After almost 70 days of his hunger strike, Palestinian Khader Adnan's term in Israeli prison was reduced. As I have mentioned previously, Adnan was in prison on "administrative detention" that allows the Israeli military to put anyone in prison for months and then extend that term on the say of an Israeli military officer, all the while with no charges filed.
Yes, it's an outrage that the United States should not support, but of course we do and you will never heard a word about it in Congress.
But Adnan was not starving himself to end the practice of administrative detention in itself. He was wasting away to protest the entire colonial occupation of Israel. The Electronic Intifada provides an English translation of an excellent article explaining the reasoning behind Adnan's hunger strike and the hunger strikes of current Palestinian prisoners that are following his example.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Monday, March 19, 2012
protesting at Batsheva Dance performance
On Saturday night I participated in a demonstration at the Auditorium Theater in Chicago where the Israeli Batsheva Dance company was performing. This video shows the occasion. The sign I carried said "Take the ART out of apARTheid"
It's important to demonstrate at every event that attempts to portray Israel in a positive light, ignoring the terrible injustice that has been present there since the creation of the state in 1948 - and that continues today.
It's important to demonstrate at every event that attempts to portray Israel in a positive light, ignoring the terrible injustice that has been present there since the creation of the state in 1948 - and that continues today.
Monday, March 12, 2012
breakthrough on MSNBC
At last an in depth discussion of Israel in regard to American support, Iran and the Palestinians with REAL LIVE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE PALESTINIANS!!! That's something to cheer about. Every minute is worth watching. You will see many people with new ideas for the American viewing public and one voicing the same old thing that's been heard for years. You guess whose voice that is.
Friday, March 9, 2012
AIPAC under discussion
I've only recently become aware of Hillary Mann Leverett. She was once an employee of AIPAC who, she says, came to her senses. I've found her to be one of the most incisive and trenchant observers of the situation of Israel in relationship to the United States.
In the following video, as usual not from one of the mainstream U.S. media outlets but from Al Jazeera, Leverett looks at the influence of AIPAC along with John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Larry Greenfield of Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.
Leverett has some comments on this program at her own website The Race for Iran, a blog always worth reading.
In the following video, as usual not from one of the mainstream U.S. media outlets but from Al Jazeera, Leverett looks at the influence of AIPAC along with John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Larry Greenfield of Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.
Leverett has some comments on this program at her own website The Race for Iran, a blog always worth reading.
Monday, March 5, 2012
thoughts on Obama at AIPAC
How far we have come since "A day that will live in infamy". When I was a kid (before Vietnam) it was a point of pride that the US had never lost a war. It was also a point of pride that we had not started one (nobody pays attention to the Spanish-American war).
The US was able to keep itself out of WW2 until after it was attacked by Japan and then Hitler declared war on us.
Now, not only do we start wars on the other side of the world for trumped up reasons, we put ourselves in the service of a tiny nation that forced itself in and demands its neighbors do as it tells them to do.
Could there be a policy any closer to national suicide than this? We have become the proxy of the one that was our proxy!
Israel is a pariah for what it is doing and has done to the Palestinians. The U.S., once the hope of the world carrying the banner "Liberty and Justice for All" now binds itself to the pariah who is actively, deliberately and forcefully denying liberty and justice to an indigenous people.
It was said in the 60's, and it is even more true today: the whole world is watching.
Read Paul Pillar's excellent and extensive treatment of Iran's possible acquisition of an atomic bomb.
The US was able to keep itself out of WW2 until after it was attacked by Japan and then Hitler declared war on us.
Now, not only do we start wars on the other side of the world for trumped up reasons, we put ourselves in the service of a tiny nation that forced itself in and demands its neighbors do as it tells them to do.
Could there be a policy any closer to national suicide than this? We have become the proxy of the one that was our proxy!
Israel is a pariah for what it is doing and has done to the Palestinians. The U.S., once the hope of the world carrying the banner "Liberty and Justice for All" now binds itself to the pariah who is actively, deliberately and forcefully denying liberty and justice to an indigenous people.
It was said in the 60's, and it is even more true today: the whole world is watching.
Read Paul Pillar's excellent and extensive treatment of Iran's possible acquisition of an atomic bomb.