Support my indiegogo funding campaign to release Martin Lang's Harmonica blues CD

Go to this address to see details about how you can help me release this Chicago blues album (if you are so inclined)

'https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/743516/emal/7016898'

the new cd will be titled Doghouse Blues and feature Martin Lang on harmonica, Tail Dragger and Willie Buck vocals, Steve Cushing, drums, Rusty Zinn & Billy Flynn, guitar, and Jimmy Upstairs, bass. ALSO look for the digital single release of the title song "Doghouse Blues" on itunes, emusic and other download websites.

As peace talks falter, Israel’s intentions become clearer

Jonathan Cook

7 April 2014

The National – 6 April 2014

There was a mad scramble by Washington last week to prevent the seemingly inevitable – an implosion of the Middle East peace talks. In a last-ditch effort to stop Israel reneging on a promise to release a final batch of Palestinian prisoners, the US briefly threw in possibly the biggest bargaining chip in its hand: the release of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard.

With Israel still dragging its feet, an infuriated Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas submitted applications to join 15 United Nations conventions, thereby reviving a campaign to win international recognition of Palestinian statehood.

Although Washington will continue quietly arm-twisting the two sides a little longer, President Barack Obama is reported to be worried that US diplomacy is starting to appear “desperate”.

The negotiations’ failure could prove an important clarifying ­moment, signalling the effective demise of the two-state solution.

Both the US and Israel have come to rely on the endless theatrics of the two-decade peace process. Settlement freezes, prisoner releases, rows about Palestinian Authority funding and, of course, intermittent negotiations have served as useful distractions from the main developments on the ground.

As Bassem Khoury, a former Palestinian Authority minister, observed last week: “Israel hasn’t changed. It is the same colonial entity pursuing the same ethnic cleansing policies it did for decades.”

That was also the little-noticed conclusion reached by Richard Falk as he stepped down last month as the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied territories. In line with warnings he has issued in his UN post for the past six years, Mr Falk, a professor emeritus in international law at Princeton University, said Israeli policies were designed to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from the occupied territories, and especially East Jerusalem, the expected capital of any Palestinian state.

Mr Falk noted that Israel had cynically exploited the peace process to expand its settlement programme, as it did again during these past nine months of talks.

In his meeting last month with Mr Obama at the White House, Mr Abbas unveiled a map showing that Israel had approved more than 10,000 settler homes since the talks began. That number has grown further, with Israel unveiling 2,000 more, including 700 last week in the East Jerusalem settlement of Gilo.

For every settler home built, Palestinians lose territory needed not only for a state but also to keep individual families living where they are now. The innocuous term “settlements” conceals their true role: as Israel’s primary vehicle for ethnic cleansing Palestinians through dispossession and harassment.

Washington welcomed Mr Falk’s departure, calling him a “noxious” presence. But his warnings have been echoed by others, including Israeli and Palestinian human rights organisations. Mr Falk’s findings were also confirmed by a usually circumspect group: European Union diplomats. A leaked joint report by EU consulates in the occupied territories observed that ethnic cleansing was advancing at an ever-accelerating pace in East Jerusalem.

The diplomats’ immediate concern is a “conflagration” as Israel’s extreme right is allowed ever greater access to the supremely sensitive site of the Al Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City.

Pushing to be given prayer rights there, the Israeli right hope they can eventually win from their government a partition of the site, as occurred earlier at the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron. There, the settlers’ control has effectively turned the once-thriving centre of Hebron into a Palestinian ghost town.

In East Jerusalem, Israel’s ethnic cleansing policies are at their most intense. As the EU notes, Palestinians have been starved of municipal funds, deprived of schools and blocked from commercial activity, and are leaving, heading for the greater security of West Bank cities.

In recent weeks, Palestinians in sections of East Jerusalem have even discovered that, despite its claims to treat Jerusalem as its “unified capital”, Israel has stopped supplying them with water.

Official data provide clues to Israel’s real intentions. This year’s first-quarter figures show that Israel sold more land to settlers for house building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem than it did for construction inside Israel itself.

Last week a Knesset committee effectively stymied efforts to force the government to disclose how much it is spending on settlement construction. Nonetheless, left wing legislators managed to extract partial treasury figures showing that the settlement budget has increased by at least $143 million (Dh525m) over the past six months, during the height of talks with the Palestinians.

In another sign of how Israel has been entrenching the settlements while paying lip-service to a peace process, the Israeli media revealed that 24 major infrastructure projects had been approved for the West Bank. They include more than $57 million for new settler roads and the first planned train service linking the settlements to Israel.

Israeli dispossession policies are not limited to the occupied territories. Foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman’s plan to redraw the borders to strip part of Israel’s large Palestinian minority of its citizenship received a major fillip last month. For the first time government lawyers rejected the opinion of international law experts and gave their blessing to what the liberal Haaretz daily called Mr Lieberman’s programme of “ethnic cleansing” of its own citizens.

If negotiations collapse, it should be clear that, while both sides were supposed to be talking, one side – ­Israel – was vigorously and unilaterally acting to further its goals.

It now seems the Palestinian leadership will respond in kind, by pushing their bid for statehood at the UN. Israel has already threatened “punitive measures”, meaning things are likely to turn yet uglier. But the era of wishful thinking may finally be coming to an end – and that will be progress in itself.

- See more at: http://www.jonathan-cook.net/2014-04-07/as-peace-talks-falter-israels-intentions-become-clearer/#sthash.eC1S14bV.dpuf

Random Musings

VENEZUELA: When The Rich Go Wild in the Streets

Tired of being an oppressed minority, the well to do businessmen, professionals, debutantes, and career-minded college students have rebelled. Building barricades in middle and upper class neighborhoods, stylishly clad white people have suffered enough under the heavy yoke of majority rule in Venezuela. "There are so many of these dirty, smelly, dark-skinned poor people, we just can't get rid of them! This is what free elections lead to!" said one weary barricade builder, "a white person just isn't anything in this country anymore," he went on to say.

It's understandable why these put-upon rich people are so frustrated. In the good old days elections were a matter of two different parties taking turns being the government. They had a small upper-class base and that's who voted.

But the lower classes couldn't leave well enough alone. NO, they had to go vote in huge numbers and elect Hugo Chavez president in 1998. Why? Just because the previous government had shot down people in the streets as they were protesting the fact that they were starving....food riots? Well, let 'em eat cake!

Now the hapless rich have to put up with losing every election because they are a minority and, believe it or not!, the majority rules in Venezuela (they could always try the USAs system to get rid of that problem).

What to do? How about imitating Ukraine and stage violent street demonstrations complete with snipers and Molotov cocktails?


NYC MAYOR DEBLASIO MEETS WITH LIEBERMAN:

Israeli foreign minister, Avidor Lieberman met with Hizzonor DeBlasio Friday afternoon for a chat about how much DeBlasio loves Israel and how far he's willing to go to kiss Israel's ass for hefty campaign donations.

Giving mayor Bill a few tips on handling thorny social issues in NYC, Lieberman suggested that instead of scaling back "stop and frisk" in the city's black and latin neighborhoods, he ought to try a policy of "stop, strip them of their New York citizenship and deport them to New Jersey."

Kerry’s Looming Deadline and the Peace Process Industry

from Palestine Chronicle
Friday, April 04, 2014 Last Update: 11:00 PM GMT


By Ramzy Baroud

As the US-imposed April 29 deadline for a ‘framework’ agreement between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority looms, time is also running out for the American administration itself. The Obama administration must now conjure up an escape route to avoid a political crisis if the talks are to fail, as they surely will.

Chances are the Americans knew well that peace under the current circumstances is simply not attainable. The Israeli government’s coalition is so adamantly anti-Arab, anti-peace and anti any kind of agreement that would fall short from endorsing the Israeli apartheid-like occupation, predicated on colonial expansion, annexations of borders, land confiscation, control of holy places and much more. Ideally for Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies in the right, far-right and ultranationalists, Palestinians would need to be crammed in disjointed communities, separated from each other by walls, Jewish settlements, Jewish-only bypass roads, checkpoints, security fences, and a large concentration of Israeli military presence including permanent Israeli control of the Jordan Valley. In fact, while politicians tirelessly speak of peace, the above is the exact ‘vision’ that the Israelis had in mind almost immediately following the 1967 war – the final conquest of all of historic Palestine and occupation of Arab lands.

Palestinians are currently paying the price of earlier Israeli visions, where Vladimir Jabotinsky’s ‘Iron Wall’ of 1923 was coupled with the Allon plan, named after Yigal Allon, a former general and minister in the Israeli government, who took on the task of drawing an Israeli design for the newly conquered Palestinian territories in 67. Not only would it not make any sense for a Zionist leader like Netanyahu – backed by one of the most rightwing governments in Israeli history – to bargain with Palestinians on what he considers to be Eretz Yisrael – the Whole Land of Israel -he has shown no desire, not even the most miniscule, to reach an agreement that would provide Palestinians with any of their rightful demands, true sovereignty notwithstanding.

It is implausible that the Americans were unaware of Israel’s lack of interest in the whole undertaking. For one, Israeli extremists like Naftali Bennett – Israel’s minister of economy and the head of the rightwing political party the Jewish Home – are constantly reminding the US through unconstrained insults that Israel is simply not interested in peacemaking efforts. The Americans persist, however, for reasons that are hardly related to peace or justice.

Previous administrations suffered unmitigated failures in the past as they invested time, effort, resources, and reputation, even to a greater extent than to Obama’s, in order to broker an agreement. There are the familiar explanations of why they failed, including the objection to any US pressure on Israel by the pro-Israel Zionist lobby in Washington, which remains very strong despite setbacks. The lobby maintains a stronghold on the US Congress in all matters related to Israel and Israeli interests anywhere.

Preparing for the foreseeable failure, US Secretary of State John Kerry remained secretive about his plans, leaving analysts in suspense over what is being discussed between Mahmoud Abbas’s negotiators and the Israeli government. From the very start, Kerry downgraded expectations. But the secrecy didn’t last for long. According to Palestinian sources cited in al-Quds newspaper, the most widely read Palestinian daily, PA president Abbas had pulled out of a meeting with Kerry in Paris late February because Kerry’s proposal didn’t meet the minimum of Palestinian expectations.

According to the report, it turned out that Kerry’s ambitious peace agenda was no more than a rehash of everything that Israel tried to impose by force or diplomacy, and Palestinians had consistently rejected: reducing the Palestinian aspiration of a Jerusalem capital into a tiny East Jerusalem neighborhood (Beit Hanina), and allowing Israel to keep 10 large settlement blocks built illegally on Palestinian land, aside from a land swap meant to accommodate Israel’s security needs. Moreover, the Jordan Valley would not be part of any future Palestinian state, nor would international forces be allowed there either. In other words, Israel would maintain the occupation under any other name, except that the PA would be allowed a level of autonomy over Palestinian population centers. It is hard to understand how Kerry’s proposal is any different from the current reality on the ground.

Most commentary dealing with the latest US push for a negotiated agreement would go as far back as Bush’s Roadmap of 2002, the Arab peace initiative earlier the same year, or even the Oslo accords of 1993. What is often ignored is the fact that the ‘peace process’ is a political invention by a hardliner, US politician Henry Kissinger, who served as a National Security Advisor and later Secretary of State in the Nixon Administration. The idea was to co-opt the Arabs following the Israeli military victory of 1967, the sudden expansion of Israel’s borders into various Arab borders, with full US support and reinforcement. It was Kissinger himself who lobbied for massive US arms to Israel that changed the course of the 1973 war, and he was the man who worked to secure Israeli gains through diplomacy.

While many are quick to conclude that the ‘peace process’ has been a historical failure, the bleak estimation discounts that the intent behind the ‘peace process’ was never to secure a lasting peace, but Israeli military gains. In that sense, it has been a splendid success. Over the years, however, the ‘peace process’ became an American investment in the Middle East, a status quo in itself, and a reason for political relevance. During the administration of both Bushes, father and son, the ‘peace process’ went hand in hand with the Iraq war. The Madrid Peace Talks in 1991 were initiated following the US-led war in Kuwait and Iraq, and was meant to balance out the extreme militancy that had gripped and destabilized the region. George W. Bush’s Roadmap fell between the war on Afghanistan and months before the war on Iraq. Bush was heavily criticized for being a ‘war president’ and for having no peace vision. The Roadmap, which was drafted with the help of pro-Israel neoconservative elements in his administration, in consultation with the lobby and heavy amendments by the Israeli government, was W Bush’s ‘peace’ overture. Naturally, the Roadmap failed, but until this day, Bush’s insincere drive for peace had helped maintain the peace process charade for a few more years, until Bill Clinton arrived to the scene, and kick started the make-believe process once more.

In the last four decades, the ‘peace process’ became an American diplomatic staple in the region. It is an investment that goes hand in hand with their support of Israel and interest in energy supplies. It is an end in itself, and is infused regularly for reasons other than genuine peace.

Now that Kerry’s deadline of a ‘framework agreement’ is quickly approaching, all parties must be preparing for all possibilities. Ultimately, the Americans are keen on maintaining the peace process charade; the Palestinian Authority is desperate to survive; and Israel needs to expand settlements unhindered by a Palestinian uprising or unnecessary international attention. But will they succeed?

- Ramzy Baroud is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. He is a PhD candidate at the University of Exeter, UK. His latest book is “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story” (Pluto Press, London).

Related posts:

In Philly, rightwing Zionists call Dershowitz anti-Semitic for opposing settlements

from Mondoweiss

Philip Weiss on April 2, 2014 16


Matt Berkman has a great piece up at the Cairo Review of Global Affairs, reporting on the screening last week in Philadelphia of a right-wing documentary attack on J Street, the liberal Zionist organization. Nearly 700 people went to the screening of The J Street Challenge at the University of Pennsylvania; Alan Dershowitz was the headliner.

It was widely expected that the battle that night would be between liberal Zionists and rightwingers over the fact that Jewish community organizations (the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia and the Hillel Foundation for Jewish Campus Life) were sponsoring an event trashing liberal Zionism.

But as it turned out, the main attacks that night were on Dershowitz, from the right, because he opposes some settlements in the West Bank.

Berkman writes that traditionally Zionist forces in US life were able to sustain a coalition between right and left wings, epitomized by Dershowitz himself. But that old coalition is falling apart, and Dershowitz is now in a middle ground, assaulted by the rightwing donor base. And J Street may also be marooned in the middle, Berkman says, as young Jews abandon Zionism altogether.

Some of his report on the screening:

The film in question, “The J Street Challenge,” is a slickly produced far-right assault on the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” organization. Produced by Americans for Peace and Tolerance, one of a growing number of right-wing Zionist groups with Orwellian names, the film mostly showcases the perspectives of hardcore Jewish ethno-nationalists….

What transpired—the intermittent pandemonium and racist hysteria of the Q&A session, the evident tensions between Dershowitz and his co-panelist [presumably Charles Jacobs], and the fact that it all went down under the auspices of mainstream Jewish community groups—is the best evidence yet that an increasingly panicked and isolated right-wing donor base is waging a scorched earth campaign against the very foundations of contemporary American Zionism….

Speaker after speaker stepped to the mic to lambaste Dershowitz, often in the most abusive terms, for a wide variety of crimes: for referring to the “West Bank” instead of “Judea and Samaria”; for Dershowitz’s anti-Semitic denial of the right of Jews to colonize the Palestinian city of Hebron; for encouraging his followers to vote for the Jew-hater Barack Obama; and, of course, for his failure to comprehend the savage, homicidal nature of Islam. Dershowitz attempted to defend himself, comparing his assailants to Meir Kahane and denouncing their racism. But his appeals were barely audible over the shouted cross talk and frenzied cheers of the audience.

“If you don’t want people like me defending Israel,” he told them, “then you’re in serious trouble.”

To anyone not hermetically ensconced in the far-right moral universe engineered by wealthy activists like Jacobs and billionaire Republican financier Sheldon Adelson (and few of the hundreds in attendance were not), the whole scene was insane. It was a topsy-turvy world where Alan Dershowitz and young AIPAC devotees represent the despised far left wing of the “official” Jewish conversation about Israel. But this was not the meeting of some fringe group in a synagogue basement. It was a big, Federation-sponsored production at a prestigious university.

Young American Jews are getting off the pro-Israel bus, and the fury of the right-wing donor base—its uncalculated reaction to the sudden loss of control—is poised to further erode the historic bargain between Zionism and liberalism that kept the wheels in motion for so many years. As J Street members move further to the left and the Jewish world turns bimodal—pure universalism vs. pure ethno-nationalism—we’re likely to see more of these insurgent encroachments by the far right into mainstream spaces. With the Dershowitzian compromise on life support, the internal dynamics of Jewish institutional life are about to get very, very interesting.

April 2, 2014 New York Times OP-Ed by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro

Venezuela: A Call for Peace

By Nicolas Maduro

April 02, 2014 "Information Clearing House - "The New York Times" -- CARACAS, Venezuela — THE recent protests in Venezuela have made international headlines. Much of the foreign media coverage has distorted the reality of my country and the facts surrounding the events.

Venezuelans are proud of our democracy. We have built a participatory democratic movement from the grass roots that has ensured that both power and resources are equitably distributed among our people.

According to the United Nations, Venezuela has consistently reduced inequality: It now has the lowest income inequality in the region. We have reduced poverty enormously — to 25.4 percent in 2012, on the World Bank’s data, from 49 percent in 1998; in the same period, according to government statistics, extreme poverty diminished to 6 percent from 21 percent.

We have created flagship universal health care and education programs, free to our citizens nationwide. We have achieved these feats in large part by using revenue from Venezuelan oil.

While our social policies have improved citizens’ lives over all, the government has also confronted serious economic challenges in the past 16 months, including inflation and shortages of basic goods. We continue to find solutions through measures like our new market-based foreign exchange system, which is designed to reduce the black market exchange rate. And we are monitoring businesses to ensure they are not gouging consumers or hoarding products. Venezuela has also struggled with a high crime rate. We are addressing this by building a new national police force, strengthening community-police cooperation and revamping our prison system.

Since 1998, the movement founded by Hugo Chávez has won more than a dozen presidential, parliamentary and local elections through an electoral process that former American President Jimmy Carter has called “the best in the world.” Recently, the United Socialist Party received an overwhelming mandate in mayoral elections in December 2013, winning 255 out of 337 municipalities.

Popular participation in politics in Venezuela has increased dramatically over the past decade. As a former union organizer, I believe profoundly in the right to association and in the civic duty to ensure that justice prevails by voicing legitimate concerns through peaceful assembly and protest.

The claims that Venezuela has a deficient democracy and that current protests represent mainstream sentiment are belied by the facts. The antigovernment protests are being carried out by people in the wealthier segments of society who seek to reverse the gains of the democratic process that have benefited the vast majority of the people.

Antigovernment protesters have physically attacked and damaged health care clinics, burned down a university in Táchira State and thrown Molotov cocktails and rocks at buses. They have also targeted other public institutions by throwing rocks and torches at the offices of the Supreme Court, the public telephone company CANTV and the attorney general’s office. These violent actions have caused many millions of dollars’ worth of damage. This is why the protests have received no support in poor and working-class neighborhoods.

The protesters have a single goal: the unconstitutional ouster of the democratically elected government. Antigovernment leaders made this clear when they started the campaign in January, vowing to create chaos in the streets. Those with legitimate criticisms of economic conditions or the crime rate are being exploited by protest leaders with a violent, antidemocratic agenda.

In two months, a reported 36 people have been killed. The protesters are, we believe, directly responsible for about half of the fatalities. Six members of the National Guard have been shot and killed; other citizens have been murdered while attempting to remove obstacles placed by protesters to block transit.

A very small number of security forces personnel have also been accused of engaging in violence, as a result of which several people have died. These are highly regrettable events, and the Venezuelan government has responded by arresting those suspected. We have created a Human Rights Council to investigate all incidents related to these protests. Each victim deserves justice, and every perpetrator — whether a supporter or an opponent of the government — will be held accountable for his or her actions.

In the United States, the protesters have been described as “peaceful,” while the Venezuelan government is said to be violently repressing them. According to this narrative, the American government is siding with the people of Venezuela; in reality, it is on the side of the 1 percent who wish to drag our country back to when the 99 percent were shut out of political life and only the few — including American companies — benefited from Venezuela’s oil.

Let’s not forget that some of those who supported ousting Venezuela’s democratically elected government in 2002 are leading the protests today. Those involved in the 2002 coup immediately disbanded the Supreme Court and the legislature, and scrapped the Constitution. Those who incite violence and attempt similar unconstitutional actions today must face the justice system.

The American government supported the 2002 coup and recognized the coup government despite its anti-democratic behavior. Today, the Obama administration spends at least $5 million annually to support opposition movements in Venezuela. A bill calling for an additional $15 million for these anti-government organizations is now in Congress. Congress is also deciding whether to impose sanctions on Venezuela. I hope that the American people, knowing the truth, will decide that Venezuela and its people do not deserve such punishment, and will call upon their representatives not to enact sanctions.

Now is a time for dialogue and diplomacy. Within Venezuela, we have extended a hand to the opposition. And we have accepted the Union of South American Nations’ recommendations to engage in mediated talks with the opposition. My government has also reached out to President Obama, expressing our desire to again exchange ambassadors. We hope his administration will respond in kind.

Venezuela needs peace and dialogue to move forward. We welcome anyone who sincerely wants to help us reach these goals.

Members of Northeastern University Students for Justice in Palestine say they refuse to be silenced.

from electric intifafa
Northeastern rallies against censorship, racism
Submitted by Ali Abunimah on Wed, 04/02/2014 - 00:25
(Ali Abunimah)

This afternoon I spoke at Northeastern University in Boston, which earlier this month suspended Northeastern Students for Justice (SJP), the first such sanction against a campus Palestine solidarity group in the United States.

A short distance away, in another campus building, university administrators welcomed a delegation of members of the Israeli parliament.

The university-sponsored town hall was expected to include representatives from Habayit Hayehudi, or the “Jewish Home,” according to a Northeastern SJP press release.

On its official website, the party refers to Sudanese and Eritrean refugees as “infiltrators” which threaten the “Jewish demographic constitution of Israel.”

Habayit Hayehudi, a member of Israel’s ruling coalition, advocates the annexation of most Palestinian land and subjecting Palestinians to permanent military rule and apartheid.
“They know we are winning

After my talk, Northeastern students and supporters held a rally outside the university to protest the Israeli lawmakers.

University police did not allow the rally to take place on campus property.

The rally was endorsed by some twenty organizations and was attended among others by members of campus Palestine solidarity groups from Boston University, Harvard University, the University of Massachusetts–Boston, Tufts University and Jewish Voice for Peace Boston.

This statement of solidarity from Palestinian activist Omar Barghouti was read out at the rally:

Dear Students for Justice in Palestine activists at Northeastern University,

Dear supporters of freedom, justice and equality, not just in Palestine but around the world and in the US as well:

On behalf of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and the entire BDS National Committee, I salute you and convey to you our gratitude and support. Your work is inspiring; your courage is uplifting.

The global, Palestine-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement has reached a tipping point in the last year, and they know it.

Israel and its well-endowed lobby are running scared and panicking. Their incessant violence, racism and bullying are failing in the face of morally-consistent, anti-racist BDS activism for Palestinian rights.

Every war they wage, or try to, every Palestinian or Lebanese child they kill, every pregnant woman they prevent from receiving healthcare, every farmer they prevent from reaching his or her land, every prisoner they torture, every neighborhood they ethnically cleanse, every refugee they deny the right to return because she is the wrong type of person, every wall they build, every Gaza school they bomb, every olive tree they uproot, every racist law they pass, every apartheid policy they implement, they strengthen our resolve to resist, to insist on existing as free, dignified humans, equal to all and lesser than none.

Despite their immense power and corrupt hold on your Congress, we are winning the battle for hearts and minds – not just in Johannesburg, London, Delhi, Oslo and Sao Paulo, but also in St. Louis, Missouri, Olympia, Washington, Chicago, Berkeley, San Diego and Boston, Massachusetts.

The BDS movement, with the dedicated, creative energies of its activists and partners all over the world, is changing the discourse and even the balance of power between Israeli apartheid and its victims.

Stephen Hawking’s boycott of an Israeli conference was precedent setting, and they know it.

The American Studies Association’s endorsement of the academic boycott of Israel, following similar decisions by the Asian American Studies Association and the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, broke what the late Edward Said called “the last taboo in America,” and they know it.

The 200-billion dollar Dutch pension fund’s divestment from all Israeli banks involved in the occupation recalls an advanced stage in the South African anti apartheid struggle, and they know it.

Withdrawal of major European pensions funds, companies and banks from Israeli projects that violate international law and Palestinian human rights simultaneously indicates the drastic erosion of Israel’s standing in world public opinion and further stimulates that erosion, and they know it.

Divestment resolutions taken by student councils at universities across the US, from Loyola to UC Berkeley and many in between, are ushering in a new reality of accountability for corporations that are complicit in Israel’s occupation and apartheid, and they know it.

They know we are winning, and that they cannot stop a movement that is anchored in the hearts of conscientious people all over the world.

Resistance to apartheid and to racist oppression in Bilin, Jaffa and Gaza is echoed in and accentuated by the resistance to oppression at Northeastern.

Indeed, you are facing nothing less than a creeping new McCarthyism in the US that is attempting to undermine free speech and suppress freedom of expression in order to protect Israeli apartheid and its corporate beneficiaries in your country from censure and accountability.

Your struggle for Palestinian rights, therefore, is far reaching in the sense that it is also a struggle for freedom and for protecting the First Amendment. Every decent US citizen who wishes to protect hard-won civil rights must join in your campaign against Northeastern’s shameful, anachronistic repression.

Your coalition with African-American, Asian, Latin@, Jewish, queer, indigenous and many other progressive groups cannot but prevail.

If you must write a 500-word essay on obeying unjust orders by a racist, repressive administration, use them to quote Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Mandela, Mahmoud Darwish and Che Guevara on the absolute necessity of doing the exact opposite – disobeying injustice and its enforcers and taking the conscientious decision to reject attempts to silence dissent and free speech.

They are desperate. Their intensified repression is a telltale sign of that despair. Justice will prevail. Justice is prevailing. You shall stand proud in a few years, or a little more, and shout in unison: we were on the right side of history, fighting apartheid again; we contributed to a noble cause for freedom, justice and equality for all, irrespective of identity.

We are proud of you and of your beautiful insistence on freedom. Our South African moment is near.