The latest in the Shit ___ Say meme has hit the internet: Shit Zionists say.
Parody is a frequent ingredient in satire and is often used to make social and political points. And likewise, in their latest video, instead of only focusing at poking fun; the Shit ___ Say takes the meme as an excuse to make not so thinly veiled commentary on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israeli border soldier stands guard during repeated clashes with Palestinian demonstrators in the West Bank town of Qalandia in 2011
IN the so called Middle East’s only democracy, they do not do guillotines. But there are other innovative rituals of humiliation, designed to reassure the Palestinians that every New Year could well be their last in the land of olive trees. As the wind calms down everything returns to normal, but not for the Palestinians, they don’t.
Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem may be best known for is its camera project, which started in 2007 when the organization began distributing video cameras to Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. These cameras are often the only object Palestinians can “arm” themselves with in the face of discrimination, oppression and violence waged against them.
In 2011, volunteers in B’Tselem’s camera project filmed over 500 hours of footage in the West Bank. These are two minutes they collected and edited from it, depicting life under occupation and military rule, as a way to sum up the year that passed.
Sources: +972 website & B’Tselem’s Facebook page.
Mustafa Tamimi after being shot in the face with a high-velocity tear gas canister from short range
Mustafa Tamimi, 27, was critically injured on Friday in the village of Nabi Saleh when an Israeli soldier fired a tear gas canister directly at his head from a short distance.
A group of Palestinian men surround Mustafa Tamimi after he was shot at the village of Nabi Saleh
Witnesses say the soldier was less than ten meters away when he fired, causing severe damage to the orbital region of Tamimi’s face.
“Half of his face was destroyed, pretty much. It looked really, really bad and he lost a lot of blood,” said Lazar Simeonov, a photographer that was in the village at the time. “I am not sure he will make it.”
Friday marked the two-year anniversary of the weekly protests in Nabi Saleh. A larger crowd than usual had gathered for this week’s demonstration, including a delegation from the United Nations.
After more than an hour of tear gas salvos from the soldiers against the main core of demonstrators, a group of Palestinian youth had set up a small road block of stones on a main road, where they began throwing rocks at soldiers.
Nabi Saleh village -Two people console each other after the day's tragedy
An Israeli military bulldozer came to remove the hand-made obstacle with three Israeli jeeps to guard it. Palestinian youths began throwing stones at the bulldozer when Israeli soldiers emerged from the jeeps and began firing. One of the soldiers launched a tear gas canister directly at Tamimi. Other protesters ran over to help him before he was rushed away in a small ambulance.
The vehicle was stopped by soldiers at a checkpoint at the entrance of the village and Tamimi was removed from the ambulance, where he was treated on the spot by soldiers before being taken to the Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva.
Several people have been killed or injured by tear gas canisters discharged by Israeli soldiers in recent years. The crowd dispersal weapons were intended to be fired skyward, a directive often disregarded by the soldiers.
Mustafa Tamimi (left) a moment before his injury. Circled in red are the barrel of the gun and the projectile that hit him
Nabi Saleh, a small Palestinian village near Ramallah, has had much of its land appropriated by the neighboring Jewish settlement of Halamish. After a critical water well was taken by settlers two years ago, local residents of Nabi Saleh began organizing non-violent protests.
Mustafa Tamimi, the Palestinian protester who died shortly after he was shot by a tear gas canister in the head by IDF soldier
Maj. Petre Lerner, an IDF officer shared his reactions to the death of a Palestinian protestor on Twitter – and created a storm that reached all the way to the UK. IDF Central Command Spokesman Major Peter Lerner was quoted Sunday night in the British media as mocking the death of Mustafa Tamimi, who died of wounds he sustained when he was hit by a tear gas canister during a protest in the West Bank.
The UK’s Daily telegraph quoted Lerner’s tweets from his personal account: “What was Mustafa thinking running after a moving jeep while throwing stones #fail.” The British media believes that the use of the word “fail” was meant to express mockery of the protestor, while Lerner’s intention was to use the word in its literal sense – as failure.
Moreover, when looking at the entire tweet timeline, something the UK newspaper, it is easy to see that as early as the day of the incident itself, after Tamimi was transferred to the Belinson Medical Center, Lerner wrote: “I am happy that it seems Mustafa Tamimi will survive the unfortunate incident. I would say that if you can’t stand the heat keep…” He most likely meant to say If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.
*All photos by Lazar Simeonov.
* thanks to +972 website, Occupied Palestine & Ynetnews
If Americans Knew
Jerusalem 1839 by David Roberts - With the mosque of Omar at the center, the Dome of the rock at the background this beautiful drawing gives a feeling of warmth, unique, & relaxed Arabic ambience of the holy city in the 19th century
In the late 1800s a small, fanatic movement called “political Zionism” began in Europe. Its goal was to create a Jewish state somewhere in the world. Its leaders settled on the ancient and long-inhabited land of Palestine for the location of this state.
Palestine’s population at this time was approximately ninety-six percent non-Jewish (primarily Muslim and Christian).
Palestine the land now occupied by the state of Israel was a multicultural society with Arabs comprising 96 % of population in late 1800s
Over the coming decades Zionist leaders used various strategies to accomplish their goal of taking over Palestine:
In the 1930s, Jewish land ownership had increased from approximately 1% to just over 6% of the land, and violence had increased as well. With the emergence of several Zionist terrorist gangs (whose ranks included a number of future Prime Ministers of Israel), there was violent conflict. Numerous people of all ethnicities were killed – then, as now, the large majority of them Christian and Muslim Palestinians.7
750,000 Palestinian men, women, and children were expelled from their homes by violent Israeli forces (1947-49)
This growing violence culminated in Israel’s ruthless 1947-49 “War of Independence,”in which at least 750,000 Palestinian men, women, and children were expelled from their homes by numerically superior Israeli forces – long before any Arab armies joined the war. This massive humanitarian disaster is known as ‘The Catastrophe,’ al Nakba in Arabic.
Zionist forces committed 33 massacres and destroyed 531 Palestinian towns. Author Norman Finkelstein states: “According to the former director of the Israeli army archives, ‘in almost every village occupied by us during the War… acts were committed which are defined as war crimes, such as murders, massacres, and rapes’…Uri Milstein, the authoritative Israeli military historian of the 1948 war, goes one step further, maintaining that ‘every skirmish ended in a massacre of Arabs.’”
Count Folke Bernadotte, a former official of the Swedish Red Cross who saved thousands of Jews during World War II and was appointed U.N. mediator in Palestine, said of the refugees: “It would be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes.” Bernadotte was assassinated by a Zionist organization led by future Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.
Over the 60 years since Israel’s founding on May 14, 1948, this profound injustice has continued. Palestinian refugees are the largest remaining refugee population in the world.
1.3 million Palestinians live in Israel as “Israeli citizens,” but despite their status as citizens, they are subject to systematic discrimination. Many are prohibited from living in the villages and homes from which they were violently expelled, and their property has been confiscated for Jewish-only uses. In Orwellian terminology, Israeli law designates these internal refugees as “present absentees.”
Israeli tanks demployed in East Jerusalem after the 1967 offensive.
In 1967 Israel launched its third war and seized still more Palestinian (and other Arab) land. Israel also attacked a U.S. Navy ship, the USS Liberty, killing and injuring over 200 Americans, an event that remains largely covered-up today, despite efforts by an extraordinary array of high-level military officers and civilian officials to expose it.
Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip – the final 22% of mandatory Palestine – and began building settlements for Jewish Israelis on land confiscated from Palestinian Muslims and Christians. It has demolished more than 18,000 Palestinian homes since 1967. In 2005 Israel returned Gazan land to its owners, but continues to control its borders, ports, and air space, turning Gaza into a large prison, where 1.5 million people are held under what a UN Human Rights Commissioner described as “catastrophic” conditions.
Over 11,000 Palestinian men, women, and children are imprisoned in Israeli jails under physically abusive conditions (many have not even been charged with a crime) and the basic human rights of all Palestinians under Israeli rule are routinely violated. Some prisoners tortured by Israel have been American citizens. In the violence that began in fall, 2000 through Jan 18, 2009, Israeli forces killed 6,288 Palestinians; Palestinian resistance groups killed 1,071 Israelis. Israel’s military, the fourth most powerful on earth possesses hundreds of nuclear weapons.
Because of Israel’s powerful US lobby, American taxpayers give Israel approximately $7 million per day – far more than we give to all of sub-Saharan Africa put together. In its 60 years of existence, Israel, the size of New Jersey, has received more of our tax money than any other nation on earth. While most Americans are unaware of these facts (studies have shown that media report on Israeli deaths at rates up to 13 times greater than they report on Palestinian deaths) our governmental actions are making us responsible for a continuing catastrophe of historic proportions – and which is, in addition, creating extremely damaging enmity to the US itself. Israel partisans have played a significant role in promoting U.S. attacks on Iraq and Iran.15
As more Americans learn the facts, there is a growing bipartisan, multi-ethnic movement to counter Israel’s US lobby, which has long has held a vicegrip on American Mideast policies.
Palestinian loss of land 1946 - 2005
“Confusion about the origins of the conflict all too often has obscured Americans’ understanding of its true dimension. It began as a conflict resulting from immigrants struggling to displace the local majority population. All else is derivative from this basic reality.”
– Donald Neff, former Senior Editor, Time Magazine, Fallen Pillars: U.S. Policy towards Palestine and Israel since 1945
“[T]he story of 1948… is the simple but horrific story of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine… Retrieving it from oblivion is incumbent upon us, not just as a greatly overdue act of historiographical reconstruction or professional duty; it is… the very first step we must take if we ever want reconciliation to have a chance, and peace to take root, in the torn lands of Palestine and Israel.”
– Ilan Pappe, Israeli Historian, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
“The Palestinian Holocaust is unsurpassed in history. For a country to be occupied, emptied of its people, its physical and cultural landmarks obliterated, its destruction hailed as a miraculous act of God, all done according to a premeditated plan, meticulously executed, internationally supported, and still maintained today…”
– Dr. Salman Abu-Sitta, Palestine Right Of Return, Sacred, Legal, and Possible
August 06, 2011, 3:44:32 PM | +972blog
On its way to passing a law that would remove Arabic’s status as Israel’s second official language, the Knesset is simply acknowledging the second-class status of Arabs in Israel.
By Mya Guarnieri
The Israeli Knesset is on a roll. First, it passes the anti-boycott bill. Now, it’s considering changing the status of Arabic from the state’s second official language into the language of the state’s second class citizens.
I’ll say now what I felt about the anti-boycott law: the Knesset should pass the legislation so the world will understand what it’s really dealing with.
Arabic might have been the second official language all these years but few Jewish Israelis speak it. NGOs have had to wage legal battles to get Arabic on the street signs funded and posted by the state. For example, when Adalah filed a petition in 1998 regarding the use of Arabic on national road signs, over 80% of those signs “were posted solely in Hebrew and English; Arabic appeared, if at all, only on signs posted near Arab localities.”
How many times has an Arabic speaker with weak Hebrew gone into a government office and not been able to get the help they need? How many times have they been faced with forms that come in Hebrew only?
And how have those who speak the second official language of the state fared in Israeli courts? I might add that I sat in on a Supreme Court hearing in January and watched a Palestinian man struggle to articulate himself to the judges in Hebrew, not in the second official language, his mother tongue, Arabic. There was no translator present.
This legislation would formalize the sentiment that has surfaced in a Yafo (Jaffa) school, where a principal has forbidden Palestinian citizens of Israel from speaking Arabic amongst each other.
The law, as disturbing as it is, is a step towards honesty. Perhaps it will also serve as a wake-up call to those who, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, are still holding on to the belief that a Jewish and democratic state is possible.
In his recent and memorable speech at Capitol Hill and while mesmerizing America’s Congressmen with his reiterated talk of Israel being the only democratic friend of the United States in the Middle East, and as he was reaching a state of absolute euphoria due to the unbelievable non-stop applause and standing ovations he received from his most distinguished and hypocritical audience, Mr. Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, somehow forgot that the democracy he was boasting about incorporated a counter view to the one he was enthusiastically presenting to the American Congress about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“No preconditions whatsoever, no concessions on Jerusalem as a unified capital for the Jewish state of Israel, no consideration of the right of return for the Palestinian refugees, no restrictions on Israeli military deployments outside its territory, no negotiations with any Palestinian delegates which include Hamas, and no clear indications of what territory might ultimately be sacrificed- painfully- to the Palestinians, even then, except that would not be based on any reference to 1967 border lines. In short, if the Palestinians want peace, they will have to accept whatever and whenever Israel is willing, unilaterally and unconditionally, to concede” …That was Mr. Netanyahu’s vision for any possible Mid-East peace or rather the impossible one.
In most political circles, this restrictive and shamefully biased and detached from reality vision for a so called peace will probably be viewed like Mr. Netanyahu is unequivocally blocking any hope for restarting the Mid-East talks, but the esteemed American Senators and Congressmen attending his speech didn’t think so.
Mr. Netanyahu, despite the brash and unapologetic chauvinism and his outright refusal of any political advice or moral leadership from Obama, proved that he is not an exception from those Middle Eastern dictators who are currently being toppled by their angry people in the region.
And as Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, pointed out, Netanyahu is acting the same as Mubarak of Egypt who had the leverage and the time of 30 long years to empower his country and people but instead he wasted all the time and opportunities and when he was finally forced to concede and implement some democratic changes it was a matter of doing too little too late.
This is exactly where Mr. Netanyahu is headed, he has been following the Arab awakening, but as a politician he failed to see through the core of those uprisings.
West Bank wall
Hiding behind his high West Bank wall he somehow couldn’t feel the wind of change sweeping through the whole Middle East. If Netanyahu had the kind of political and historical insight that allowed him to decipher what is being currently written down as history in the Middle East he should have realized that now is the time to change the Zionist rhetoric, let go of the old prejudices and make some concessions that would bring about peace to the Palestinians, the Israelis and the whole Middle East.
If only Netanyahu invested some critical and professional political thinking before he slammed the white house late initiative and if he had not been hypnotized by the support of the most fanatic Israeli right wingers and the most stubborn and unrealistic American Zionist lobbies he would have had the courtesy to contemplate the wisdom in Obama’s Middle East speech.
But not all the Israelis are grudging right wingers and not all the pro-Israeli American lobbies are as blinded and detached from reality like AIPAC. The newly liberal pro-Israel group, j-street has made it clear from the start that they endorsed Obama’s call for establishing a sovereign Palestinian state on the 1967 border lines and so did the liberals and the leftists in Israel.
Netanyahu left the United States feeling victorious after getting the American Congress on its knees and after having lectured Obama about the political perils of a two-state solution based on 1967 borders but it didn’t take so long before that phony triumph crashed upon the rocks of Middle Eastern reality, as Netanyahu himself put it.
Israelis marching on the evening of Naksa Day calling for a sovereign Palestinian state
Once he got back to Tel Aviv, Netanyahu called for a state of high alert as it was a matter of days before the anniversary of the six-day war, or what the Arabs refer to as the shameful setback or Naksa, that was launched on June 5, 1967 and after which Israel had premeditatedly occupied big chunks of Arab lands on 3 fronts, the Egyptian, Palestinian and Syrian.
Last week the Israeli defense forces –IDF- braced for possible Palestinian marches on the Israeli borders commemorating the 1967 Israeli aggressive war but this year’s Naksa day came a little different than what Mr. Netanyahu expected, not that hundreds of Palestinians didn’t march on the borders with Israel but because thousands of Israelis unexpectedly and on the evening of Naksa day marched in Tel Aviv itself and loudly called for the realization of the two-state solution now and before it is too late and exactly as president Obama has called for in his Middle East speech last month.
Some 5,000 people, with protesters affiliated with the Hadash party, Meretz, Peace Now, the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement and the Geneva Initiative marched through the streets of Tel Aviv Saturday evening in a demonstration calling for the creation of a Palestinian state contiguous to the Israeli state.
"Yes We Ken" poster
Those rallies shouldn’t be viewed as Obama striking back at Bibi in the heart of the Israeli capital but rather as a sincere bid for rejuvenating the call “give peace a chance” embraced by liberal politicians and peace activists in the United States, in Israel and even in the occupied Arab territories in East Jerusalem and the west Bank who are pleading for letting not, what might be the last chance to reach a fair and durable settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, simply slip away over some futile dueling speeches between Bibi and Obama in Washington DC.
“it’s difficult for us to be excited by the applause Netanyahu received in Congress. Applause there cannot protect us here.” said Meretz MK Zehava Gal-On as she addressed the Israeli protesters
Speakers in the rally included Knesset members from the Meretz, Hadash, Labor and Kadima parties who in turn showed their endorsement and solidarity to the recent call by President Obama for a two-state solution based on 1967 border lines.
The rally sends an important message about Israeli support for President Obama’s vision at this critical moment — especially as his opponents are on the attack, distorting facts and apt to question his political loyalty to the concept of greater Israel, a concept most of his predecessors of the United States presidents had subscribed to.
The amazing moments in the march came when protesters chanted: “Israel and Palestine, two states for two peoples”; “Yes we ‘ken’” (the Hebrew word for “yes”); and “Bibi and Barak, peace isn’t a game,”
Indeed… peace is not a game and neither is war.
… Those Israeli rallies which have been hardly reported by the main stream media clearly show that Obama’s Middle East speech should not be regarded as some kind of a political blunder that somehow offended the American Zionist lobbies and jeopardized his odds for a second term in office but rather as a road map that ought to be followed if Israel want to escape the otherwise inevitable doom of turning into an apartheid regime where a Jewish minority would rule over an Arabic majority. And we all know how appallingly apartheid regimes crumbled down throughout history.
Carried away by his, on the rise, presidential approval rating following his legendary triumph over Osama Bin Laden, the prince of darkness whose image and recorded video-tapes have been made to haunt the American collective psyche as the destroyer of America president Obama thought it was time to indulge himself with some rhetoric about the Middle East’s chronic crisis and it’s so called peace process.
I cannot blame the man for obviously he was basking in the ecstasy of his political victories. I mean with the monstrous Gulf oil spill overcome and now behind him as history, the health care legislation passed and hailed as a big victory, the boys are out of the Iraqi swamp and soon out of the Afghani poppy fields and with the notorious Bin Laden shot in his bed room and given the most dignified burial ceremony before he was dumped in the bottom of the sea, one thing that would make Obama worthy of his controversial Nobel peace prize remained missing and unaddressed, namely the Palestinian- Israeli conflict, The only hot issue on the US foreign policy that defied any sort of promising outlook.
And since he was all geared up for his second term in office, especially after he had easily shoved away that showy billionaire, Trump by exhibiting a small piece of paper and since Sara Palin has been politically self-decaying by the virtue of her God- given clueless mentality Obama thought that with the presidential elections, a process made to believe controlled by the Zionist lobbies, coming next year why not while rolling out the red carpet for Netanyahu, try and appease the pro-Israeli lobbies in America like, AIPAC, J Street, AFSI, ..etc, and announce that the United States stands firm behind ironclad Israeli security alongside a non-militarized and feeble Palestinian state as an acceptable prerequisite for any negotiations with the Palestinians.
Jewish activists in New York denounce Obama's call for a return to Israel's pre-1967 borders. But the US president declared his 'unshakeable support' of Israel and did not condemn its illegal settlement building
In his Middle East speech Obama carefully refrained from mentioning the Palestinian refugee Issue nor did he mention how the East Jerusalem file would be tackled but he came out explicitly and without a flicker of hesitation and declared to the whole world that the United States strongly believes that the future state of Palestine should be based on the pre-1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps with Israel,… and this is where his luck ran out on him.
With The United States being a member of the diplomatic quartet on the Middle East the Obama statement subsequently meant that this is where also the United Nations, European Union and Russia probably stood on this thorny matter of the Palestinian borders.
Obama’s speech created a buzz on the mainstream media and on the web and certainly made him go to sleep that Thursday night feeling good about himself and thinking what a splendid speech he gave that surely made everyone happy in North Africa and the Middle east. … Well, maybe not the whole Middle East.
Obama thought, may be the Norwegian Nobel prize committee that granted him the Nobel peace prize had been right all along, a committee of that caliber could not be mistaken, they are all men of good judgment and great expertise and he must be that world peace maker they all agreed he is. He must be the one who could get the job done in the Middle East conflict.
That Thursday must have been one of Obama’s lucky days and it could have stayed so hadn’t it been for the following day visit of Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime minister of the state of the chosen people of Israel.
Receiving his esteemed guest in the oval office and after showing cordiality before the cameras and world press Netanyahu put on his iron gloves and began to punch, the unprepared and still ecstatic from last night, Obama where it really hurts.
Netanyahu with his monotonous and metallic voice and with the aid of his body language began to grab every statement Obama has made on the hoped for Israeli-Palestinian agreement and literally tore it apart and threw it into some shredder machine right in front of Obama’s eyes.
Netanyahu declared that while Israel is prepared to make generous compromises for peace, only he didn’t say what those compromises would be, it cannot go back to the 1967 borders because those borders are indefensible.”
Indefensible, a new word in the vocabulary the Zionist machine is bound to utilize in the coming years and may be decades and to be added to the dictionary of Israel’s most popular words such as anti-Semite, Holocaust denier, Israel-hater, Israel’s right to exist, Israel’s right to defend itself, chosen people and of course the promised land.
Netanyahu looked Obama in the eyes; and referring to his worldwide admired Middle East speech told him “A peace based on illusions will crash upon the rocks of Middle Eastern reality” in other words Netanyahu was saying that Obama, the diplomatic Quartet, the Arab league and the Palestinians they all have been deluded and living in a world of fantasy land and it was he who would take upon himself the arduous task of waking them up to the world of reality.
In a blunt display of arrogance, Netanyahu even went so far as to address, audaciously, unexpectedly and publicly, the highly delicate issue of the Palestinian refugees and their long deliberated upon right to return and declared “It’s not going to happen. Everybody knows it’s not going to happen, and I think it’s time to tell the Palestinians forthrightly it’s not going to happen.”
At this point and as the ticking seconds seemed like ages for Obama, it was clear that Mr. Netanyahu was slapping Obama in the face in public and for the whole world to see.
Obama with a look in his eyes that reflected mixed feelings of amazement, bewilderment and subjugation listened intently, his hands cupping his chin and part of his cheek as if he was feeling the pain and the humiliation and at the same time dodging any more slaps across his face.
It's not going to happen
Now the whole discourse was taking a dramatic change, as Mr. Netanyahu was lecturing Obama and the United States about the new Israeli geo-political realities on the ground, the Palestinian ground that is, or rather the used to be.
“The old game is over fellows, this is a whole new game now and it is going to be Israel once again, and like it or not, who will set the new rules. And as the United States had annexed Texas back in 1845 Israel simply followed in her footsteps and annexed the West Bank and East Jerusalem, big deal. It’s all part of this new game of demographic changes and if America got away with it I can see no reason why we cannot” that was the message Netanyahu was giving and impudently declaring between the lines.
Also between the lines there was a lot more to read than just this slap in the face, UN resolution 242 and the different interpretation of the Israeli-Palestinian borders issue; there was a clear indication as to who was really pulling the strings in the white house.
This historically awkward moment revealed beyond doubt the true influence Israel and its brigades of Zionist lobbies wield over the white house and the American policy. An old story but this time aired live in a new world edition that will cover, beside the oval office spectacle, the finale scene as Netanyahu speaks triumphantly at the annual policy meeting of AIPAC.
As Obama was hosting Netanyahu In the oval office, the holy of the holies of the American diplomacy, and with the whole world watching, it was not clear which one of them was the real president of the United States and which one was the guest of honor, I mean with this eternal and unbreakable bond between the United States and Israel it has always been kind of hard to tell who is who and which is which.
Clearly that Israeli display of public defiance and contempt for the United States policy and its president raises a lot of comments and questions but on top of which the one question that has been long begging for an answer “is a second term in office, or the first for that matter, worth sacrificing the pride and the interests of the world superpower?”
This hard to die question really needs to be answered, not by Obama but the Americans themselves, for it is one burdening issue that could not be easily terminated, gotten rid of and dumped in the bottom of some sea.
Poster of Dr. Finkelstein's lecture at the American University in Cairo
If you’ve been trying lately to contact Dr. Norman Finkelstein via email only you kept getting this reply “I will be out of town until 20 May 2011. I will not have access to internet so I will not be able to check my email” .. Then you must have wondered where Dr. Finkelstein was and what could that seemingly urgent matter, that kept him from checking his email, be?
Well, to spare you the time and a wrong guess, Dr. Finkelstein was not on some Caribbean island vacation, he was in Egypt joining some youth activists in their most daring and adventurous attempt to breach the heavy security cordon around the Israeli embassy in Cairo, break into the embassy and take down the Israeli flag.
Nevertheless and before he left Egypt he somehow managed to keep his prefixed schedule and gave a memorable lecture at the American university in Cairo – AUC.
Every year and on May 15, the Palestinians and the whole Arabs mark the Nakba day - the day Israel was established and declared a state by a controversial UN decree back in 1948.
Nakba is the Arabic for catastrophe. And indeed it has been, at least for the Palestinians who were expelled in a mass exodus as 750000 Palestinians were forced to flee their home land and make way for the new Jewish settlers.
This year marks the 63rd anniversary of this catastrophic event which proved after all these years of land grab that it’s not just some kind of brutal occupation or apartheid regime but an imminent danger to world peace altogether if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remained unresolved
Palestinian protesters on the Lebanese side of the border near Maroun al-Ras take cover from Israeli gunfire on Nakba Day
The 63rd anniversary of Nakba day comes amidst extraordinary events the Arab world is currently witnessing as the wind of change and revolutionary tide is sweeping across the Arab world.
Emboldened by the powerful Arab uprisings Palestinians living in Diaspora in scattered refugee camps along the borders with Israel in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestinians from the west bank and Gaza decided to rally in hundreds and head for the land where their ancestors once lived. They all decided to march to Palestine on the 63rd Nakba day.
In commemorating the day they simply crossed the barbed wires and the fortified Israeli check points jeopardizing their lives for the sake of a few moments where they could walk through the fields and actually touch the trees their fathers planted ages ago.
For the Palestinians it was a day of remembrance, mourning their uprooting, embracing the past and keeping the hope to return home alive in the heart of new generations.
For the Israelis it was also a day to remember, not as their day of independence but rather as the day Israel’s borders were practically breached on 4 fronts; the Syrian, Lebanese, Jordan and Palestinian.
One cannot go far as some Zionist analysts who, in their bid for more American and European funds to Israel’s security, came out and said that on Nakba day Israel had been invaded on all fronts. But I would certainly point out that this has been more like a psychological blow to the Zionist myth of living secure and isolated behind some high wall or impregnable iron dome.
The 760 km concrete barrier has given the Israelis the false perception that their world stopped where the high fence stood and that nobody existed on the other side.
The Israelis have been deluded by this wall myth and on the Nakba day they found out how vulnerable they are.
While segregation walls are being demolished all over the world, Israel stands on the wrong side of history and embrace this dying wall culture.
It has been years since Israel witnessed this kind of pan-Arabic public display of rejection to the Zionist scheme for the transfer or rather the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.
Dr. Finkelstein joining the anti-Israeli rallies outside the Israeli embassy in Cairo on May 15
In Egypt the Nakba day scenario has been completely different as thousands of pro-Palestinian activists planned to commemorate the day by marching toward Rafah, the border crossing point with Gaza, where they would express their solidarity to the Palestinians and denounce the continuing occupation of their land.
Also in the commemoration program came the invitation by al-Quds studenty club for Dr. Norman Finkelstein, the political scientist and the world acclaimed pro-Palestinian activist to give a lecture at AUC.
Since they were banned from reaching the border terminal of Rafah for security reasons, the activists made a tactical change in their plan and headed for the Israeli embassy in Cairo instead. They rallied there on Sunday as they called for the embassy to be closed and the Israeli flag to be taken down.
The protests started peacefully in front of the embassy in the morning but at 11 pm things began to turn violent as the protesters managed to breach the heavy security cordon around the embassy and actually reached the main entrance of the multi-story building at the top of which the Israeli embassy lies.
At that point, and minutes before the protesters were to get inside the embassy building, military and security reinforcements were called upon and on arrival to the protests site they began to warn the protesters not to proceed any further.
Failing to heed the warning, the military began to disperse the rally by shooting tear gas canisters and rubber bullets that hit one protester in the head and another one in the abdomen.
Dr. finkelstein joined the rally and actually took part at the beginning of the protests which lasted for hours into the night leaving 353 wounded and 168 arrested and waiting to be interrogated by a military prosecutor.
A military spokesman declared that the violent crackdown on protesters came after they had violated the peaceful terms for rallying as they actually set out to break into the embassy and commit an international violation by trespassing the premises of the embassy of a foreign sovereign country and forcibly taking down its flag.
As a matter of fact, a great sector of the Egyptian people, especially those who have witnessed the long history of Egyptian military confrontation with Israel in 1956, 1967 and 1973 are not at ease with these enthusiastic anti-Israeli embassy protests for they know too well that Israel tends to get foolishly aggressive whenever she gets nervous, and they think Egypt has other priorities at the moment than to get into trouble with the restless Zionists in Tel Aviv. But Dr. Finkelstein didn’t think so.
And when asked, on an Egyptian TV show the following evening, if now was the right time for post-Mubarak fragile Egypt to provoke Israel by closing down its embassy or taking down its flag, Dr.Finkelstein responded
“the Israeli embassy is the real provocation, and I think the Israeli flag should be taken down and the embassy should be closed as long as the Palestinian issue remains unresolved” …
and he added “the Egyptians will not lose their lives if Egypt lowered down the flag. It’s the Palestinians who are losing lives; around 15 were killed yesterday as they marked the Nakba day”
In his lecture that focused on the effects of the January 25 Revolution on the Arab-Israeli conflict Finkelstein said ..
“Egypt’s first civilian government is unlikely to attack Israel or renounce its 1979 peace treaty with the country. Instead, Israel is sweating simply because Egypt has become a force to reckon with rather than a pawn to be played. The biggest threat to Israel, he said, is that Egyptians will enter the modern world, continue to reclaim their dignity, and demand a central role in the region”
Dr. Norman Finkelstein during his lecture in Cairo
Finkelstein managed to win his AUC audience over, exactly as he did with most of the viewers of his TV interview. And he wrapped up his talk on TV by calling for the Egyptian military not to do Israel’s dirty work, and to release all 168 arrested protesters whom he viewed as true heroes who couldn’t stay silent over the Israeli crimes in Palestine and the whole Middle East.
In the few days Finkelstein stayed in Cairo, which lacked any mainstream media coverage, he did not only walk like an Egyptian but he talked and protested like one.
Though it was the first lecture for Dr. Finkelstein in Egypt but the chemistry between him and the Egyptian audience has been remarkable.
Finkelstein is a man who never does anything against his conscience and who dares to go to the end of his thought and that is the kind of voices people want to hear not only in Egypt but the whole world.
Cairo's iconic Tahrir square packed with thousands rallying in solidarity with Palestine.
It is hard to believe that those are the same people who were on the verge of being torn apart by the deadly sectarian violence just a few days ago. It is hard to imagine those are the same people who are yet struggling out of a revolution that weighed down heavily on their economy and security.
How could they, in just few days, grow out of their grief and overcome the dreadful shadow of civil war. How could they easily wipe the tears, put out the fire that meant to engulf the whole country and instead put on a smile, hold hands and head for Tahrir square once again. How could the people of Egypt, while preoccupied and deeply engaged in sorting out the post-Mubarak mess, find the time, or better yet the drive to show solidarity to their Palestinian brethren?
We can only understand this through a historical perspective. Only a people who go back thousands of years and who have been exposed to all sorts of experiences and historical episodes could come up with this remarkable construct of resilience.
Knesset member, Hanin Zoabi.
With the dawn break of Friday, May 13th, the prefixed date for Egyptian masses to support the Palestinian cause, thousands rallied in Tahrir square calling for national unity between Muslims and Christians and at the same time showing their everlasting solidarity for the Palestinians and their legitimate struggle to liberate their homeland from the Israeli occupation.
According to a facebook page created by Arab and Palestinian activists, these Friday rallies at the Cairo’s iconic square are meant to, not only revive the popular support for the Palestinian cause but to officially launch Egyptian mass rallies toward Gaza, in a move that would encourage Palestinians in return to take to the streets and start their third intifada.
This call for a third intifada comes at a critical time the wind of change is storming the whole Arab world. And since Israel has been deliberately inserted inside the heart of that world, it will be hard for the politicians in Tel Aviv not to feel the mighty daft.
As a matter of fact the call for a third intifada has been resonating inside Israel itself and specifically from the Israeli Knesset as Hanin Zoabi, a member of the Knesset representing the Balad party called for a third intifada against Israel.
Zoabi, the first Arab woman to be a Knesset member, recommended the Palestinian intifada would be fashioned after the Egyptian Tahrir square peaceful protests which she added should be the model for all the Arab youth.
George Mitchell
And in response to Zoabi’s call, other knesset members said she should be stripped of her parliamentary immunity and put on trial for calling for rebellion.
But while charges of inciting rebellion could be filed against Hanin zoabi for her support for a nonviolent third intifada aimed at ending the brutal siege on Gaza, defiant statements by Avigdor Leiberman, Israel’s foreign minister, declaring that Israel will not entertain any new building freezes and will not consider more peace negotiations with the new Palestinian coalition pass uncommented upon.
But again, the timing of this call for a third intifada comes on the same day George Mitchell, the Obama administration’s special Middle East peace envoy, plans to resign after more than two unsuccessful years of trying to press Israel and the Palestinians into negotiations.
We have to admit that political endeavors to see an end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict have utterly failed and may be that what Mitchell’s resignation is trying to say.
The only thing that the American-brokered so called peace talks did is buy more time for Israel to grab more Arabic land and create a hard to change or negotiate reality on the ground.
But more wasted time is a luxury Palestinians cannot afford.
May be the Arab-Israeli conflict doesn’t need any more US special envoy, may be president Obama shouldn’t bother appointing a replacement, for, as far as the Palestinians are concerned, they had enough of this backstage Zionist-manipulated politics disguised as peace envoys.
And may be what the whole Middle East conflict needs right now is a new kind of politics, the politics of the street, the kind that is driven by the power of the people.
In fact, it could very well be the third intifada, that we need.
All of The popular uprisings that swept through the Arab world have been preplanned and officially launched on facebook pages weeks in advance.
Pro-Israel lobbying. An Israeli Cabinet minister, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and a massive American-Zionist campaign have succeeded in pressuring Facebook into removing the“third Intifada” page, which clearly calls for an all-Arab uprising against Israel.
According to the facebook “cause” page, the plan for the intifada would go as follows;
Friday, May 13th
In Egypt, the epicenter of the Arab world, the biggest Arab country and from Tahrir square at the heart of Cairo where the whole Arab spring has sprung and gained fervent momentum, this massive Arab intifada will be launched.
Millions will gather once again in Tahrir square at the heart of Cairo but this time to call for all Arab-march toward Israel.This mass protest will come two days prior to the actual march, as a clear message to Israel and the rest of the world that liberating Palestine is the core cause for every Arab in the Middle East. And that restoring Jerusalem is all Arab’s sacred mission
Sunday, May 15th
To commemorate the Palestinian exodus day 1948 ( Nakba) when well over 750000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled out of their home land by Israel, similar number of Thousands angry Arab protesters from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon along with their Palestinian brothers from Gaza and the occupied west bank will advance toward Israel in what they call, the third intifada
Profile photo of third intifada facebook page
Those fair Palestinian demands have been begged for by all ways known to diplomacy over the last 60 years. But since diplomacy has utterly failed the Arabs of Palestine and since politicians have granted them nothing except despair and Diaspora, they thought it was time they put their life into their own hands.
And what could be more timely than this Arab spring, which a lot of Arabs could not see or rather imagine approaching its full bloom without Palestine included.
This revolutionary plan that has been publicly posted on a facebook “cause” page and given the daring title “the third Palestinian Intifada” as there has been two Palestinian Intifada- uprisings- before. The first was sparked in 1987 and the second or what is known as the Aq’sa intifada in 2000, during both uprisings, Israel had to live through years of domestic unrest and worldwide condemnation of its apartheid and oppressive policy toward the Palestinians.
But as this “cause” page managed to attract almost 300000 fans and incredibly growing number of visitors in just few days Israel grew restlessly nervous about it. And nervously restless Israel acted in response.
What was worrying Tel Aviv is the fact that, so far, all Arab uprisings have been kicked off on facebook pages. So, under the boiling situation in the Arab world this facebook call couldn’t be underrated nor neglected.
With the unbelievably growing traffic to the facebook page and the spread of the call for a third intifada Israel couldn’t just stand watching underneath its big sign that reads “The only democracy in the Middle East”
Quickly switching signs, Israel grabbed the “Israel-hating and anti-Semitism” sign and put on its despotic mask, and before the administrators of the third intifada knew it, Yuli Edelstein, Israel’s Minister of Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs, on the last week of March wrote Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook co-founder and told him ..
“the social network site has great potential to rally the masses around good causes, and we are all thankful for that. However, such potential comes hand in hand with the ability to cause great harm, such as in the case of the wild incitement displayed on the Third Palestinian Intifada page”
Third Inifada
whiles the “third Intifada” page “may be upsetting for someone, criticism of a certain culture, country, religion, lifestyle, or political ideology, for example — that alone is not a reason to remove the discussion.”
At that point it was clear to Israel that this Zuckerberg is not getting the message, Israel didn’t not seek his eloquent definition of the site’s terms for freedom of speech, removing the page that what Israel wanted. So Israel, with its Zionist lobbies and pro-Israel campaigns began to pull some strings and show some muscles and it did not take long before Mr. Mark Zuckerberg came to his senses and reevaluated the page as inciting violence against Israel.
And to make sure this will always be a lesson, learned the hard way, less than a week after facebook removed the intifada page; Zuckerberg was hit by a law suit seeking more than $ 1 billion in damages, for doing too little too late. The law suit has been filed by one of the American Zionist puppets- let off the leash- by the name of Larry Klayman.
After the page was no longer available on Tuesday, ADL director Abraham Foxman commented ..
“By taking this action, Facebook has now recognized an important standard to be applied when evaluating issues of non-compliance with its terms of service involving distinctions between incitement to violence and legitimate calls for collective expressions of opinion and action. We hope that they will continue to vigilantly monitor their pages for other groups that call for violence or terrorism against Jews and Israel.
Mark Zukerberg, facebook co-founder
Israel could intimidate facebook but not the millions of awakening Arabs.
If facebook to block any page or any account that speaks unfavorably of Israel that will mean that Mr. Zuckerberg is going to sacrifice the hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims who are already using facebook worldwide.
Could facebook, contrary to its previous role in boosting the Arab uprisings, save the Israeli domino piece from falling?
That is yet to be seen.
ARAB UPRISINGS: Time-Out For Israel Is Over.
History is taking a new turn in the Middle East and so is the Arab-Israeli conflict.If Israel stalls peace, Palestinians have options.
Twenty-two years after our historic compromise, we are still waiting for an end to the Israeli occupation. The status quo cannot continue.
“The history of Gaza is the history of empires come and empires go but the people of Gaza always remain in the land, They do not go”