see photos and download audio mp3’s from emergency WMass forum on Middle East war
“The building was not targeted.”
That’s the Israeli government’s excuse about its killing of many civilians, including at least 16 children by Human Rights Watch, in its bomb attack on Qana, Lebanon on July 30, 2006.
It doesn’t cut it. (more…)
see photos and download audio mp3’s from emergency WMass forum on Middle East war
We thank Sharon Smith for permission to reprint this article
WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?
Israel and the future of the antiwar movement
By Sharon Smith | July 28, 2006
ISRAEL’S SLAUGHTER of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians should be a moment of truth for the U.S. left. The fact that “about 55 percent of all casualties at the Beirut Government University Hospital are children of 15 years or less,” according to journalist Dahr Jamail, should dispel the myth that Israel’s latest incursions are acts of “self-defense,” as Israel’s many apologists claim.
The Bush administration’s rush shipment of precision bombs to aid Israel’s onslaught last weekend should be a wake-up call for those on the U.S. left who purport to follow antiwar principles, yet until now have failed to take a clear stand against the Israeli manifestations of the U.S.’s so-called “war on terror.”
To do so would require acknowledging that the U.S.’s wars on Afghanistan and Iraq were meant to be mere stepping-stones in a strategic plan aimed at establishing U.S. dominance over the entire Middle East. (more…)
(Monday July 17 2006)
Lebanon, Gaza and the consistently racist American stanard
by Ahmed Amr http://nilemedia.com/
“If Saudi Arabia honestly wanted a change in American policy, they have a very easy way to send a convincing message to Washington. They can simply stop accepting American dollars in exchange for their oil. They won’t do it. Because that particular regime – along with Kuwait and other Gulf countries - was instrumental in orchestrating the war against Iraq in full partnership with the Likudnik operatives in the Israeli lobby.” Here we go again. The Arabs weigh America’s response to the onslaught against Lebanon and Gaza and start accusing Washington of double standards. It is an accusation that has no merit. The more obscene reality is that the United States has consistently implemented a single racist standard against the indigenous people of the Middle East.
After months of tormenting the Palestinians with all manner of collective punishment, the Israelis have invaded Gaza and laid siege to Beirut. In the Israeli narrative, the escalation of the conflict in the Middle East started with the abduction of a single IDF soldier. This absurd and blatantly false time line of recent events has been elevated to holy writ by the Bush administration and Israel’s mass media collaborators at CNN and The New York Times.
The predictable response from Washington has been to applaud Olmert for acting in ‘self defense.’ With a straight face, Bush is demanding that “the international community must address the root causes” of the violence in the Middle East. In his jaded view of the conflict, “this started because Hezbollah abducted two soldiers.”
When Israel incinerated a family of seven on a beach in Gaza, the United States didn’t even bother to comment on the ‘incident.’ In the southern Lebanese village of Dweir, an entire clan of ten children and their parents are murdered by the IDF. Again, the State Department had nothing to say about the matter. Sixteen Lebanese – nine of them children - are incinerated in a convoy escaping the carnage. The victims had evacuated their village after Israelis instructed them to leave over loudspeakers. No comment on the incident was forthcoming from the White House.
While the IDF was unleashing indiscriminate fire on innocent Lebanese and Palestinian civilians, Bush publicly and unabashedly gave Ehud Olmert a carte blanche to continue the nasty business of systematically destroying vital infrastructure, power plants and Beirut’s international airport. The crippling economic siege has been imposed on both Lebanon and Gaza. In the case of Gaza, the American government has arm twisted the European Union and Arab states to join the in an international coalition to starve the Palestinians into accepting Israeli dictates.
More recently, John Bolton - the neo-con ambassador to the United Nations - was instructed to veto a watered down UN resolution condemning the Israeli invasion of Gaza. Bolton’s veto was cast even though the resolution called for the release of that one ‘precious’ Israeli POW. In a further public show of disdain for the Lebanese people, Bush brazenly obstructed the Security Council’s efforts to call for a cease fire. And Condi Rice is making it clear that she wants the hostilities to continue.
Far from making any attempts to put an end to Israel’s collective punishment campaign, the president has taken the liberty of pouring gasoline on the fire. In a calculated move to give Israel a free hand, Bush invited the Israelis to escalate the conflict by expanding its operations to Syria. As Tony Snow puts it, the president “is not going to make military decisions for Israel.”
Bush’s reaction to the events of the last two weeks was not only predictable but certain. This is a president who bombed Fallujah to rubble to avenge the death of four mercenaries. He is the same man who insisted on rules of engagement that gave American soldiers immunity to slaughter innocents in Haditha and torture detainees in Abu Ghraib. The rape of a 14 year old Iraqi girl and the cold blooded murder of her family is but one of many war crimes that the Pentagon has attempted to cover up. Bush is an individual who can’t be bothered with body counts – especially if the anatomies being dismembered and slaughtered are of the Arab variety. It doesn’t take a leap of imagination to understand that Bush might be grateful that the current crisis has diverted attention from the quagmire in Iraq – where another three hundred Iraqi civilians perished last week.
Given his record in Iraq, Bush is not exactly in a position to publicly condemn another nation’s war crimes. From the Israeli perspective, this immunity from American criticism is one of the enduring and advantageous legacies of the Pentagon’s atrocious behavior in Iraq. This might help explain why Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz and the Likudnik neo-con cabal in the Pentagon agitated for loose rules of engagement in Iraq.
Still, it is a mistake to conclude that Bush is implementing a policy that varies substantially from previous occupants of the White House. While this commander in chief is perhaps the most psychopathic president since Andrew Jackson, his policies are not an aberration. Having been frustrated in the search for Saddam’s phantom chemical arsenal, Bush authorized his generals to deploy their own WMD arsenal in Fallujah – including phosphorous bombs. In mild contrast, the Clinton administration was partial to the use of depleted uranium and genocidal sanctions.
The accusation that Bush is implementing a policy that amounts to some kind of “double standard” in favor of Israel is nonsense. In fact, he has been consistent in vigorously implementing a single standard that devalues Arab lives in comparison to Israeli lives. The former is worthless and the latter is more precious than the blood of his kin.
For one Israeli captive soldier – the Gaza penitentiary can be converted into a shooting gallery for Tel Aviv’s goons. For two Israeli captive soldiers, the IDF can unleash a scorched earth policy against Lebanon.
If George Bush would only bother checking the sequence of events that led to the outbreak of the current crisis – he might notice that the atrocity on the beach in Gaza took place weeks before Hamas apprehended the Israeli soldier. Someone somewhere at the State Department might also recollect that the collective punishment measures and deliberate destruction of infrastructure was put in motion to extract vengeance from the Palestinians for their bad voting habits. If the policy makers in Washington could take the time to review Israeli conduct over the last four decades, they might discover that the seeds of the conflict are rooted in the well documented belligerent land grabbing occupation of Palestinian land.
In regards to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, American policy is as clear as day. Israel can kill and abduct Palestinians and Lebanese at will. Olmert’s government has a license from the great white father in Washington to collectively punish millions of Arabs from the refugee hovels of Gaza to cosmopolitan Beirut. While nine thousand Palestinians – including women, children and elected officials – rot in Israeli jails, whole families can be wiped out to release a single soldier involved in enforcing the genocidal IDF siege on Gaza.
For those who bother to pay attention to the Bush administration’s role in fomenting violence in the Middle East, there is an obvious method to the madness. Tel Aviv and Washington have already negotiated and settled the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Starving and humiliating the Palestinians is merely a necessary condition for implementing the infamous “Rice/Weisglass” accord – an agreement that was finalized in October, 2004. This final unilateral solution to the Palestinian ‘problem’ is now the official – if undeclared – policy of the United States.
So, enough already with Arab gripes about ‘double standards.’ For six decades of well documented history, successive American administrations have been very consistent in their treatment of Middle Easterners of the non-Jewish persuasion. The Arab governments are not only aware of the consistency of American policy – but have come to accept it as a fact of life. They just haven’t figured a way to break the news of their capitulation to their own people.
The basic elements of American foreign policy in the region are simple enough to understand. In the event of any conflict involving the natives of the Middle East and their Jewish lords, the conflict will be judged in favor of Israel. In matters involving real estate acquisition for additional Jewish settlers, the native people will be encouraged to move along and find other quarters to live and die. The killing of a native by a Jew will not be considered a crime. If a native so much as dares to throw a rock that dents an Israeli tank, Israel will have the right to ‘defend itself’ as it sees fit, short of using tactical nuclear weapons. Only Israel will be allowed to possess and use WMDs. Native people who have wet dreams about WMDs will be subject to invasion by the Armed Forces of the United States. The natives will acknowledge that the “Special Relationship” between the United States and Israel will take precedence over the decidedly slave/master special status of their own countries.
One can only hope that God is not finished with American Foreign policy. At some point, a more informed American public will do the decent thing and demand that foreign affairs should not be influenced by the bigotry and racism of the Israeli Lobby and its accomplices in the White House, Congress and the mass media.
In due course, extremist bigots like Cheney and his neo-con gang will become as anachronistic as Jim Crow. Future Arab generations might rebel against their designated status as the lesser race of the Middle East. At which point, they can initiate constructive measures to demand equal treatment by Washington.
People change. History evolves to reflect those changes. In the meantime, it is folly to pretend that we are not where we are. America has spent six decades enforcing a single racist standard in the Middle East. One of the definitions of insanity is to repeat the same thing and expect different results. And the Arab people ought to get with the program and stop griping about double standards and figure out a way to deal with America’s alliance with Israel and the Bush administration’s racist and murderous hostility towards the people of the region.
Instead of griping about double standards, individual Arabs need to take the initiative to convince their senile quisling leaders that enough is enough. If the House of Al Saud and the other custodians of the oil plantations have made the strategic decision to capitulate to Tel Aviv – they must be asked to do so publicly and start mass education programs to teach their people how to properly lick American and Israeli boots.
If Saudi Arabia honestly wanted a change in American policy, they have a very easy way to send a convincing message to Washington. They can simply stop accepting American dollars in exchange for their oil. They won’t do it. Because that particular regime – along with Kuwait and other Gulf countries - was instrumental in orchestrating the war against Iraq in full partnership with the Likudnik operatives in the Israeli lobby.
It should be clear to every Arab that the kleptocrats who operate the oil plantations in the Gulf hold their own people in greater contempt than Washington or Tel Aviv. If individual Arabs started challenging their governments to change the “oil for dollars and only dollars” policy – even the bigots in the Bush administration will have to revisit their political calculations. They won’t necessarily shed their deeply engrained racism – but they will be compelled to take the national interest into consideration before allowing Israelis to do whatever they can get away with.
While the Arabs have no military options to confront Israeli adventurism – they certainly have economic leverage. The Israeli government has publicly stated that the destruction of infrastructure is meant to impose punitive collective economic measures against the Palestinians and the Lebanese. To accomplish the mission, Tel Aviv is deploying American financed tanks and planes. No such implements of death and destruction are required by Arab governments. All they need to do is post a sign that the American dollar will no longer be accepted in exchange for their oil. Before you know it, the powers that be in Washington will have a sudden revelation that they need to come up with another standard to assess the value of an Arab life.
***
We thank Ahmed Amr for contributing this article to the writer’s blog.
Presented as part of panel on June 23, 2006 with Elizabeth Wrigley-Field (Campus Antiwar Network - NYU) and Charles Peterson (Campus Antiwar Network - HCC) (moderated by Monique Dols) - “Free Speech and the Movement Against Military Recruitment” 63:26 minutes - 29.1 mg - June 23, 2006. See full conference coverage at http://www.traprockpeace.org/socialism_2006.html
June 23, 2006
Charles Jenks, Traprock Peace Center
Students Confront Military Recruiters and Campus Repression
National and International activists came forward in 2005-06 to support US students
The Campus Antiwar Network has had a very busy year, onfronting military recruiters on campuses and facing down repression and threats by college administrations.
During this academic year, protests, followed by repressions, have happened at Holyoke (MA) Community College (HCC), George Mason University, Kent State, Harold Washington College (Chicago), Hampton University (an historically black university in Virginia), Pace University, U Wisconsin at Madison, San Francisco State University and U Texas at Austin.
In most of these cases, student protestors have been threatened with possible expulsion. At HCC, for example, Charles Peterson was pepper sprayed by campus police during a non-violent protest. It was the police who had become violent by ripping a sign from a student’s hands and then roughing up students. At Kent State, recruiters chased, and grabbed student Dave Airhart from a climbing wall they had erected on campus. Airhart is a veteran of the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq and had unfurled a banner that read “Kent, Ohio for Peace” at the top of the wall. He was threatened with expulsion by the university. At Hampton University, students were threatened for passing out “unapproved” literature.
In all these situations, college administrations backed down in the face of massive phone calls, emails and, in some cases, media attention. The situation at SFSU is ongoing, as students have been threatened with discipline, after having been kicked off campus for several days with no hearing. Several students were rendered homeless and prevented from going to campus jobs as the university reacted to their loud, but nonviolent, protest of military recruitment at a campus jobs fair. Police used rough tactics in escorting the students from the jobs fair, but as in all the other cases, there was no investigation of the perpetrators of violence – that is, the police or recruiters.
Still, despite the threats, no students have been subjected to serious discipline. Much of the reason for this may lie in the extraordinary support that students have received from activists and organizations from the larger antiwar movement.
Several strategies have been used to bring in support from the broader movement. Traprock, CAN national coordinators and CAN chapters at the affected campuses have consulted on the best approaches for each campus. Tactics have included on-line petitions, letters of support, call-in campaigns and open letters to college administrators.
Traprock took on the role of approaching outside activists and organizations and asking them to write letters of support for the students. The letters were sent to college administrators, and also posted at the Traprock and CAN web sites, with links from the websites of sympathetic organizations and news services. Upon posting the letters, we sent out email blasts with links to the letters and requests to the movement at large to call and write to administrators. We posted activist letters for support for students at Holyoke Community College, Kent State University, Hampton University, Pace University, and San Francisco State University.
At SFSU, we relied primarily on an open letter, drafted by Traprock’s Charlie Jenks with valuable help from Elizabeth Wrigley-Field of NYU. 70 noted activists, writers and artists have signed the letter. The letter was then posted, with signatures, as an online petition to the SFSU administration (over 1200 people have signed it.)
The letters from activists and organizations have served several functions. The letters 1) have encouraged other people in the antiwar movement to contact the administrations – either by email, letter or phone call; 2) have helped to generate media interest through use in press releases and at press conferences; 3) have been available as exhibits for potential disciplinary hearings; and 4) have forged or strengthened relationships between student and non-student organizers.
In virtually all cases, threatened disciplinary actions were dropped prior to a hearing. At Kent State, NBC’s Dateline called the administration and a UK television crew showed up for the student press conference and hearing. The administration dropped its charges before the press conference could take place. Students held it anyway, as an educational program and as a celebration. Audio and photos are available at the www.traprockpeace.org
A wide array of activists and organizations responded to the calls for help. It was extraordinary that so many people took the time to sit down and write letters. (We asked so often, given CAN’s busy year, that we opted for the open letter approach with SFSU.) While UFPJ has not responded, the students got warm international support.
National and International Support and Cooperation
I turn my attention to this international support and cooperation for the Campus Antiwar Network and US students. It’s been a two way street – CAN has supported the initiatives of others. I contrast this cooperative approach with refusals of cooperation by another US national network, namely United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ). (I note that CAN’s spirit of cooperation has not always been mirrored by other organizations that purport to represent students.)
This year, students have received support from US activists including Cindy Sheehan, Camilo Mejia, Sharon Smith, Dahr Jamail, Michael Letwin (NY City Labor Against the War), David Swanson (After Downing Street), Anthony Arnove, Sara Flounders, Howard Zinn, Pablo Paredes, Todd Chretien, Stan Goff, Norman Solomon, Jeffrey St. Clair and many others, including directors of regional coalitions (such as Bonnie Weinstein of BAUAW) and grassroots organizations (such as Tim Baer, with the Bloomington Peace Action Coalition).
European supporters have included Denis Halliday and Hans-Christof von Sponeck, both former UN Assistant Secretary Generals who resigned in protest as UN Humanitarian Coordinators for Iraq; Dirk Adriaensens, coordinator of SOS Iraq and a member of the Executive committee of the Brussells Tribunal; Lindsay German, convener for the Stop the War Coaltion (UK); Paola Pisi, professor of religious studies (Italy) and editor of uruknet.info; and Pav Akhtar, Convenor, National Union of Students (UK) Internationalism Campaign.
CAN’s international support has grown out of relationships that it has developed over the years. The Stop the War Coalition and the National Union of Students have supported CAN since its beginning. Jeremy Corbyn, British Labor MP and a STW steering committee member gave the key note address at CAN’s founding conference in Washington, DC on January 17, 2003. Helen Salmon of NUS also spoke in DC, and Omar Waraich of British Students Stop the War addressed CAN’s national conference in November, 2003 in Chicago.
CAN has responded to international invitations to participate in events in Paris (2003 European Social Forum and 2004 protests); Iraq (2004 peace delegation), St. Petersburg (2004 conference), London (delegate to the 2005 London International Peace Conference) and this year at the World Social Forum in Caracas. Monique Dols, Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, Tim Kaldas, Khury Petersen-Smith, Katrina Yeaw, and Kathleen Brown have represented US students and CAN internationally. In December, Elizabeth was the only US student delegate to the London International Peace Conference, where she addressed the mass meeting of student organizers. A video of her talk and photos are available at the Traprock website.
In December, CAN supported the international call, led by the Stop the War Coalition, for mass demonstrations in major cities marking the third anniversary of the war. In contrast, UFPJ pointedly refused to do so at the London conference. Judith LeBlanc, UFPJ’s Co-Director, said that it was instead looking to a mass demo in late April, with an eye toward the 2006 Congressional elections. (As we know, after stating that it would refuse to work with A.N.S.W.E.R., UPJF organized a mass march and festival, without the traditional rally, in NYC on April 29th.)
CAN has also supported initiatives by non-student organizations in the US. In 2006, for example, it has endorsed the ExxonMobil War Boycott; the Walk to Redeem the Soul of America from Dallas to Crawford, Texas; and the Don’t Attack Iran petition initiated by Cindy Sheehan. This followed a major collaboration with Military Out of Our Schools (MOOS-Bay) that brought 650 people to a joint counter-recruitment conference in San Francisco in October, 2005. At that conference, CAN endorsed upcoming initiatives in December by other organizations, such as the RCP’s World Can’t Wait (an initiative that UFPJ refused to endorse.)
Where does the student movement go from here?
The big question now is where does the US student movement go from here, after a year of protests against war and military recruitment, and after victories over repression at campuses coast to coast? The answer to that question is up to students obviously. The Campus Antiwar Network has a strong record of success, and given that it is the democratic, grassroots national student antiwar network in the US, it will have a primary role in determining student priorities in 2006-2007.
Certainly, CAN have much work to do to stimulate and organize student activism at US campuses. Unlike last year, though, we know this: it has proven allies, both in the US and internationally, who will come to their aid when they face the inevitable challenges that lie ahead.
References:
The Open Letter to SFSU is found at http://www.traprockpeace.org/sfsu/
CAN’s history in photos, with links to blogs that contain letters in support, is found at http://www.traprockpeace.org/campus_antiwar.html
See also the Campus Antiwar Network website at http://www.campusantiwar.net