Palestinian people

Scott McConnell ~ Stephen Hawking And The Boston Globe: Two Breaks In The Wall

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The American Conservative May 14 2013

BDS = Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions ~G

BDSIt’s hard to know which is the bigger deal, Stephen Hawking’s BDS-inspired decision to drop out of a high-powered conference in Israel (a country he has visited several times before) or the Boston Globe’s endorsement of Hawking’s protest. Both actions would have been virtually inconceivable five years ago, and both reflect the broader impatience of mainstream, high-prestige Western institutions and personalities with Israel’s intensifying land-grabbing on the West Bank and its longstanding practice of using the never-ending “peace process” to camouflage policies of slow-motion ethnic cleansing.

Hawking of course is a global celebrity, renowned as a top theoretical physicist who has triumphed professionally despite suffering from the most debilitating of diseases. His defiance is celebrated in graphic form here and analyzed perceptively by the Israeli anti-occupation journalist Larry Derfner here. Derfner doesn’t really like BDS but notes that nothing else to date has worked: the Israeli public seems all too happy to elect governments which support the occupation, the United States is too timid to try “tough love” on Israel, and it’s very difficult for the Palestinians to make non-violent protest effective against an occupier using live ammunition, midnight arrests, and detention without trial. Not that they aren’t trying.

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Stephen Lendman ~ Understanding Israeli Settlements

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Steve Lendman blog February 23 2013

They violate international law. They prioritize land theft. They prevent peace. On January 31, the UN International Fact-Finding Mission on Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory condemned them for good reason.

They deny Palestinian self-determination. They comprise “part of an overall pattern of (Israeli) breaches.”

They benefit Jews exclusively. They institutionalize racist segregation, inequality, dispossession, and occupation harshness.

The UN Mission wants them halted without preconditions. It called for “immediately initiat(ing) a process of withdrawal of all settlers from the OPT.”

It wants companies and governments to “assess the human rights impact of their activities.”

It wants them to “cease all connections to settlements.” It wants decades of Israeli lawlessness ended.

The David Project (DP) “shapes campus opinion on Israel by educating, training, and empowering student leaders to be thoughtful, strategic and persuasive advocates.”

They do so for what they should condemn. Their programs operate in more than 130 Jewish high schools and middle schools.

David Bernstein is executive director. “We have moved from a more frontal approach to advocacy to a more relational” one, he said.

“We believe relationships make the world go round.”

“We educate and empower students in both the content and the skills necessary to form a robust network of relationships on campus, and teach and guide them in leveraging those relationships to raise understanding and support for Israel.”

“We also have moved from addressing problems wherever they appear (there are 4000 institutions of higher learning in this country alone!) to a more focused approach in which we pick our spots carefully, knowing that to be all things to all people means that you are not going to be very effective at any one place.”

Its “Understanding The Settlements: A Primer” addresses the growing controversy. It goes “beyond headlines and sound bites,” it claims.

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Paul Craig Roberts ~ Puppet State America

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Paul Craig Roberts | November 19 2012

GazaThe United States government and its subject peoples think of the US as “the world’s only superpower.” But how is a country a superpower when its entire government and a majority of the subjects, especially those members of evangelical churches, grovel at the feet of the Israeli Prime Minister? How is a country a superpower when it lacks the power to determine its own foreign policy in the Middle East? Such a country is not a superpower. It is a puppet state.

In the past few days we have witnessed, yet again, the “American superpower” groveling at Netanyahu’s feet. When Netanyahu decided to again murder the Palestinian women and children of Gaza, to further destroy what remains of the social infrastructure of the Gaza Ghetto, and to declare Israeli war crimes and Israeli crimes against humanity to be merely the exercise of “self-defense,” the US Senate, the US House of Representatives, the White House, and the US media all promptly declared their support for Netanyahu’s crimes.

On November 16 the Congress of the “superpower,” both House and Senate, passed overwhelmingly the resolutions written for them by AIPAC, the Israel Lobby known as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the only foreign agent that is not required to register as a foreign agent. The Global News Service of the Jewish People reported their power over Washington with pride. Both Democrats and Republicans shared the dishonor of serving Israel and evil instead of America and justice for the Palestinians.

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Chris Hedges Interview ~ The Template For Harvesting America, Sacrifice Zones And Blood (Part 2)

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SGTReport | October 27 2012 | Thanks, A.L.

This is part two of a two part transcript that’s over 5000 words.

In this interview, Chris Hedges talks about the template being used to harvest America– at the expense of the middle class, the sacrifice zones feeling the most pain, and the blood price we’ve paid for the rights they are trying to take away.

Thanks to ON volunteer Don Caldarazzo    for help with the transcription process.

Rob Kall: Okay, so there were definitely problems.  How do you see the big picture evolving then, with resistance, with civil disobedience?  What are the next steps?

Chris Hedges: Well, it’s the Ruling Class that determines the parameters of rebellion. And I’ve covered movements all over the world. I’ve covered the revolutions in Eastern Europe, I covered both of the Palestinian uprisings, the Intifadas, I covered the street demonstrations that brought down Slobodan Milosevic, I’ve of course covered the collapse of Yugoslavia itself. And when the ruling elite cannot respond rationally, i.e. institute mechanisms to mitigate the despair, and anger, and frustration that has been visited on the population, then there is always a backlash, but no one, not even the purported leaders of movements, have any idea, number one, what will set it off, and [two] what it will look like.  But that “something” is coming, I have no doubt, especially having spent the last two years in the poorest pockets of the United States. And I just want to throw in, that the reason I did it with Joe Sacco, and fifty pages of the book are illustrated with drawings and comic panels that outlined people’s lives, give them a kind of filmic quality, is because these people are invisible, and these Sacrifice Zones are invisible, the Corporate Media, especially the airwaves, just virtually don’t cover it at all.  You know, things are only getting worse. The fact that Congress refused to extend unemployment benefits means that hundreds of thousands of Americans are going to be thrust into destitution, and tens of thousands of those people are going to lose their homes.

Read More @ OpedNews.com

Max Igan ~ LIVE from Gaza On Truth Frequency Radio [Video]

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 | September 26 2012

09/26/2012 ~ Max Igan joins us LIVE on the ground in Gaza, to give us a firsthand account of what life is really like there. We had some difficulties on both ends technologically and with Hamas bothering Max and his team during their stay there, so we are very happy and relieved to have him home safe again. We thank him from the bottom of our hearts for exposing the truth about the people living there. Not only are they NOT suicide bombers, they’re also some of the sweetest people in the world!

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