-setting rate, floggings and long prison terms for anti-regime bloggers, executions of those with minority religious views, and exploitation of terror laws to imprison even the mildest regime critics.

Absolutely nobody expects the “deeply concerned” President Obama to impose sanctions on the Saudis — nor on any of the other loyal U.S. allies from Egypt to the UAE whose repression is far worse than Venezuela’s. Perhaps those who actually believe U.S. proclamations about imposing sanctions on Venezuela in objection to suppression of political opposition might spend some time thinking about what accounts for that disparity.

That nothing is more insincere than purported U.S. concerns over political repression is too self-evident to debate. Supporting the most repressive regimes on the planet in order to suppress and control their populations is and long has been a staple of U.S. (and British) foreign policy. “Human rights” is the weapon invoked by the U.S. Government and its loyal media to cynically demonize regimes that refuse to follow U.S. dictates, while far worse tyranny is steadfastly overlooked, or expressly cheered, when undertaken by compliant regimes, such as those in Riyadh and Cairo (see this USA Today article, one of many, recently hailing the Saudis as one of the “moderate” countries in the region). This is exactly the tactic that leads neocons to feign concern for Afghan women or the plight of Iranian gays when doing so helps to gin up war-rage against those regimes, while they snuggle up to far worse but far more compliant regimes.

Any rational person who watched the entire top echelon of the U.S. government drop what they were doing to make a pilgrimage to Riyadh to pay homage to the Saudi monarchs (Obama cut short a state visit to India to do so), or who watches the mountain of arms and money flow to the regime in Cairo, would do nothing other than cackle when hearing U.S. officials announce that they are imposing sanctions to punish repression of political opposition. And indeed, that’s what most of the world outside of the U.S. and Europe do when they hear such claims. But from the perspective of U.S. officials, that’s fine, because such pretenses to noble intentions are primarily intended for domestic consumption.

As for Obama’s decree that Venezuela now poses an “extraordinary threat to the national security” of the United States, is there anyone, anywhere, that wants to defend the reasonability of that claim? Think about what it says about our discourse that Obama officials know they can issue such insultingly false tripe with no consequences.

But what’s not too obvious to point out is what the U.S is actually doing in Venezuela. It’s truly remarkable how the very same people who demand U.S. actions against the democratically elected government in Caracas are the ones who most aggressively mock Venezuelan leaders when they point out that the U.S. is working to undermine their government.

The worst media offender in this regard is The New York Times, which explicitly celebrated the 2002 U.S.-supported coup of Hugo Chavez as a victory for democracy, but which now regularly derides the notion that the U.S. would ever do something as untoward as undermine the Venezuelan government. Watch this short video from Monday where the always-excellent Matt Lee of Associated Press questions a State Department spokesperson this week after she said it was “ludicrous” to think that the U.S. would ever do such a thing:




The real question is this: if concern over suppression of political rights is not the real reason the U.S. is imposing new sanctions on Venezuela (perish the thought!), what is? Among the most insightful commentators on U.S. policy in Latin America is Mark Weisbrot of Just Foreign Policy. Read his excellent article for Al Jazeera on the recent Obama decree on Venezuela.

In essence, Venezuela is one of the very few countries with significant oil reserves which does not submit to U.S. dictates, and this simply cannot be permitted (such countries are always at the top of the U.S. government and media list of Countries To Be Demonized). Beyond that, the popularity of Chavez and the relative improvement of Venezuela’s poor under his redistributionist policies petrifies neoliberal institutions for its ability to serve as an example; just as the Cuban economy was choked by decades of U.S. sanctions and then held up by the U.S. as a failure of Communism, subverting the Venezuelan economy is crucial to destroying this success.

As Weisbrot notes, every country in the hemisphere except for the U.S. and Canada have united to oppose U.S. sanctions on Venezuela. The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) issued a statement in February in response to the prior round of U.S. sanctions on Venezuela that “reiterates its strong repudiation of the application of unilateral coercive measures that are contrary to international law.” This week, the chief of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) issued a statement announcing that “UNASUR rejects any external or internal attempt at interference that seeks to disrupt the democratic process in Venezuela.” Weisbrot compares Obama’s decree this week on Venezuela to President Reagan’s quite similar 1985 decree that Nicaragua was a national security threat to the U.S., and notes: “The Obama administration is more isolated today in Latin America than even George W. Bush’s administration was.”

If Obama and supporters want the government of Venezuela to be punished and/or toppled because they refuse to comply with U.S. dictates, they should at least be honest about their beliefs so that their true character can be seen. Pretending that any of this has to do with the U.S. Government’s anger over suppression of political opponents — when their closest allies are the world champions at that — should be too insulting of everyone’s intelligence to even be an option.



Email the author: glenn.greenwald@theintercept.com

US Preparing for Military Aggression on Venezuela

History shows that when the U.S. denounces a country, it is often a pretext for intervention and regime change.

Barack Obama, an ornamental figure in the White House, who was not able to impede a lunatic like Benjamin Netanyahu from addressing both houses of Congress to sabotage the talks with Iran on the country’s nuclear program, has received a strict order from the “military-industrial-financial” complex: he must create the conditions to justify a military aggression against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

The presidential order issued hours ago, and broadcast by the White House press office, establishes that the country of Bolivar and Chavez is an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States,” and declares a “national emergency” to deal with that threat.

This type of declaration tends to precede military aggressions, either by its own hand, as was the case of the bloody invasion of Panama to overthrow Manuel Noriega in 1989, as well as the one issued in relation to Southeast Asia that culminated with the Indochina war, especially in Vietnam, starting in 1964. But it can also be the prelude to military operations of a different kind, in which the United States acts jointly with its European minions, grouped under NATO, and the region’s oil theocracies.

For example: the first Gulf War in 1991; or the Iraq War of 2003-2011, with the enthusiastic collaboration of Britain’s Tony Blair and Spain’s unpresentable Jose Maria Aznar; or the case of Libya in 2011, erected over the staged farce in Benghazi, where so-called “freedom fighters” — who later turned out were mercenaries recruited by Washington, London and Paris — were hired to overthrow Gadhafi and transfer control over the country’s oil riches to its masters.

More recent cases are those of Syria and, especially, Ukraine, where the much yearned for “regime change” (a euphemism to avoid talking about a coup) that Washington pursues ceaselessly to redesign the world — above all in Latin America and the Caribbean — in its image and likeness, has been achieved thanks to the invaluable cooperation of the European Union and NATO, and whose result has been a bloodbath that continues in Ukraine today.

Miss Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, was sent to Kiev’s Maidan Square by Mr. 2009 Nobel Peace Prize (aka President Obama) to express her solidarity with the demonstrators, including the bands of neo-Nazis that later would seize power by storm, through blood and fire, and to whom the kindly official was handing out bread and water bottles to quench their thirst, to demonstrate, with such an affectionate gesture, that Washington was, as always, on the side of liberty, human rights and democracy.

When a “rogue state” like the United States — which it is because of its systematic violations of international law — issues a threat like the one we are commenting on, it must be taken very seriously. Especially if one remembers the persistence of an old U.S. political tradition that consists of carrying out coups that serve as pretext for justifying its immediate military response.

It did so in 1898 when it made the U.S. cruiser Maine explode in Havana harbor, sending two thirds of its crew to the grave and provoking the indignation of North American public opinion, which propelled Washington to declare war on Spain. It did so again in Pearl Harbor, in December 1941, sacrificing 2,403 mariners and wounding another 1,178 in that infamous maneuver. It did so again in the Gulf of Tonkin incident to “sell” its war in Indonesia: the alleged North Vietnamese aggression against two U.S. cruisers — later unmasked as a CIA operation — which caused president Lyndon B. Johnson to declare a national emergency, and, a little later, war against North Vietnam. Maurice Bishop, in the small island of Grenada, was also considered a threat to U.S. national security in 1983, and was overthrown and liquidated by an invasion of U.S. Marines. And the suspicious 9/11 attack to launch the “War on Terrorism”? The history could extend itself indefinitely.

Conclusion: Nobody could be surprised if, in the following hours or days, Obama authorizes a secret operation of the CIA, or some other intelligence service, or maybe the armed forces themselves, against some sensitive U.S. target in Venezuela, for example the embassy in Caracas. Or begin some other deceitful operation against innocent civilians in Venezuela — as in the case of “terrorist attempts” that shook Italy- the murder of Aldo Moro in 1978, or the bomb in the Bologna train station in 1980 — to create panic and justify the Empire’s response in “restoring” human rights, democracy and public liberties. Years later it was discovered that these crimes were committed by the CIA.

Remember that Washington birthed the 2002 coup in Venezuela, maybe because it wanted to assure for itself the oil supply before attacking Iraq. Now it is in the process of a two-front war: Syria/Islamic State, and Russia, and also wants a secured energy rearguard. Serious, very serious. This calls for the active and immediate solidarity of South American governments, in individual fashion and through UNASUR and CELAC, and popular organizations and political forces in our Americas to denounce and stop this maneuver.

Cornel West: Gaza Is the Hood on Steroids, Thanks to Israel

David Palumbo-Liu
February 25, 2015
Salon

“It’s ugly, it’s vicious, it’s brutal” describes Israel in Palestine — and why Gaza is “the hood on steroids” says Cornel West speaking with Stanford Professor David Palumbo-Liu about the divestment effort and Palestinian activism. The interview ranges from how the issue of Israel-Palestine is registering not only with young people, but also with older progressives and intellectuals, and about the linkages between civil rights struggles in the US and abroad.

Cornel West , Albert H. Teich via Shutterstock,


One of the fundamental questions with regard to the critique of — and activism against — the Israeli occupation: How does this connect up with other social movements, and other struggles? Is the case of Israel and Palestine so specific, so complex, as to resist analogy? And if so, what does that mean for those who would be inclined to sympathize with the plight of the Palestinians, but unable to see their way clear to act in solidarity with them, as they might for others?

These are pressing and difficult problems, yet increasingly, and especially on college campuses, and in academic organizations, people are willing to discuss and debate things like divestment, as well as academic and cultural boycotts that refuse to endorse the status quo. Indeed, earlier this month a group of 600 artists that included Ken Loach, Brian Eno, Khalid Abdalla and Haim Bresheeth announced they were endorsing a cultural boycott of Israel.

At a recent event at Stanford, where I am a professor of comparative literature, Cornel West paused in the midst of a speech to praise the student organizers who had put forward a bill to ask the Stanford trustees to divest; the bill had failed by only one vote. (And, on February 18, there would be a revote, in which the bill was passed, 10-4-1.) West made a point of insisting that raising the Palestinian flag should not be seen as an act of narrow nationalism, but rather as an act of solidarity with an oppressed people, and as part of the effort to grant them their right to self determination.

Afterwards, I spoke about how the issue of Israel-Palestine was registering not only with young people, but also with older progressives and intellectuals, and about the linkages between civil rights struggles in the US and abroad.

First of all, let me ask you: Why do you endorse the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement? In what ways do the movement and its goals resonate with your longstanding activism, your values and principles?

Well I always proceed based on moral criteria and spiritual standards that have to do with keeping track of the humanity of persons. And there is no doubt in my mind that the Israeli occupation is ugly, it’s vicious, it’s brutal, and it needs to not just be brought to attention, it needs to be brought to an end. It’s also true that I am against the occupation of the Tibetan people and the occupation of Kashmir and others, but this particular occupation is one that deserves our attention precisely because as an American citizen my tax money is being used to perpetuate that ugly occupation.

Let me draw out a possible link between your anti-racist activism and your support of the Palestinian people. After Ferguson, a lot of people drew the parallel to Gaza. But as soon as they did, many others chimed in and said, “No, those cases are not at all the same and you can’t make that comparison.” And in fact when Angela Davis was invited to give the Martin Luther King, Jr. convocation for the city of Santa Cruz, Calif., recently, she got a lot of criticism for drawing out the parallels. What are your thoughts on that, how do you see making a legitimate case for the connection between Ferguson and Gaza?

Well first, in terms of the various kinds of Zionist critiques, we make it clear that this has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with anti-Jewish hatred or anti-Jewish prejudice. This has to do with a moral and spiritual and political critique of occupation. Secondly, there is no doubt that Gaza is not just a “kind of” concentration camp, it is the hood on steroids. Now in the black community, located within the American empire, you do have forms of domination and subordination, forms of police surveillance and so forth, so that we are not making claims of identity, we are making claims of forms of domination that must be connected. And those are not the only two — we could talk about the Dalit people in India and the ways that their humanity is being lost and there are parallels there; we could talk about peasants in Mexico. So all of these are going to have similarities and dissimilarities. But there is no doubt that for the Ferguson moment in America and the anti-occupation moment in the Israel-Palestinian struggle there is a very important connection to make and I think we should continue to make it.

Well at one of our events today you called me a literary critic, but you’re a literary critic too—I’ve read some of your essays–so I want to ask you a question: How do we change the narrative around Israel-Palestine? How does that story change when one version is so ingrained in the American psyche — and it’s a particular narrative of the founding of the state of Israel as a Jewish state, and one that continues to justify the occupation and the colonial settler project of the state of Israel?

Well I am not the sophisticated literary critic you are, but I can say this: You can just look at the history of the divestment movement here at Stanford. You told me that two years ago when the student government voted on a divestment resolution, the vote was one “Yes,” seven “No,” and five abstentions. And just a few days ago when a similar divestment bill was presented, the vote was nine “Yes,” five “No,” and one abstention. The narrative is being changed and it’s only by means of voices — new stories and analysis, and bodies on the line, not just here but also across national boundaries — to shift the court of world opinion. And that’s precisely what is taking place. And of course at the center of it is the unbelievable courage of the Palestinian brothers and sisters against just overwhelming odds.

One last question: When you hear some people say, in the face of protest, agitation, critique, and civil disobedience, “we have to have peace, we need to obey the law,” like Obama did after the Ferguson verdict—you often have to think that it is precisely those whom the status quo serves, and in fact those who have the power to maintain the status quo in their favor, who are saying that we need to maintain peace (as they see it) at all cost. How do you move people out of their sense of privilege and entitlement?

Well first I think we have to be very clear that the call for the end of the vicious Israeli occupation is today a kind of litmus test for progressives, because you have sacrifice so much. There is no doubt that you will be called an anti-semite, that you will be called a chauvinist; there is no doubt you will be called someone who is downplaying the history of oppression of Jews. For so long, we have allowed not just the conservatives, not just the neo-liberals, but even progressive intellectuals to be silent when it comes to Palestinian peoples. So we have to call into question our own academic colleagues, we have to call into question our own fellow intellectuals.

And as a black intellectual it means I have to make the connection between the Obama apologists — who, as intellectuals, hide and conceal, not the silence, but the promotion of the military might that facilitates the killing of 500 Palestinian babies — with not one mumbling word being said by a President as the apologist intellectuals themselves don’t say a mumbling word. That needs to be shattered, that needs to be called into question. One can no longer say one is a serious progressive, let alone committed to moral integrity, without lifting one’s voice to call for an end to the Occupation of the Palestinian people. We have got to make that more and more a central part of our action.

David Palumbo-Liu is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor at Stanford University. Follow him on Twitter at @palumboliu.

Cornel West backs Steven Salaita, cancels prestigious Univ. of Illinois lecture

(Wissam Nassar / Maan Images)

Submitted by Ali Abunimah on Wed, 03/04/2015 - 21:54
cornel-west.jpg

Cornel West (Bradley Siefert/Flickr)
Celebrated public intellectual Dr. Cornel West has cancelled a lecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to protest the firing of Steven Salaita.

West, a professor at Princeton University, joins a boycott of the University of Illinois by thousands of scholars outraged over the violation of Salaita’s right to free speech.

Salaita is suing university officials, trustees and donors for firing him from a tenured position in the American Indian Studies program. The complaint contends that the dismissal was motivated by university officials’ disagreement with tweets Salaita made criticizing Israel’s assault on Gaza last summer that killed more than 2,200 people.

“My change of mind in regard to my cancellation of my lecture constitutes a line in the sand I could not cross,” West said in a statement released by the Center for Constitutional Rights.

West was scheduled to deliver the prestigious 2015 Marjorie Hall Thulin Lecture next month on “The Profound Desire for Justice.”

“The case of my dear brother Professor Steven Salaita is a moral scandal of great proportion and the suffering of precious Palestinians under a vicious Israeli occupation is a crime against humanity, even in a world in which ugly anti-Jewish hatred escalates,” West added.

Salaita is represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights, along with the law firm Loevy & Loevy.

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