Pictures from our presentation Wed 12/17

Thank you all for coming to our presentation in Norfolk this last Wednesday. We hope you take some time to look at these pictures and we really hope to work with all of you to build the antiwar movement!

This is Jabalia refugee camp (near Gaza City) where the First Intifada began in 1987. When we were there, 500 homes and buildings had been recently demolished, killing 150 people. Notice the fire? Now people live in the piles of rubble where their homes stood.



Rafah is the demolished city surrounded by snipers in watchtowers on the border with Egypt. The boy picking through the rubble is endangering his life. Doing so, or even looking directly at a watchtower gives the snipers permission to shoot. That's Egypt behind the iron Wall (which was partially exploded on Jan 23, 2008!).



Still in Rafah, this is SOS, a children's village with locations in over 100 countries. It also happens to be my favorite organization. The bullet holes in this school are from the 2 nearby watchtowers. While we were touring the grounds, a tower fired twice into the village; warning shots because we were sneaking peaks at them. They should be PROTECTING these children and instead they live in fear in their own homes.

One of the first things we spoke about at our presentation was that a minority of Palestinians have citizenship in Israel but are not equal in law to Jewish citizens. Here is an example of that, from the Negev desert, where Israel provides Jewish citizens with plumbing, water, electricity, and paved roads but is not obligated to provide the same to non-Jewish citizens living just down the road. Look at the difference!

This photo should illustrate the size and presence of the wall in the West Bank.

Here is the photo I took of the 16-member family who the Israelis had made homeless, along with hundreds of others, that summer in 2005 when Missy and I were in occupied Palestine.
This is another picture of the wall to illustrate its effects on Palestinians. The wall here snakes around an orchard, leaving it on the "Israeli side" and effectively stealing it.
Lastly there are the radical settlers of Hebron. To normal Israelis they are crazy people who give Jews a bad name. To the wealthy rulers of Israel they are conveniently helping to intimidate the Palestinians, and help to steal more land and homes as Israel ruthlessly expands. The constant rain of garbage thrown by radical Jews has forced Palestinians to erect nets. And the irritation of garbage is nothing compared to cinderblocks and rocks.

Thank you for caring about this issue and wanting to end American support for the occupation. It is clear from our event that there is a lot of potential for organizing in Norfolk and Tidewater. Let's BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW! END THE OCCUPATIONS - IRAQ, PALESTINE, and AFGHANISTAN!

Crossing into Bethlehem from Israel nowadays you are met with a scene from the pages of Orwell. The Israelis have removed anti-apartheid graffiti from the wall and erected two murals. One states in three languages, "Go in peace," and the other describes the relationship between the annexed city of Jerusalem and the occupied city of Bethlehem as one of "peace and love." Tourists on their way to see the birthplace of Jesus may not even realize they've entered martial law.

Along with the absurd facelift, plenty of things have changed in Palestine since my last stay here two years ago. Abbas and Fateh have accepted Western aid to crush Hamas. Militias are being disarmed despite continued Israeli attacks and land theft. And basic Zionist law is being challenged.

On November 5 I entered Nablus and our driver avoided the main road which bordered on Balata, the largest West Bank refugee camp. We heard shooting from that direction so I asked him what the Israelis were up to. He told me, "Not Israelis. Palestinian police." The Palestinian Authority (PA) had brought into Nablus hundreds of armed police to disarm militias, obviously expecting confrontation. We heard shooting for hours.

Refugees have every right to take back their stolen land and redistribute it. Palestinians under occupation have every right to defend themselves from attacks and theft. But on that day in Nablus, the PA would not recognize the right for Palestinians to defend even the status quo. The Oslo agreements created the PA as a policing agent, not a resistance force. Instead of uniting the various militias as a single Palestinian army, it is actively disarming them and negotiating with Israel for permission to create a capitalist mini-state.


In Halhool I met some locals and visiting French activists who were helping with the olive harvest. We were assisting farmers that had been victimized by the apartheid wall, which either made it difficult for them to access their lands or just outright confiscated it for use by Jewish settlers. One family had waited 7 years just to plow the land. We picked and pruned the olive trees, started a small fire for tea, and felt pretty good about helping the family get passed the soldiers. The next time, however, the military was not impressed by the French and American volunteers. The family was once again denied access to their land, belonging to them since before the state of Israel was founded. An English-speaking soldier had an interesting take on the situation. He believed the military presence was necessary because Israel had to broker between two extremist groups: Hamas and the radical Jewish settlers. The absurd idea that an occupation mediates between extremists should sound familiar to Americans fed up with this rhetoric being used to justify the Iraq war.

Israeli citizens may find comfort in Zionism by blaming the conflict on extremists, but this is not the reality. Even in Hebron, where the settlers are the most brazen and violent, the reality is not one of "bad apples." Radical Zionists have been on a campaign to terrorize the population into leaving, with some successes. They do this by threats, open harassment, home invasions, vandalism, and violence. They have taken over homes above Palestinian shops to throw their garbage, or bricks, upon them regularly. Shop owners have had to erect nets to keep the filth off their wares. But the problem in Hebron, and in Palestine, is not a small population of extremist Jews. The Zionist government was founded with the intent to continue expanding and ridding the land of the indigenous population. The settlers have the support and protection of the military and without this the local population could have easily defended themselves. Israel is not mediating; it is using the settlers as a battering ram.

In Tel Aviv I met with folks at Kav La Oved (worker's hotline) and got some good news. On October 10 the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that Israeli companies that employ Palestinians under martial law must provide for them the same minimum wages and labor rights guaranteed to Jews. At the same time 90 West Bank workers employed by Yamit irrigation systems went on strike to demand enactment of the ruling. In the beginning of November, all 90 of the workers of the Sol-Or petrol container and metal factory went on strike for the same demands. This small strike wave is impressive in its simple demand: that Jews and non-Jews should have equal rights in the workplace.

Though the victory brings hope, Israel fears becoming dependent on Palestinian labor and has been steadily replacing them with foreign guest workers. The number of Palestinians employed inside Israel or in Israeli-controlled industrial zones has dwindled from 180,000 in 1987 (before the First Intifada) to 33,000 in 2004. It is unlikely that the Palestinian capitalist leadership will aid in the fight for West Bank workers to keep their jobs in Israel, preferring to profit from their own exploitation of those men and women. Nor would they see the necessity forming an alliance between guest workers and Palestinians, demanding full rights for non-Jews regardless of origin. Only a working-class leadership can remedy this.

The apartheid government of Israel enforces its racist rule in a three-tier system in which Palestinian refugees, Palestinians under occupation, and Palestinian citizens of Israel are subject to different laws from Jewish citizens. Capitalist and middle-class leaderships have led recent fights for those in one tier, but not the others. Only a working-class leadership can unite Palestinians in all three tiers in a combined fight to dismantle Israeli apartheid. Additionally, it is only a working-class leadership that can unite Palestinians with Hebrew workers and guest workers in Israeli industries to establish a secular, democratic Palestine.

Our activism is aimed at ending US aid to the apartheid government of Israel, and our strategy here must reflect the complexities of the situation itself on the ground. Israel is not a "mistake" in an otherwise benevolent US imperialism. It is harmful, not helpful, to mobilize based on these terms. This rhetoric only serves to justify imperialism, seeking merely to streamline it by ridding it of the burden of Israel. Instead, our movement must make it untenable to wage war on working people anywhere. To do this we must popularize the ideas of the anti-imperialist struggle in the Middle East and in the world.

More about Sudan

I just recieved this article: "Ten Reasons Why 'Save Darfur' is a PR Scam to Justify the Next US Oil and Resource Wars in Africa"

There are also some good articles written by a French acedemic, Gérard Prunier, about the context and history of the conflict.
-Darfur's Sudan Problem


He wrote a book titled "Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide" and the first chapter is available to read online here


Incedently, the role played by celebrities like Angolina Jolie or Opra is also nothing new. In fact, the tactic of getting celebrities to endorse colinialism, whether well-intentioned or not, is as old as colonialism itself. Henry Morton Stanley, the famed explorer of Africa, was sent around the world by King Leopold to garner support of Belgium's colonizing of the Congo. He and others convinced the world that this was a charitable effort to counter the horrors of the Arab slave trade with the civilizing influence of Europeans and their values.

Sudan and Darfur

Go to SaveDarfur.org and you will be surprised at the strange unfamiliarity you will feel. Sure, it seems like a normal activist group, but there are some some notable and important differences. For instance, when have the US presidential hopefuls ever sent video messages to our activist websites? There is something strange afoot...

Watch the videos and you will find Hillary Clinton and John McCain expressing their outrage at China, which Clinton claims has been "the main obstacle to strong Security Council action." Here is another strange thing to find on an activist site - they are calling FOR intervention, rather than trying to STOP intervention.

Along with Hillary Clinton's anger at China, you will hear Obama lamenting genocide. Yet neither of these presidential hopefuls would agree to leave Iraq by 2013! Here they are - the architects and supporters of the most genocidal conflict in the world right now, in numbers of both casualties and refugees, are lamenting a smaller conflict and promising the new invasion would be different from the Iraq adventure. Yes, Sudan has the 2nd largest oil reserves in Africa. And yes, China has contracts, which US oil politicians want, to drill the oil there. But no, this invasion would be UN or NATO sponsored and therefore "humanitarian."

History is filled with examples of conquerers claiming they came for the bennefit of the colonized, rather than for their real intention to loot what was valuable. Read "King Leopold's Ghost" and you will see how the Belgian King garnered support for the conquering and enslaving of the Congolese people by claiming it was a humanitarian venture. He spoke about the horrors of "the Arab slave trade" which he wished to abolish out of the kindness of his heart. He was even elected the honorary president of the Aborigines Protection Society, a British human rights group! Thus he began his plunder, on the backs of Congolese slaves he supposedly liberated from the inhuman Arabs.

US imperialists have retained the rhetoric of their European forebears - the dull-witted black African is the victim of the hateful, dehumanized Arab villain. This is what the Belgians were presented in regards to the Congo, and what we are now presented in regards to Sudan. The supposed good intention of groups like the Aborigines Protection Society, and perhaps Save Darfur today, lends support to imperialist projects.

If Americans wish to save lives from genocide, or to save people the horror of becoming refugees, the best thing we can do is end our government's wholesale slaughter of the Iraqi people. And to help the people of Darfur, our real weapon lies in our ability to keep the US war machine from getting a foothold on Sudanese soil.

What function does the PA serve?

The most significant thing that I witnessed while in Palestine was in Nablus, the largest city in the West Bank. We were driving in the vacinity of Balata, which is also the largest refugee camp in the West Bank. It was probably 3pm and we heard the unmistakable sound of shooting from the camp. The driver avoided the main road and began climbing a steep hill to get around. I asked him, "Why are the Israelis here? Why are they shooting?" He told me that the Israelis were not there - that the Palestinian police were the ones firing in the camp.

Around 7 or 8pm when we left, we still heard shooting. The Associated Press article that I read a few days later claimed that the Palestinian Authority had brought in something like 200 extra police to carry out this operation. They were forcibly disarming the militants.

We Americans may not have to deal with occupation today, but we did fight off an occupation by the British when we had our revolution. Imagine if our situation was like the Palestinians - that the Minutemen, defending their land from foreign tyranny, was told that they could no longer fight the British because George Washington signed a treaty. And he came with guns to prevent you from continuing...

The Palestinian Authority was created by the Oslo Agreements. It was a terrible treaty - like the treaties that the Native Americans mistakenly signed - and Israel neither ended the occupation nor stopped the theft of land. In fact, more Jewish settlements were build on stolen land AFTER the Oslo Agreements were signed! And the Palestinian Authority, which the accords created, became a policing agent. It "stabilized" the region, meaning Palestinians could not violate the "peace" by fighting for basic rights.

What should we think about the Palestinian Authority? Refugees have every right to arm themselves and take back their stolen lands. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have every right to fight the military that threatens them daily in their own homes. But the Palestinian Authority does not even acknowledge their right to defend themselves. Even the status quo cannot be defended! The Israelis are currently stealing land and destroying Palestinian homes while the Palestinian Authority is currently preventing Palestinians from resisting.

If we look at South African history, we see that the ANC had legitimacy. It launched a real military campaign against the racist South African Army. The Palestinian Authority, on the other hand, is not engaged in any form of resistance. Without serving to resist it, what function can the PA serve except to help maintain the system of Israeli oppression?

Back in the US...

This is my first post in over two years. I am back in the US from a second trip to Palestine and I will be reporting on my experiences there soon - I have a lot of notes and photos to go through.

I intend to post to this blog fairly frequently now, in an attempt to turn some of my experience and research into coherent articles.

Today I read an article by Stokely Carmichael, the Civil Rights activist, which he wrote post-67 about Palestine and its link with the struggle for Black Liberation. He talked about the need for all oppressed people to unite, and for all colonized people to fight the colonizers together. This is the simple basis for why he said blacks must support Palestine, and all nations in the struggle to free themselves. But he went further and even illuminated the special place that blacks hold amongst oppressed peoples - that they were taken from their homeland and colonized as a people somewhere else entirely.

I think this is a good place for me to start off. Palestine shares something more intimate with the black nation than I had thought. There are similar contradictions and difficulties. Both are captive labor forces - that is, they do not hold the simple status of poor workers. Poor workers are allowed more mobility and, as is seen with new immigrant populations, will be allowed to integrate and attain wealth much more readily. This explains why the Irish, while oppressed so poorly in the US when they first arrived, have surpassed blacks in wealth and political representation. Blacks are captive workers - not just poor workers - and this is seen in the way their communities are policed. They are captive, like the Palestinians are captive, because they are a colonized people.

The fact is that the Palestinians, and blacks, face two distinct struggles that must be fought simultaneously - the struggle of an especially exploited worker, and the anti-colonial struggle. Neither are sufficient on their own. Fighting for equality as a worker is self-explanatory. But it won't be a solution to imprisonment, militarization/police presence, or the extremely important perceptions of a people - history, culture, standards of beauty - that are not controlled by the people themselves. De-colonization will have to do away with the state of things as they are - that oppressed people, even when they successfully win their freedom, have been ommitted from the institutions that showed their faces to the world and to themselves. They have not only been robbed of their labor, but of their identities as well.

And this, unfortunately, means Palestinians and blacks have a great deal in common. It is helpful to think of this when trying to understand Palestine.

I can now say that the place where I have seen the most Korean people at a single time was in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Today, something like 2600 Koreans marched from the checkpoint into Bethlehem. This was a peace march that they have been doing every year for I don't know how long...

I am inspired to see so many different people from all over the world coming here at great personal expense to work in solidarity with the Palestinians and their struggle for freedom. And I am also disgusted to see how our governments can go on for so long without needing to listen to us, their citizens, because they do not need our approval to sell weapons and oppress people and make profits doing so.