A is for Anti-semitism and Apartheid (with update)

My father and mother shared the history of growing up in Ottawa's multicultural Lower Town with their daughters. It was thus I learned of the bigotry that francophone Catholic priests spread from the height of their pulpit, preaching - and deliberately planting seeds of violence - against the Irish, the Protestants and particularly, their Jewish neighbours. Later on, I discovered research documenting the hateful manifestions of anti-semitism.

My parents' choices as well as their open minds allowed me to understand the life experiences of immigrants to Canada as well as the vital and dynamic role the Jewish community held in Ottawa since its foundation. As an adolescent, I had the privilege of attending a religious service in the old synagogue, now closed.

When my cousin who converted to Reformed Judaism in her 30s invited me to her daughter's Bat Mitzvah, I felt honoured then moved by the beauty and spiritual force of the ritual. The women and men of this congregation are equally and fully engaged in all practices of their religious traditions.

Recently a friend's mom stated the film "An Education" sugar-coated its anti-semitic depiction of anti-semitism; after watching it I agreed with her impression, though some Jewish reviewers had a different perspective.

Today my friend lagatta directed my attention to powerful opinion piece by Letty Cottin Pogrebin, one of the original founding mothers of Ms magazine. It concludes:

As a life-long, Israel-loving, peace-seeking Zionist, I disdained the hyperbolic label and the facile, incendiary parallels to pre-Mandela South Africa that, for years, have been propagated by Jimmy Carter and some pundits on the left. I’ve made at least two dozen trips to Israel since 1976 and, though strongly critical of its government’s policies toward Palestinians within and outside the Green Line — whether under Labor, Likud or Kadima leadership — I never felt that extreme indictment was warranted by the facts on the ground. Then again, until last month, I had never been to Hebron.

Justice-loving Jews cannot keep denying what is happening under Israeli auspices in Hebron; we can never say we didn’t know.

It is painful to discover that a person, an institution or a belief one respects is wrong. It takes courage to say so.

Via our feminista consoeur AntoniaZ, a link to a strong and timely opinion piece in Haaretz.

If Stevie gets his way, this will be a crime in Canada. And also.

This - posting excerpts from, and linking to it, that is.

Two Israeli nonprofit groups that focus on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, HaMoked and B’Tselem, recently reported that Israeli agents have mistreated and even tortured Palestinian detainees. The groups’ findings were based on interviews they conducted with 121 Palestinians who had been held at the Israel Security Agency’s Petach-Tikva interrogation center in the first or last quarter of 2009. The full report, “Kept in the Dark: Treatment of Palestinian Detainees in the Petach-Tikva Interrogation Facility of the Israel Security Agency," can be found here on B’Tselem’s website.

In the report, the authors allege that prisoners were mistreated in a variety of ways, including: Thirty percent of those interviewed reported physical violence being used during their arrest, including beating, kicking, and painful shackling.[...]

The report points out that abuse of detainees is against Israeli and international law. In addition, B'Tselem and HaMoked write that these cases can't be excused as "ticking-bomb" scenarios where police have to get a detainee to talk immediately or disaster will strike -- according to them, most of the detainees "were not suspected of serious offenses." The authors of the report connect the mistreatment of detainees to a wider pattern of prejudice against Palestinians. Detainee abuse, they write, is "made possible due to the dehumanization of the Palestinian population."

Read Dawg's Blawg for an overview of what to expect, and how Stevie Spiteful plans to engineer this feat of sycophancy.

Meanwhile Alison at Creekside proves once more that reality and reason have an anti-rightwingnutter bias.

And also bonus: In The Star's exposé on how the PMO engineered the takeover of Rights and Democracy, Siddiqui notes that Braun and his acolytes' sustained attacks upon Beauregard was key to creating the illusion that the organization was anti-semitic.

The majority voted 7-6 to repudiate three grants of $10,000 each to B'Tselem (an Israeli NGO critical of human rights violations), Al Haq (in the West Bank) and Al Mazen (in Gaza), approved by Remy Beauregard [...].

It all fits together. Stevie's monomania, as always, is impeccable.

Who's the terrorist?

Is Izz el-Deen Aboul Aish a terrorist? Is that why his daughters had to die?

Izz el-Deen Aboul Aish, who speaks Hebrew, worked as a gynecologist in an Israeli hospital. Even as the crossings between the Gaza Strip and Israel had largely been closed in recent months, he had traveled frequently from one place to the other. But he had remained in Gaza since the Israeli offensive began 21 days ago. He gave frequent interviews to the Israeli media on living conditions in the seaside enclave. He spoke of having tanks around his house and of passing through checkpoints; he told Israelis what it was like to be Palestinian.

Minutes away from a scheduled phone interview on Israeli TV 10 with newscaster Shlomi Eldar, Aboul Aish called Eldar’s cellphone, screaming and weeping in Arabic and Hebrew. The doctor’s home had been struck by a shell:

“Oh God, oh my God, my daughters have been killed. They’ve killed my children. . . . Could somebody please come to us?”

Sitting at his news desk for one of Israel’s main evening news broadcasts, Eldar held his phone up. For three minutes and 26 seconds, Aboul Aish’s wailing was broadcast across the country.

Some more pictures of terrorists from Guerrilla Radio:






































From Da Arab Mcs: Who's the terrorist?

Terrorism and terror

Much has been said and written about the events in Gaza. I listen to Radio-Canada and I read news coverage that attempts to balance the overwhelming, initial pro-Israel bias with parsimonious information eked out from Gaza. Progressive Bloggers have been particularly diligent in seeking out alternate news sources and writing about this bloody conflict which has both sides targeting civilian populations. The side with the best weaponry is inflicting the most savage damage as the number of deaths, mutilations and crippling wounds increase every day in Gaza.

Terror: Intense, overpowering fear. Violence committed or threatened by a group to intimidate or coerce a population, as for military or political purposes.

Terrorism: The use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes. The state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization. A terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government.

Terrorism, 1795, in specific sense of "government intimidation during the Reign of Terror in France" (1793-July 1794), from Fr. terrorisme (1798).

"If the basis of a popular government in peacetime is virtue, its basis in a time of revolution is virtue and terror - virtue, without which terror would be barbaric; and terror, without which virtue would be impotent." (Robespierre, speech in French National Convention, 1794)

General sense of "systematic use of terror as a policy" is first recorded in Eng. 1798. Terrorize "coerce or deter by terror" first recorded 1823. Terrorist in the modern sense dates to 1947, especially in reference to Jewish tactics against the British in Palestine - earlier it was used of extremist revolutionaries in Russia (1866); and Jacobins during the French Revolution (1795) - from Fr. terroriste. The tendency of one party's terrorist to be another's guerilla or freedom fighter was noted in ref. to the British action in Cyprus (1956) and the war in Rhodesia (1973).

How to end this conflict? Fighting terrorism with terrorism appears to be a losing strategy for all sides. There are alternatives, though they rarely receive the attention and the financial support that armed confrontations do. Which is not incidentally a result of the increasingly lucrative weapons industry.

Here's an overview of groups and organizations who are attempting to fight terrorism and violence with information, reason and pacifist means.

Women Against Occupation

Adalah-NY: Coalition for Justice in the Middle East

Jews Against the Occupation

Feminist Peace Network

Christian Peacemaker Teams