By Akram Salhab - The West Bank

As I lead a delegation of UK students around the West Bank, I thought about how the trip was to benefit the Palestinian people. When they spend money, they help the Palestinian economy, their solidarity helps boost morale and when they record incidents of abuse they help give legitimacy to Palestinian claims of oppression.

The power that international qualifications of abuse give to Palestinians was shown by the release, earlier this week, of a video showing the shooting of a Palestinian youth. The video shows a soldier grabbing the young man and dragging him to his feet. He is blindfolded and handcuffed and looking unstable as he stands, the senior officer holding him instructs a nearby soldier to shoot him in the leg. The soldier raises his gun and shoots, at which point the photographer drops her camera in surprise and by the time the camera returns to him, the victim is on the ground in what appears to be quite a fair amount of pain.

When coming to respond to this incident, the usual IDF trick of denying any knowledge wouldn’t fly, unfortunately for them it had been caught on film. The brief suggestion by the IDF that the moment where the camera was out of focus represented a sinister editing trick was also quickly dropped for fear of embarrassment. In the end there was nothing to do but begrudgingly apologise and try as hard as possible to suggest that the incident was a one-off. The incident, claimed Ehud Barak “was a grave and wrong one and is not indicative of the IDF's norms”, "Warriors do not behave like this", he concluded philosophically.

It would seem safe to assume that Ehud Barak, in his long and brutal career would have, whilst not abided by one, at least heard of such a thing as a human rights report. This novel type of document normally contains within it an assessment of what is taking place in a certain area of the world and compares how well the actions of groups in that area correlate or fail to correlate with norms established in international human rights agreements. For somebody who had never read such a report on Palestine, seeing a video of a Palestinian man being shot for no immediate reason would indeed be surprising.

For an Israeli minister however, there can be no excuses. B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights group, reports frequently on abuses that take place and concludes that, “Both the army and the Border Police have yet to make it unequivocally clear to security forces serving in the Occupied Territories that it is absolutely forbidden to abuse and beat Palestinians”. Their attempts thus far are deemed by B’Tselem to be “more lip service than a frank and honest attempt to uproot the phenomenon once and for all.”

Amnesty International’s report into how soldiers treat Palestinians is also worth quoting at length:

"impunity remained widespread for Israeli soldiers and settlers responsible for unlawful killings, ill-treatment and other abuses of human rights of Palestinians and attacks against their property. Investigations and prosecutions relating to such abuses were rare and usually only occurred when the abuses were exposed by human rights organizations and the media."

Similar reports by Human Rights Watch, Al-Haq, Physicians for Human Rights, Breaking the Silence and many, many others paint a similar picture; that on top of the systematic abuse legitimized by the Apartheid regime in the West Bank, individual soldiers consistently violate, with impunity, the thin legal protection that is afforded to Palestinians. For anybody who took the time to goggle 'human rights' and 'Israel' the brutality of the situation faced by Palestinians would be readily evident and they would see that the incident in the video, instead of being a singular freakish occurrence, is actually wholly indicative of the way that Israeli ‘warriors’ behave.

Why then was there such an outpouring of anger and sorrow for the case of this one individual caught on camera?

There is definitely something to be said for the power of photography. A photo often does, paint a thousand words and seeing very often is believing. But beyond the clichés there is a deeper more sinister reason why despite mountains of evidence on other cases, it is only this one that will get the attention, if not the justice which it deserves.

The prevalent attitude that leads to Palestinian claims being ignored are evident in all facets of the history and politics of Palestine. Benny Morris, one of Israel’s most frank historians come political commentators managed to write an entire book about the greatest crime committed against Palestinians, the Nakba, using precious little first hand evidence from Palestinian witnesses. The reason? Because according to Morris, Palestinians (or Arabs as he calls them) have a “penchant for exaggeration” therefore they cannot be considered credible sources. Arabs, he tells us, are simply unable to tell the truth.

Edward Said wrote 30 years ago about the West’s orientalist attitude in its dealing with the Arab world. He argued that Arabs were represented as ‘the noble savage’, ruthless, merciless and untrustworthy. When one looks today at the occupation of Palestine and the way in which Palestinian claims of abuse are ignored, one can’t help but thinking that orientalism is alive and well.

As our delegation heard time and time again of beatings, torture and daily harrassment, one of them felt compelled to ask me "if there are so many incidents of abuse and so many first hand accounts of it, then why isn't action being taken?". One man who they met explained how his mother was shot on the front step of their house. He took us to her grave, he showed us the injuries that he suffered during her murder and the bullet holes on the nearby walls. Why was he still waiting for justice?

Another B’Tselem report explains that when Palestinians come to complain about their abuse, they are faced with “a system which tends not to believe them, and which tends to protect rather than prosecute those who injured them”. In most cases where a crime has been committed, procedure is to take an account of events from all those concerned, and use them, along any evidence at the scene to form a picture of what happened and thereby dish out justice accordingly. The fact that Palestinian complaints are ignored so out of hand suggests that Palestinians are not deemed human enough to be considered serious winesses.

Part of the statement by Barak is very revealing in this regard. Amongst the stream of empty words and crocodile tears of sorrow, he committed to “exact the full extent of the law in this case". ‘Only in this case’ because no Palestinian, with their deceptive lying ways, would ever be able to prove to the world that the abuse that they had suffered was real and even if they could, unless the crime they suffered was as blatant as the incident caught of film, then a suitable lie can be fabricated to explain it away.

Even when a crime is caught on film, however, it is not sufficient evidence for a conviction and as the criminal soldier from the indicent above walked free on Tuesday, Palestinians will be wondering what they need to do to for the world to take seriously the daily attacks that they face. In Palestine, it would seem, even the camera lies.

-Akram Salhab is a Palestinian from Jerusalem who is currently studying an undergraduate degree in Politics at the University of Leeds. He is active with the UK student movement, Action Palestine, as well as being the national student coordinator for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. He works with these organisations on campaigns to raise awareness of the plight of Palestinians and to give momentum to the BDS movement to end Apartheid. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

An Excerpt from Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland (AK Press)

By Joshua Frank

You can go home again, but it might break your heart or turn your stomach. Even if your home is Montana. Perhaps especially here, where there is so much to lose.

No, Montana is not what it used to be. Corporate behemoths have taken over small family-owned farms, and public forests have been squandered and sold to the highest bidder. Poverty and racism run rampant. Native Americans are being corralled onto even tighter plots of land. But while things seem disheartening, voices of hope continue rumbling across the Big Sky Country.

With Montana, like so many other "lost cause" states, not fitting neatly into the Blue State/Red State dichotomy, even Thomas Frank would be baffled. Don’t get me wrong: this is still Republican country. Oversized SUV bumpers flaunt "W" stickers, and almost every Ford truck touts a yellow "Support Our Troops" magnet. There is no question that these flag-waving Montanans overwhelmingly voted for Bush in 2004.

Having grown up on the eastern side of the continental divide in Billings Montana’s largest city with a population exceeding 90,000—I know this area well. Dubbed America’s drug stricken "Crank Capitol" by Time in the late 1990s, Billings is nestled beneath the shadows of 500-foot sandstone cliffs. The snowcapped Rockies are due west. The mighty Yellowstone River cuts through the town’s south end. It’s searing hot in the summer and bitter cold in winter. A forty-minute drive to the southeast will bring you to the impoverished and desolate Crow Agency Indian reservation, which houses the memorial for the Battle of the Little Big Horn where General George A. Custer met his much-deserved fate. This land has a bloody ubiquitous history, the aura of which can be troubling for those familiar with its past.

Much has changed since I left Billings some years ago. An insipid Mormon temple has been erected on the outskirts of town near a glitzy country club. Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Barnes and Noble, Starbucks, dozens of tasteless eateries, and countless cookie-cutter homes have relentlessly extended the city’s boundaries. Once unique, Billings now resembles most any place you would find in these sprawling Xeroxed States of America.
Teenagers fill their weekends with beer, sex and cheap booze, remnants of which pepper the roads off the beaten path. Things are not much different for the slightly older crowd. You are just more likely to find these Generation Xers frequenting the local bars and passing joints back and forth in their pick-up trucks. Who can blame them? This is the rhythm of the new American dream, the anthem for surviving cultural homogeneity: do what you must to escape the mundane. Take two and pass.

A cursory glance probably wouldn’t reveal so much as a chirp of dissent in these parts. That is, of course, if you aren’t referring to the right-wing militiamen that have made Montana famous in the 1990s. But I am not talking about the tax averting Freemen, who stockpiled weapons and took on the Feds, or the chemically inclined Ted Kaczynski’s fetish for sending loaded love letters. I’m talking about a populist backlash that is fast gaining speed on these remote country roads.

Welcome to Montana.

Some things, like the volatile weather that can turn from rain to snow in minutes, rarely change out here. But there are aspects of life in Montana that the public can help determine. The Red State marker that the politicos and pundits have given to places like this is not etched in stone.

Just a few decades ago things on the Montana prairie changed, but sadly it was for the worse. Before the rightwing takeover of the state legislature in the late 1970s, this place was actually thriving with progressive politics. Take Democratic Senator Lee Metcalf, who was a staunch wilderness supporter during his tenure in D.C. and would likely be considered an eco-terrorist by today’s standards.  On the heels of the great conservationist Bob Marshall, Metcalf became a relentless advocate for the wild, where he attempted to make Marshall’s public forest vision a reality. He stood up against timber barons, big oil, and land developers, rarely backing down. He cherished Montana for its ecological beauty, wildlife and serenity.

The truth is Montana has a long history of going against the traditional grain. Along with electing Metcalf, voters also sent liberal Democrat Mike Mansfield to Congress and the Senate nine consecutive times. Sen. Mansfield’s most enduring accomplishment came when he engineered the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 during his tenure as Senate Majority Leader. Using Senator Hubert Humphrey as his floor manager, Mansfield quietly rounded up the necessary votes and broke the Southern filibuster, which cleared the way for the passage of the monumental legislation. Although both Mansfield and Metcalf had plenty of glaring flaws, there is no question that they, compared to today’s corporate Democrats, were remarkable.

Of course, we can’t talk about progressive politics in Montana without mentioning Janette Rankin, whom in 1916 became the first woman ever elected to Congress. A social worker by trade, Rankin was a tireless defender of the underclass. She was also one of the first representatives to speak out against child labor practices in the early 20th century. But it was her opposition to war that led her to her most exceptional accomplishment: just four days after taking office, Rankin voted against U.S. entry into World War I. Violating Congressional procedure, she spoke out during roll call prior to casting her vote and declared, "I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war!"

During the rest of her term, Rankin fought for many political reforms, including civil liberties, women’s suffrage, birth control, child welfare, and equal pay among sexes. She was ahead of her time on nearly every issue. Sadly, however, Rankin’s vote against World War I sealed her political fate. Later, after much harassment back home for her war resistance, she was gerrymandered out of her Montana district. When she ran for a Senate seat, she was overwhelmingly defeated.

Like so many states, an electoral map does not do justice to what has actually taken place on the ground politically or historically. In fact, in 1992 Montana’s electoral points went to Bill Clinton as Ross Perot captured a quarter of the votes. And the contradictions are not much different in the so-called Blue States, where right-wingers run rampant and dominate state and local governments. One need look no further than Schwarzenegger’s reign in California or Bloomberg’s grip in New York City, not to mention the conservative Democrats who rule the roost in the Interior West.

We’d all do well to abandon such divisive and inaccurate Red/Blue labels, and unite behind common causes.

Indeed some Montanans are.

***

Today, a fair portion of the population is pissed. And rightfully so. Montanans have suffered far too long under the boot of the conservative majority. Many years have passed since Metcalf and Rankin were in office. Most recently it was the cavalier Governor Marc Racicot, now a rising star within the Republican establishment, who used Montana as a stepping-stone for his own political trajectory. After Racicot left office in 2000, the state was faced with the putrid stench of Judy Martz, a frightful Republican corpse of a governor who bragged that she was the "lap dog of industry." Martz was then personification of John Sayles’ Dicky Pilager character in Silver City, an unsightly puppet for corporate interests and damn proud of it.

Ol’ Judy earned herself quite a rap sheet after her election in 2000. She shielded timber companies from litigation and supported deregulation as Montanans saw their electricity bills skyrocket. Much to the dismay of her voting base, she undermined public schools. Gouged taxpayers. Destabilized local business owners. Angered small farmers. Martz was a political train wreck, and Montana reacted accordingly. By the summer of 2004 her approval rating had sunk to a meager 30 percent, an all-time low. Without a wince of shame Martz opted not to run for reelection. A sensible decision—surely the wisest of her brief political tenure.

Sick and tired of Republican rule, many Montanans voted to replace Martz with Democrat Brian Schweitzer—a wealthy cattleman who has operated ranches across the state. A naturally gifted speaker, Schweitzer had almost defeated entrenched US Senator Conrad Burns, a popular Republican stooge who had ties to lobbyist Jack Abramoff back in 2000. And Montanans love Schweitzer because, like an honest cowboy, he shoots it straight.

"If I stay in Washington for more than 72 hours I have to bathe myself in the same stuff I use when my dog gets into a fight with a skunk," he said after a visit out to D.C. a few years ago.

Running on a split ticket in 2004, Schweitzer picked moderate Republican State Senator John Bohlinger to be his running mate. Bohlinger was a pragmatic choice, as it is well known that John is just a donkey in elephant attire, bow tie and all. He simply swapped parties when he chose to run for state congress in a conservative Billings district in 1992. Bohlinger knew his constituents would vote Republican out of habit and a penchant for hating Democrats.

John Bohlinger was right and the Schweitzer camp capitalized on their collective ignorance under the banner of "bipartisanship." But Montana’s neopopulism isn’t about party loyalty. Instead it seethes with a true disgust for big government. A fair majority of Montanans don’t trust their elected officials—state or federal—and the higher up on the ladder you go, the more pessimistic things they’ll have to say about our broken system and the fools that run the show.

In 1999, when Schweitzer drove a batch of old-timers across the border into Canada to see how much cheaper pharmaceuticals were there, he made his mark with senior citizens. As Schweitzer explained in a radio address shortly after he was elected, "The purpose of those trips was to demonstrate the hypocrisy of Congress’ trade policies. They passed NAFTA, told us that it would be great for the consumers of the United States. We’d be able to have products and consumer products cross the border from Canada and Mexico, and the United States freely, and that we would find greater choice. And we have NAFTA and we’re supposed to have free choice for everything but medicine."

Not bad for a post-Clinton Democrat.

Since his January 2005 inauguration, Schweitzer has been vocal in his opposition to the Bush agenda. He even called for the return of Montana’s guard troops from Iraq so they could help battle wildfires, which raged in the summer of 2005. Schweitzer is not buying Bush’s call to privatize social security either. "Today we’re talking about Social Security, something that might happen 20, 30, 40 years from now," he said after a recent meeting in D.C. when U.S. governors spent an afternoon with the President, "But guess what’s really happening? ... We’re cutting Medicaid. We’re cutting programs in the heartland."

But don’t get too excited; Schweitzer is no radical. He is cautious and pragmatic. He opposes gay marriage (though I’m told this is the case only because Bohlinger would have declined to be his running mate had he come out in favor of gay marriage) and wants to expand Montana’s private prison system, one of the state’s only growth industries. As the New York Times asserts," Schweitzer veers right on many economic and social issues: he ... favors the death penalty and preaches about lowering taxes and balancing budgets."

Schweitzer’s win wasn’t the only interesting development in the state since the turn of the century. Montanans also voted in favor of medial marijuana. Despite what liberals claim, these Red Staters may have some common sense after all. And compared to a "liberal" Blue state like Oregon, where citizens nixed a medical marijuana initiative in 2004, Montana sure as hell seems like they are on the cusp of change.

***

Brian Schweitzer was just the beginning of the political change happening here. Montana’s newest U.S. Senator is not exactly the type of Democrat you’d be likely to see backslapping New York City fat cats on their way into an elaborate fundraiser for Hillary Clinton. In fact, Jon Tester, who was elected to the Senate in 2006, isn’t your typical Democrat. He’s almost not a Democrat at all. In fact Tester ran his campaign against Senator Conrad Burns on just that platform. He was tired of the scandals and dishonesty that engulf our national politics and professed that the polluted Beltway could use a little Montana house cleanin’.

Voters agreed, and Burns was defeated in one of the tightest races in state history.

An organic farmer by trade, Tester, a former state legislator, ran his family’s homestead just outside Big Sandy in northern Montana, where the winter chills can chatter your teeth as early as mid-September. Sporting a Marine drill sergeant buzz cut, Tester is essentially an NRA approved populist with libertarian tendencies who vowed he’d redeploy troops from Iraq as well as repeal the PATRIOT Act. And although nobody would consider Tester an anti-globalization activist, his position on international trade is more in line with the protesters who shut down Seattle in 1999 than with the Democratic Leadership Council.

On a "Meet the Press" broadcast shortly before he took office, Tester even addressed the most evaded issue in national politics: poverty.

"There’s no more middle class," he asserted to Tim Russert, "the working poor aren’t even being addressed. Those are the people who brought us here [to Congress] and they need to be empowered. It’s time to show them attention ... We have to use policy to help that situation."

In a debate in September 2006, Conrad Burns attempted to paint Tester as wimpish on terror. "We cannot afford another 9/11," Burns chided. "I can tell you that right now, he [Tester] wants to weaken the PATRIOT Act." To which Tester bravely countered, "Let me be clear. I don’t want to weaken the PATRIOT Act. I want to get rid of it."

Tester built his campaign from the ground up, shunning support from nationally known Democrats like John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, as he knew they’d rub Montanans the wrong way. Instead, the nearly 300 pound farmer who lost three fingers in a meat grinding accident as a child, drove around the state so he could chat face-to-face with his potential constituents.

Fortunately for Tester, he’s used to bucking the system. His first foray with the Washington Consensus came in 1998 when he ran for the Montana legislature because he was outraged over the huge energy hikes that had resulted from the state’s deregulation of the power industry. And he’s been speaking out against policies that pit working folks against the corporate class ever since. Tester even occasionally touts renewable energies and a livable minimum wage.

Still, like Montana’s current governor, Tester isn’t an ideal politician, if there is such a thing. While he may remain strong on some issues, he is weak on a many social justice issues, such as the death penalty and gay rights. Nevertheless, Tester’s campaign and personal appeal may serve as a winning blueprint for left-leaning populists out here in the Interior West. Indeed Brian Schweitzer used the exact formula to become Governor two years earlier.

Yet, Jon Tester’s win wasn’t even close to the biggest triumph for the state. The largest political victory for Montana came when voters overwhelmingly shot down a mining initiative in 2000 that would have returned the dreadful and polluting open-pit cyanide heap-leach mining to Montana’s hills. Big mining companies put up millions to raise support for the bill, but Montanans didn’t bite. Environmentalists and the public won outright.

Open-pit cyanide heap-leach gold mines have forever polluted water and left environmental destruction in their wake. Montana is used to it. Throughout the state these vast toxic pits have poisoned streams and drinking water, killed off wild trout, desecrated the landscape and created environmental catastrophes that have cost taxpayers millions to clean.

Still, the greatest change in Montana isn’t happening in the electoral arena. It is taking place on the ground where a plethora of movements, from environmental causes to anti-corporate organic farming, are coming to a head. Election Day hoopla is only a shadow of the real activism going on. These agitators know that ultimate victory requires enduring many, many losses and years of protest before cultural changes are reflected in policy and ultimately, their daily lives.

There is a dreadful attitude still lingering out in Blue America where folks put the majority of their energy into electoral politics, anticipating that change can only happen within the confines of the voting booth. And it’s a downer.

No doubt "blue" is an apt color to describe the dejected mood that still paints our coastal states even with the Democrats in power. Fortunately, progressives, libertarians, anarchists, and others out here in Montana, although a tiny minority, have rolled up their sleeves and continued their work. Elections are never deterrents. They have stayed the course, never abandoning their issues, and are slowly winning as a result.

Maybe liberal Blue Staters will realize this isn’t "fly-over country" after all, and borrow a page from these Red State dummies.

-Joshua Frank is the author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush (Common Courage Press, 2005), and along with Jeffrey St. Clair, the editor of the brand new book Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland, published by AK Press in July 2008. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

By Sukant Chandan - London

Docu-dramas, documentary films and feature films are perhaps some of the most influential media by which we develop our political perceptions and prejudices. This has been recognised long ago and put to use on a mass scale during the Second World War, when films were used to rally the masses in the Allied countries against Hitlerite fascism. It was a time when the US made films celebrating Soviet guerrilla martyr attacks against the Nazi occupation, such as in the film North Star. The US has ever since pumped massive amounts of resources into this medium through the cinema, TV and more recently the internet.

With the emergence of the internet, online video file sharing and peer-to-peer download services in the last decade, the grip of the big production houses have decreased, and people now have relatively more access than before to a more complex and critical understanding of politics and culture. Documentary films have also played a major role in shaping public opinion, and perceptions of the ‘Other’. The Other being non-white people generally, but today specifically focused on Muslims and Islamists which, we are told, do not share or are against ‘our’ values.

Perhaps the most well-known example of a documentary film that has shaped public opinion is Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. Many other films have had an impact on political discourses which are defining our time: Islamophobia, Western initiated war and occupation, or in the words of the world’s self-proclaimed standard bearers of democracy: “full spectrum dominance” and “shock and awe”.

While it is often US-made films that receive most attention, there have perhaps been more interesting and nuanced films made in Britain. Such films include White Girl, Mark of Cain, Britz and several documentaries, especially on the issue of Palestine.

Michael Moore and Nick Broomfield’s films have been commercial successes. However one is not so sure that they have been successful in assisting their mass audiences in understanding Muslims and their struggles for independence such as in Iraq or Palestine or throughout the Muslim world generally.

Fahrenheit 9/11 is seen by many as an insightful critique of US government reaction to 9/11, but it fails to give any insight into US foreign policy in the Middle East, policies that have led many in the region to view the 9/11 attacks as a reaction against the oppression of Arabs and Muslims over generations. Unsurprisingly criticism of the film has come from the Right, however it is important that people who oppose Western arrogance do not let Moore off the hook as Muslims are given no time whatsoever in representing themselves. Robert Jensen’s review of the film has been one the few critiques from a progressive point of view. He states: “The sad truth is that Fahrenheit 9/11 is a bad movie, but not for the reasons it is being attacked in the dominant culture. It’s at times a racist movie. And the analysis that underlies the film’s main political points is either dangerously incomplete or virtually incoherent.”

Jensen argues that there is no fair representation of Muslims in the film, and the representation of countries like Morocco are far from respectful, let alone inline with challenging racism and prejudice. While the film contributed to the climate of mass opposition in the West to the Iraq war, it failed to give any understanding of what Muslims are thinking and doing about their oppression; rather the only portrayal in the film of Muslims was the rich Gulf Arabs (the Bin Laden family who are one of the main construction industrialists in the region) who are in cahoots with Bush and Co. Jensen spoke about his criticisms of the film, saying that at the time of writing his review he was too soft on the movie and explains: “Since the end of WWII, there has been bipartisan support for US attempts to dominate the politics of the Middle East. Republican and Democratic administrations alike have pursued illegal and immoral policies, using overt and covert violence. This didn’t start with George W Bush and won’t end when he’s out of office. Moore’s movie failed to offer any coherent analysis of the historical and political context for Bush’s failed wars, and hence did little to help viewers deepen their understanding.”

Broomfield’s recently released Battle for Haditha on the other hand does feature Iraqi protagonists in the community where the massacre took place as well as persons involved in the Iraqi resistance. This film was expected to be a critical film of the now notorious massacre of 24 men, women and children by US marines in November 2005. While the film does show the gung-ho nature of the Marines, it fails to depict the Iraqis accurately. Iraqis are a proud people with a long history and tradition of multi-confessional Iraqi, Arab and Islamic culture which includes a deep sense of patriotism which they have defended against colonialism of the past and today against neo-colonialism.

Battle of Haditha treats the Iraqi resistance in an even more problematic manner than that of the Iraqi non-combatants. One of the main resistance fighters is a drunk and joins the struggle due to financial reasons, while the Islamist resistance leader, a cleric, is a very shady and manipulative character who cares nothing about the Iraqi people. In contrast, despite the animal-like behaviour of the Marines, they are shown as victims of their political and military leaders. There is no doubt that the viewer is supposed to sympathise with the Marines culminating in one of them leading an Iraqi girl by the hand into the light, while a few moments ago he just massacred her entire family. The Western viewer would rightly never accept such a depiction of a soldier of the Third Reich in relation to the French or Dutch, and would never accept the anti-fascist resistance as a fundamentally suspect movement, so why should the viewer accept such a portrayal in this instance?

Radical Arab Nationalist Ibrahim Alloush explains in a critique of the film, “when the humanitarian perspective becomes a cover for humanizing the invader in Iraq or Palestine independently of politics, it changes into an arrogant, orientalist mechanism of reducing the Arab cause to a form of shallow humanitarian advocacy at best, and political misguidance based on conflation of henchman and victim at worst… Undeniably, the movie’s message is tricky: it is in an effort to exonerate the Marines in Iraq and the non-ideological resistance; present the residents as aimless barn animals ready for slaughter; and to indict major politicians in the West and ideologists in the East. Ultimately, it is a liberal message and stems from lack of comprehension of the ongoing battle between the occupation and the resistance on Iraq’s soil.”

The puzzling thing about Broomfield’s ‘docu-drama’ is the way in which he depicted the relationship between the Iraqi civilians and resistance; it seems this was at odds with reality. The residents of Haditha have said that the resistance are a part of the community who defend the people against the occupation forces. For some reason Broomfield has decided to completely distort the relationship between the resistance and the people of Haditha.

In contrast to Moore and Broomfield there are a number of British-made film productions which positively challenge the mainstream Islamophobic discourse. In discussion with The Guardian journalist and film-maker Clancy Chassay on the subject of his video reports from Gaza, he said of his short films: “It encourages the viewer to engage with our shared humanity; a humanity too often denied to these victims.”

Indeed it is not a complicated principle to understand, but the ability to engage in a process to share a common humanity is beyond many people as a result of the sheer mass of mainstream media which turns reality on its head. Chassay’s reports cuts through the warped message in much of the mainstream media that Fatah equals a shared democratic value with Western democracy, and that Hamas equals terrorism and repression. Chassay shows that in Gaza Fatah’s armed wing are actively engaged in sending rockets into Israel, whereas we are led to believe that it is Hamas’ responsibility that any homemade Palestinian rockets are targeted at Israel. The second round of films from Chassay shows the impact on Palestinians in Gaza of the blockade on Gaza by Israel and with which the West is complicit. These latter films challenges a Western audience as much as the first set of Chassay’s films as they force the viewer to see beyond the ‘terrorists’ label, and see Palestinians as people, albeit a brutally oppressed people.

One of the bravest films to be made is the British film Britz, a film that raised some uncomfortable home truths about the ramifications of British foreign and domestic policies towards Muslims. The film’s director Peter Kosminsky has said that the film was not aimed at Muslim audiences but at white Western audiences, particularly those in Britain. Moazzam Begg in his review of the film following a special preview screening states: “He [Kosminsky] replied that it was to make people ask more questions about internal and foreign policy; about spooks as well as suicide bombers. Indeed, it was to boldly ask the question whether the effects of personal trauma—in this case Nasima’s best friend who is detained without trial and then subjected to a control order—coupled with societal hostility and a sense of political impotence can lead someone to the path of violent extremism. And if it can, are we able to understand?”

Britz addressed political taboos head on. In this day and age it takes confidence and political daring to take up political themes that should be some of the main political issues that urgently need addressing. The onus is on intellectuals, writers, film-makers and those engaged in progressive political change to radically adjust the parameters of the debate (or the lack of debate), otherwise it is left to those in weaker positions to try and raise these issues but are either ignored or vilified in an atmosphere reminiscent of McCarthyite totalitarianism.

Another off-limits subject seems to be the Iraqi resistance. There is only one documentary film that has reported on the resistance, and that is Steve Connors’ and Molly Bingham’s Meeting Resistance. This film was shot during the small window of time immediately after the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 when Western filmmakers could still meet and interview those involved in the resistance. The film shows people from all walks of life, young men, professionals, religious clerics, a house wife and political activists, all part of the resistance who have nearly an hour and a half on film to discuss their motivations and the nature of their involvement in the struggle to free their country.

In conversation with Connors at the British Museum’s screening of Meeting Resistance during the London Documentary Film Festival, Connors explained how the film challenges many assumptions and misrepresentations of the resistance to occupation in Iraq: “Firstly, it pushes back on the “insurgency” title. To use one word to describe all the different reasons for violence in Iraq is ridiculous and - far from simplifying the issues - just creates more confusion.”

When asked in what ways the film challenges Western preconceptions of the conflict in Iraq, Connors replied “I think the film allows the audience to rethink and re-humanise the resistance faction of the Iraqi political scene and shows them to be people whose aspirations are not so dissimilar from our own. Denying a view of Iraqis as actors in their own history then perpetuates the notion that we Westerners are the only ones civilized and sophisticated enough to provide a solution instead of facing the reality that we are actually the major problem in Iraq. Unfortunately most Western filmmakers (or journalists) who have tackled Iraq simply haven’t been sufficiently self aware to look at themselves and the subject in this way”.

Connors is right when he highlights the dearth of filmmakers that approach the Muslim and Islamic Other in a human way rather than in way that adopts every Eurocentric stereotype of Muslims. Nevertheless, despite the flawed depictions of Muslims and their liberation struggles, and in the face of the lack of films like Britz and Meeting Resistance, these and other ground-breaking films are outstanding examples for others to build upon and positively influence wider audiences.

- Sukant Chandan is a London-based political analyst. This article first appeared in Conflict Forum’s Cultures of Resistance magazine, of which Sukant Chandan is a Co-Editor. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact him at: sukant.chandan@gmail.com.

By Kenneth Ring

We are used to hearing about the hazards, often fatal, of being a journalist these days. Everyone is familiar with accounts of courageous Russian journalists who have been assassinated and of course with  stories of war correspondents who have been killed or gravely wounded in the course of reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan. But what about the dangers of just being a Palestinian journalist who is simply trying to return to his own hometown in Gaza after being abroad?

Consider the case of a twenty-four-year-old reporter named Mohammed Omer.

Some background first: For the past six years Mohammed has been covering and reporting on the situation in Gaza and has published his articles in various periodicals in Europe, for the Inter Press Service News Agency and The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. His articles have received much recognition and several awards, including, most recently, the prestigious Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, which was presented to Mohammed in a special ceremony in London in June, 2008 – about which more in a moment.

Mohammed and his family, like many Palestinians, have suffered greatly because of the circumstances under which they live in Gaza. He himself was nearly killed by a bulldozer in the course of photographing the demolition of a neighbor’s house and one of his brothers did lose his life as a teenager as a result of being shot by Israel Defense Forces on his way home from school.  Another brother was shot in the leg, which had to be amputated. Mohammed’s father has spent eleven years in Israeli prisons where torture, as is well known, is common. And in March, 2003, Mohammed returned to his home after school to find that he had it been demolished by an Israeli bulldozer.  All his family’s possessions – books, photographs, all his own notebooks, everything – were  obliterated, and he and his family suddenly found themselves homeless.

It is not an unusual family story for people living in Gaza; on the contrary, one hears accounts like this all the time from the lips of Palestinians.

Now fast-forward to June, 2008. Mohammed has recently received word that he is to be a co-recipient of the Martha Gellhorn Prize. For this, he must get to London, but, as you know, it is not easy for any Gazan to leave the prison that Gaza has become under the unrelenting Israeli siege.  Only after strenuous diplomatic efforts over several weeks by Dutch officials and a prize-winning Australian journalist living in England was it possible for Mohammed to leave Gaza to receive his award.  While in Europe, Mohammed also spoke in Sweden, the Netherlands and Greece about his work, in addition to making a very moving acceptance speech in London during the ceremonies for the Gellhorn Prize.

The return to Gaza was, however, also fraught with difficulties. According to various reports in the press, as soon as Mohammed had arrived in Amman, the Dutch diplomats who had facilitated his trip informed him that the Israelis did not want him to return.  However, after further negotiations by his Dutch sponsors, Mohammed was finally allowed to enter Israel via the Allenby Bridge on the morning of June 26th.

That’s when the trouble began.

According to all the accounts I have read in the press including several interviews with Mohammed himself, there he was interrogated, strip-searched and brutalized by agents of the Shin Bet for several hours. Mohammed says that his interrogators made fun of him saying, “Oh, so it’s you who won the journalism award,” and repeatedly asked him where he had hidden his prize money.  After that, he was continually threatened at gunpoint, forced to remove all his clothes leaving him completely naked, and then beaten and kicked for more than ten minutes until he lost consciousness. He awoke to find himself being dragged around the room by his feet, his head banging on the floor, after which another Shin Bet officer pressed his boot upon Mohammed’s neck while another painfully jabbed his fingers into his face. At this point, Mr. Omer says, “I thought I was dying.  I remained in a state of unconsciousness for up to 90 minutes until a medical doctor who was carrying an M-16 performed an electrocardiogram on me.”

This bare summary of Mohammed’s ordeal hardly does more, however, than give a kind of overall impression of his treatment and the rank and wanton humiliation that was inflicted on him that seems to have been motivated only by malice. Reading Mohammed’s own testimony, one can’t help being reminded of the unchecked and unmonitored torture that was visited upon Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. To illustrate this, I will present some excepts from a recent interview with Mohammed conducted by Amy Goodman on her Democracy Now! Program. At this point, a Shin Bet officer named Avi has taken Mohammed into an empty room to continue his “interrogation:”

Avi took me inside a room, where he asked me—in an empty room, where he asked me, “Take off your clothes.” I told him, “I’m not going to take off my clothes, because I have the Dutch embassy waiting for me outside.” After some time, I had to take off my clothes. He said, “Take off your T-shirt.” I take it off. I took off my jeans. I took off my shoes and my socks. And then he’s coming to me—he’s getting closer to me, and then he says, “Take off your underwear.” I said, “I’m not going to take off my underwear. There is an embassy waiting outside for me.” He said, “I know that there is an embassy waiting for you. Take off your underwear.” I said, “I’m not going to take it off.” Then he was putting his hand on his revolver and kept looking at me. “Mohammed, take off your underwear,” he says. And then I said, “I’m not going to take it off, because this is a humiliation. You’re trying to humiliate me. It’s not security checking, because I went through the security system like anyone else, and you are treating me differently.” And then he said, “Take it off.” And then I said, “I’m not going to take it off.”

So he went down to my knees, where he pulled down my underwear to make me totally naked. I looked at him, and then I told him, “OK? So what are you trying to do here?” And he said, “Go right, go left.” I said, “I’m not going to move right or left. I’m totally naked.” And then he started humiliating me and laughing. And I continued explaining to him, “Why do you treat me that way? I’m a human being, and I don’t deserve this kind of treatment.” Then he said to me, “Well, still, you have seen nothing. You will see more.” He continued to interrogate me and…search me, stripping and searching me while I was totally naked. And then he told me, “Go and get your clothes on.” I put my clothes on, and I went back to the hall where the travelers are coming.
 
There was of course “more,” as Avi had threatened.  Later on, after more ridicule, taunting and other forms of verbal intimidation, it starts to get physical:

I collapsed during the interrogation. I fainted and…I started vomiting everywhere. And then the soldiers, they started gathering around me. I estimate nearly one hour and a half vomiting on the ground. And one of the Shabak officers—I was unconscious for most of the time, but I can remember one of the things that they were doing to me. He was using his [fingernails] and pinching me all the way, trying to cause me pain under my eyes and under the soft part of my eye. I thought what these people are doing is basically they are trying to torture me. And one of them who was trying to do that, the same thing, pinching me using his [fingernails] under my ears, and then one other of them…put his shoes on my neck. I could feel actually the outline of his shoes on my neck, moving right and left.

I started vomiting again and again, especially after one of the soldiers had both his two fingers inside the hole between my neck and my chest. There is a little hole, and he put it all the way inside and tried to grab my bones, to grab me from my bones different times. That was the most painful thing. And then, [the] other one who was trying to put his hands on my chest and all his weight on my chest. He was—it was actually meant to break me and to break my ribs, because he put all his weight. And the man who continued…to put his feet and his shoes on my neck, that can’t be first aid at all. When I told the doctors here in Gaza what happened to me, they said that can’t be first aid, it can’t be something like that, that’s torture.

Mohammed’s account of his treatment goes on, as I indicate in my summary account above, but you have read enough to get the flavor of this “interrogation.”  In any case, eventually Mohammed was dragged off, still only half conscious, to an ambulance and taken to a hospital in Jericho following which he was transported by Dutch diplomats to a hospital in Gaza where doctors determined that several of his ribs had been cracked. Mohammed was hospitalized for five days after his assault and is still recovering from his injuries and trauma. His voice remains weak and hoarse, and he still seems emotionally broken from the incident. As he told one interviewer, “I’m emotionally destroyed.  I have nightmares.  I have never experienced such humiliation. They stripped and made fun of me….If I weren’t a Palestinian, if only I had a different passport, they would never have done that to me.”

The latest word I have heard from those who are close to Mohammed is that he needs an operation.  It is not clear exactly for what, but one of his friends has written that it is because of where they had kicked him.  He said it was in a sensitive area so I am assuming it is in the groin.”  I think we can surmise just where Mohammed was kicked.

Of course, the Israelis deny that any unusual security procedures were involved in Mohammed’s interrogation, and that “the person in question received decent treatment and no extraordinary measures were taken against him. After the body search…the person in question lost his balance and fell for some unknown reason….”

Needless to say, no one, and certainly no one who has talked with Mohammed, believes this.  Such denials are standard practice and are risible on their face.

As you can imagine, there has been a widespread sense of outrage over this incident and various protests have already been lodged by friends of Mohammed and concerned journalists everywhere.  Dutch MP Van Baalen has demanded an investigation and an open letter has been sent to the Israeli ambassador to the U.K., Ron Prosor, asking him to launch an investigation into the matter. 

Meanwhile, in America, The Washington Report for Middle East Affairs has circulated a petition on Mohammed’s behalf, which has already garnered thousand of signatories demanding redress, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s office has agreed to a meeting.  In addition, the Consul General of the San Francisco Israeli consulate has been advised of this matter and has offered to meet about it.  At the very least, if the results of these inquiries establish the veracity of Mohammed’s claims, as few doubt they will, then the Israeli government should be required to issue an apology to Mohammed and to compensate him for his injuries, although of course none of that will repair his broken ribs or his damaged “groin,” much less undo the trauma and humiliation that he suffered as a result of the thuggish actions that its operatives perpetrated on him.

Even though Mohammed has been deeply wounded, physically and psychologically, by the ordeal that I have described, he is determined not to allow the insults he has suffered at the hands of these Israeli agents to intimidate him or keep him from his work, no matter what the consequences.  As he told Amy Goodman:

Well…they can kill me.  I thought that the fact that I’m being given this international prize was going to bring me protection, but who cares?  Israel doesn’t care….I mean, will Israel care [about] killing a journalist?  Of course not….Will they care [about killing] Mohammed Omer?   Of course not.

As long as Mohammed lives, they will not succeed in killing his voice either. He will continue to speak out against injustice and to report the facts in Gaza, once he is able to work again.  As it states in his Gellhorn Prize citation, “Every day, he reports from a war zone, where he is also a prisoner. His homeland, Gaza, is surrounded, starved, attacked, forgotten. He is a profoundly humane witness to one of the great injustices of our time.  He is the voice of the voiceless.”

Mohammed told another interviewer that he was calling on his colleagues around the world to condemn in the strongest words the “criminal and disgraceful Israeli behavior,” which “only befits criminals and thugs, not states, let alone states that claim to be civilized, western and democratic.” 

As is well attested by human rights organizations and many witnesses, flagrant abuses like those which were inflicted upon Mohammed occur routinely to Palestinian citizens at the hands of Israeli soldiers and have been going on for many years. Most of the victims of this kind of brutality, which can only inflame hatred because of its capricious cruelty, are ordinary people who have no one to speak up for their defense, so reports of this sort of thing often leave no trace except on those who are the victims of it. But in this case, Mr. Omer is a highly respected journalist who has many friends throughout the world, and because of that, there will rightly be a “stink” made about this incident, and it will not forgotten, any more than it will by Mohammed himself.

In fact, in the last communication I have received from one of his close friends, Mohammed made it clear that he wanted his friends and allies around the world “not to give up fighting for the safe passage of Palestinians” and that his own case not be forgotten since it provides such a clear instance of what can happen to any Palestinian, especially one who has a record of speaking out against injustice, when such routine protections can no longer be counted on.

Which is why those of us who have been especially concerned with this incident want to do all we can to continue to publicize it until justice is done, both to Mohammed and to all Palestinians. In this effort, we hope you will also see fit to make your voice heard.

-Kenneth Ring, Ph.D., is a professor emeritus of psychology, University of Connecticut, who currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. He contributed this article to PalstineChronicle.com. Contact him at: Ken_Ring@Compuserve.com.

By Stephen Lendman – Chicago

Along with other past and present administration officials, Attorney General Michael Mukasey supports lawlessness and police state justice. Weeks after the Supreme Court's landmark (June 12) Boumediene ruling, he addressed the conservative, pro-war American Enterprise Institute (on July 21) and asked Congress to overrule the High Court - for the third time. His proposal:

-- subvert constitutional and international law;

-- authorize indefinite detentions of Guantanamo and other "war on terror" prisoners (including US citizens designated "enemy combatants"); and

-- deny them habeas rights, due process, and any hope for judicial fairness.

Since June 2004, the (conservative) High Court made three landmark rulings. Twice Congress intervened, and Mukasey wants a third time. In Rasul v. Bush (June 2004), the Court granted Guantanamo detainees habeas rights to challenge their detentions in civil court. Congress responded with the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA) of 2005 subverting the ruling.

In June 2006, the Supreme Court reacted. In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, it held that federal courts retain jurisdiction over habeas cases and that Guantanamo Bay military commissions lack "the power to proceed because (their) structures and procedures violate both the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the four Geneva Conventions (of) 1949."

In October 2006, Congress responded a second time. It enacted the Military Commissions Act (MCA) - subverting the High Court ruling in more extreme form. In its menu of illegal provisions, it grants the administration extraordinary unconstitutional powers to detain, interrogate, torture and prosecute alleged terrorist suspects, enemy combatants, or anyone claimed to support them. It lets the President designate anyone anywhere in the world (including US citizens) an "unlawful enemy combatant" and empowers him to arrest and detain them indefinitely in military prisons. The law states: "no (civil) court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any claim or cause for action whatsoever....relating to the prosecution, trial or judgment of....military commission(s)....including challenges to (their) lawfulness...."

On June 12, 2008, the High Court again disagreed. In Boumediene v. Bush, it held that Guantanamo detainees retain habeas rights. MCA unconstitutionally subverts them, and the administration has no legal authority to deny them due process in civil courts or act as accuser, trial judge and executioner with no right of appeal or chance for judicial fairness.

On July 21, Mukasey responded, and immediately the ACLU reacted in a same day press release headlined: "Attorney General Wants New Declaration of War Allowing Indefinite Detention and Concealment of Torture." It called Mukasey's speech "an enormous executive branch power grab....authoriz(ing) indefinite detention(s) through a new declaration of armed conflict." He asked Congress to redefine habeas through legislation "that will hide the Bush administration's past wrongdoing - an action that would undermine the constitutional guarantee of due process and conceal systematic (lawless) torture and abuse of detainees."

Like his two predecessors, Mukasey mocks the rule of law and supports harsh police state justice. He wants Congress to "expand and extend the 'war on terror' forever" and let the president detain anyone indefinitely without charge or trial. ACLU's Washington Legislative Director, Caroline Fredrickson, called this "the last gasp of an administration desperate to rationalize what is a failed legal scheme" - that the Supreme Court thunderously rejected three times.

Mukasey proposes lawlessness and cover-up, "but there is no reason to think that Congress will assist him." It "won't fall for this latest (scheme) to (suppress) its wrongdoing." Besides, the House Judiciary Committee is now investigating whether high-level administration officials authorized torture and abuse. Mukasey wants to hide it and is asking Congress to "bury the evidence."

The ACLU is righteously outraged by this latest attempted power grab. It rejects Mukasey's lawlessness and states there is "no need to invent yet another set of legal rules to govern the detention and trial of prisoners held on national security grounds, and the rules that (Mukasey) is proposing are fundamentally inconsistent with" constitutional and international law.

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) Responds

After Mukasey's September 17, 2007 nomination for Attorney General, CCR issued the following November 1, 2007 statement:

"Michael Mukasey is not fit to be Attorney General because he supports torture, illegal spying on Americans, and limitless powers for the Executive Branch." As the "country's highest law enforcement official," he's obligated "to enforce the law" - not make excuses for the government when it's in violation. CCR stands "firmly against Mukasey's nomination....Our country cannot afford to make compromises to our laws, our morals, and our humanity any longer." The Senate must reject Attorney General candidates who'll "undermine American justice and shred the Constitution."

CCR expressed equal outrage on July 21. Its Executive Director, Vincent Warren, denounced Mukasey's proposal in the following excerpted statement:

"What Mukasey is doing is a shocking attempt to drag us into years of further legal challenges and delays. The Supreme Court has definitively spoken" in Boumediene v. Bush and its two prior rulings. "For six and a half years," the administration and Congress "have done their best to (deny due process) and prevent the courts from reviewing the legality of the detention of the men in Guantanamo. Congress should be a part of the solution this time by letting the courts do their job."

For the past six years, CCR litigated for Guantanamo detainee rights and continues to do it. It organized and coordinated over 500 pro bono lawyers for everyone held there illegally. Most recently, it represented plaintiffs in the landmark Boumediene v. Bush case - argued on December 5, 2007 and ruled on June 12, 2008.

The Wall Street Journal Reports and Editorializes

Its July 22 article states: "Mukasey Seeks Law on Detainees - Congress Is Urged to Limit Rights of Terror Suspects....in light of a rebuke by the Supreme Court." It quotes Mukasey wanting:

-- legislative "principles" for "practical" limits on the right of detainees to challenge their incarceration;

-- Congress to give the administration freedom to detain combatants "for the duration of the ('war on terror') conflict;"

-- a "reaffirmation of something that was enacted in legislation after September 11, 2001" (a menu of harsh repressive laws);

-- no "enemy combatants" released in (or brought to) the US (even to appear in civil court);

-- no intelligence (or harsh interrogation) methods revealed (so evidence of torture and abuse is suppressed), and

-- military officers (and intelligence officials) to be excused from testifying (because what they know is damning).

On its editorial page, the Journal is supportive. It called Mukasey's proposal "modest" on a "difficult" issue over which "different judges even on the same court will disagree." Mukasey wants congressional "guidance" because there's risk of "inconsistent rulings and considerable uncertainty."

According to the Journal, Mukasey "was right in stepping forward to say that someone has to take responsibility for the consequences of the Supreme Court's 5 - 4" Boumediene ruling. It wants "Congress (to) give one court jurisdiction over (all detainee) cases" and not let the process "bog down into a Babel of conflicting procedural and legal rulings." Mukasey is "right" to ask Congress to settle the issue, (regardless of three landmark High Court rulings). In other words:

-- constitutional and international laws don't apply;

-- judicial fairness is a dead letter;

-- presidential power is supreme; and

-- Congress must support the executive and overrule the highest court in the land....A "modest (police state) proposal" according to the Journal and one it clearly supports.

- Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact him at: lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. (Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM - 1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests. All programs are archived for easy listening.)

By Joharah Baker

Even Lewis Carroll would have a difficult time picking through the politics of Palestine and Israel. In Alice's world, everything is upside down – cats that disappear and reappear at their own will, talking rabbits, hookah-smoking caterpillars and rabbit holes that lead to a world of wonder. Still, at the end of Carroll's famed "Alice in Wonderland", Alice realizes that logic and reason are not as mundane as she once thought and serve a purpose in real life.

In Palestine, logic and reason go but so far and what politicians say and pledge is far removed from their realities. In our own Alice in Wonderland version of reality, peace is near and the world is on the side of establishing a Palestinian state. Unfortunately, neither logic nor reason follows this vision given the hard facts on the ground, which prove the opposite.

Let's examine the Wonderland version first. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is invited to the home of Israeli President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem. This is the first time any Palestinian president has been invited to the Jerusalem home of an Israeli president. The closest Palestinians have ever gotten was when late President Yasser Arafat was invited to former Israeli President Ezer Weisman's home in Caesaria.

The meeting was accompanied by all the fanfare afforded to heads of state complete with a red carpet welcome. "I am full of confidence the problems will be resolved," Peres told reporters. "I feel both sides believe there is no alternative to peace."

Abbas was a smidgen more realistic but duly offered the optimism expected from him on such an occasion. "Despite the passage of time, despite difficulties and obstacles, there is an end to this long conflict," he said during the visit.

Both Palestinians and Israelis are no strangers to such lofty words from the mouths of those who lead them. Just a few short weeks ago, on July 13, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert prophesized that the Palestinians and Israelis "have never been as close to a possible peace agreement as today." The Israeli premier was speaking at the Union of the Mediterranean Conference held in Paris, flanked by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and President Abbas. Both sides, he concluded, "are serious and want to achieve peace."

That is probably true. There is virtually no one on this earth who doesn't 'want' peace. What kind of peace, however, is a different story. Even as Olmert was offering his pearls of wisdom, Jewish settlements in east Jerusalem continued to expand, despite international condemnation and the fact that these houses are being built on expropriated Palestinian land.

Olmert and Abbas both seem to have the idea that the prospect of peace is within reach, much like President Arafat who died with the words "we are in the last quarter hour" [before liberation] on his lips. International figures also seem to think so, with French President Sarkozy outlining the tasks that need to be accomplished before this can happen during his Knesset address last month. Israeli settlement building must stop, the refugee issue must be dealt with and Jerusalem must be the capital of both states. The Palestinians, he added, would have to take better control of their own affairs, "terrorism" in particular.

The economic world is singing to the same tune. During his visit to the region last week, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown pledged an additional $60 million to boost the ailing Palestinian economy over and above the $500 million Britain has already promised over the next three years. The Palestinians were pledged close to $7 billion at the Paris Economic Conference last December in a bid to bolster the Palestinian economy and also boost President Abbas' secular West Bank government in the face of Hamas' continued Islamic stronghold on the Gaza Strip.

Ambitious plans to create job opportunities for Palestinians, establish industrial zones, strengthen the Palestinian security forces and alleviate unemployment have all been part and parcel of the overall peace process restarted in Annapolis last November. The parties, including the United States, were so enthusiastic they even estimated that Palestinians and Israelis would be able to sign an agreement by the end of this year.

So much for that. As the Palestinians' wonderland vision fades into the background, the reality of the situation comes to the fore. In contrast to Olmert's prediction that "peace has never been nearer", the Palestinians feel it is miles away. Nothing on the ground has changed in terms of Israeli promises to ease restrictions on the Palestinians' everyday life such as removing some of the 600 or so checkpoints peppered throughout the West Bank. Jerusalem is as sequestered as always, if not more. Today, following the second bulldozer attack in west Jerusalem by a Palestinian, which resulted in several injured Israelis, the Israeli government has pledged to crack down even harder on east Jerusalem residents. Punitive measures such as demolishing the homes of "terrorists" and revoking their residency rights are currently being discussed in Israel's legal corridors of power. In the overall scheme of things, this only serves Israel's broader goal in Jerusalem, which is pushing out as many Palestinians from the city as possible and making room for an even wider Jewish majority.

If nothing else, such adverse developments in the city can only further hinder any agreed on reaching a solution there. Furthermore, while the international community continues to reiterate its commitment to helping the Palestinians create their state if they prove capable of governing themselves, Israel continues to undermine this very effort. How can the PA's security forces assert their authority on the ground when Israel constantly raids and arrests the very areas they are meant to control?

Last week, Israel closed down several facilities in Nablus on the claim that they were Hamas affiliated, including a shopping center, medical clinics and kindergartens even though Palestinian security forces have been patrolling the city for months.

We all want to believe Ehud Olmert when he says Israel wants peace. We know for sure that President Abbas wants it because governing a people under a foreign occupation is hardly an enviable position. What we need now, however, is to somehow bridge the enormous gap between these two parallel realities. The fairytale-like vision of peace leaders here and elsewhere feed us in a constant stream of statements crosses the line between being practically optimistic and quite frankly, delusional. A just, lasting and comprehensive peace may be attainable somewhere down the line. At least we all hope it is and will continue to work towards this goal. It is not, however, that close.

-Joharah Baker is a Writer for the Media and Information Programme at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH). Contact her at: mip@miftah.org. (This article was originally published in MIFTAH – www.miftah.org.)

By Ivan Eland – Washington

After having begun a series of investigative stories criticizing the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in May 2008, CNN reporter Drew Griffin reports being placed with more than a million other names on TSA’s swollen terrorism watch list.  Although TSA insists Griffin’s name is not on the list and pooh-poohs any possibility of retaliation for Griffin’s negative reporting, the reporter has been hassled by various airlines on 11 flights since May.  The airlines insist that Griffin’s name is on the list.  Congress has asked TSA to look into the tribulations of this prominent passenger.

In a recent op-ed in the Washington Post, probably responding to the controversy over Griffin, Leonard Boyle, the director of the Terrorist Screening Center, defended the watch list, claiming that because terrorists have multiple aliases, the names on the list boiled down to only about 400,000 actual people.  If there are 400,000 terrorists lying in wait to attack the United States, we are all in trouble.

But wait a minute. There has been no major terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11—almost seven years ago.  Where are all these nefarious evildoers?

Boyle says 95 percent of these people are not American citizens or legal residents and the vast majority aren’t even in the United States.  He rather sheepishly defends the size of the list by writing, “Its size corresponds to the threat.  It’s a big world.”

That brings up a very important issue.  The U.S. government regularly tries to police the world and combat threats to other nations—in the process, usually generating more enemies.  Examining the forty-four organizations on the State Department’s highly politicized list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO), one finds that only a very few currently focus their efforts on U.S. targets.  And the U.S. government has even flirted with one anti-Iranian group, the Mujahedin-e Khalq, which was put on the FTO list long ago. 

Similarly, the State Department’s list of five state sponsors of terrorism has included Cuba and North Korea—neither of which has actively participated in terrorist attacks in decades.  These two countries continued to be on the list for other reasons—namely U.S. government aversion to them.  On its website, the State Department even admits that, “The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) was not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since the bombing of a Korean Airlines flight in 1987.”  The website also contains an implicit admission that keeping selected countries on the state sponsors list can reap ulterior political benefits for the United States.   The website notes that under the umbrella of the Six-Party Talks, the United States intends to remove North Korea from the list as that nation takes actions toward getting rid of its nuclear weapons program.  Even the remaining three nations on the list that do sponsor terrorism—Syria, Iran, and Sudan—don’t support groups that focus their attacks on the U.S.

Thus, the humongous terrorist watch list for airline travel and the excessively large FTO and state sponsors lists are a few more examples of the United States taking on other nations’ security burdens.  Trying to be the “big man on (the world) campus,” however, comes at a horrendous cost to American freedom at home.

The terrorist watch list is downright unconstitutional.  Under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, no warrants shall be issued unless there is probable cause that a crime has been committed.  If the government has such probable cause that a passenger is conspiring to commit a terrorist act on an airplane, it should not hassle that person at the airport when trying to fly or ban him or her from flying; it should arrest them.  But of course the government does not have the evidence to do that for the vast majority of the 400,000 people on the watch list. 

And it’s apparently not easy to get yourself off the list once you are on it.  Although Boyle claims that the TSA constantly scrubs the list for possible mistaken identities of people who have frequent “encounters” with the list, even if they don’t file a complaint, Griffin uncovered an innocent passenger with a common name—James Robinson—who has complained endlessly and has received no resolution of his case.  Senator Edward Kennedy—also with a common name—experienced endless hassles and red tape trying to get his name off the list.  If such a well-known figure has such problems, the average misidentified traveler is in big trouble.

And as the economists would say, what about opportunity cost to real security?  The U.S. government should spend the time it devotes to scrutinizing 400,000 people on the watch list, and the vast majority of the 44 FTOs and all of the 5 countries who don’t sponsor anti-U.S. terrorism, on the again rising principal threat from Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and their tens of hard core al Qaeda followers operating out of Pakistan.  The American public would be much safer.  As the famous Prussian military ruler Fredrick the Great (and closet economist) said, “To defend everything is to defend nothing.”  Moreover, under current government policy, we have neither liberty nor security.

-Ivan Eland is Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute. He is author of the books, The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed, and Putting “Defense” Back into U.S. Defense Policy. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

By Kevin Zeese

Although many of Senator Obama’s policy pronouncements are disturbing to peace voters, there are two things that Senator Obama has said during the long presidential campaign that give voters opposed to war some hope.

First, in a debate on January 31st 2008, Senator Obama said:

“I want to end the mindset that got us into war in the first place.”

If this statement is to be taken seriously it would mean a paradigm shift in U.S. foreign policy away from militarism towards diplomacy, foreign aid and cooperation with other nations.  It will also mean shrinking the already too large defense budget creating the ability to invest in the new energy economy, U.S. infrastructure and the basic necessities of the American people.

Secondly, Sen. Obama has repeatedly told voters that the change he promises will not occur unless voters organize to pressure him and other elected officials. Most recently when he reversed course on the issue of telecom immunity, Senator Obama said that he expects voters to “hold me accountable” and make demands of him, saying:

“…when citizens join their voices together, they can hold their leaders accountable. I'm not exempt from that. I'm certainly not perfect, and expect to be held accountable too.”

Now is the time to do as exactly Senator Obama requests. As he travels in Afghanistan and Iraq and is on his way to meet European leaders it is time for us to urge Senator Obama to begin the process of ending the mindset of war.  Peace voters need to be more organized and demonstrate that it is time to change U.S. foreign policy.  We need to let Senator Obama know that we will hold him accountable and that we have other choices in this election; he has not yet earned our votes.

Peace voters are disgruntled with many of the positions Senator Obama has taken.  His plan for Iraq is not a withdrawal but a redeployment of troops.  Obama has called for a gradual redeploying of combat troops to Kuwait, where they can serve as a strike force to attack inside Iraq, while moving other troops to Afghanistan.  He is also calling for a residual force to remain in Iraq.  He does not say how large this force would be but his foreign policy advisors have put the number at 30,000 to 80,000 troops.  Further, he told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now that he would not remove 140,000 private security forces (mercenary troops like Blackwater).  On July 15, 2008, Sen. Obama told Larry King “I've also said that we'll leave a residual force there to engage in counterterrorism activities inside of Iraq, as well, to protect our bases and our diplomats and civilian workers there.”  This describes the current mission of U.S. troops. The comment about protecting bases was particularly disturbing to peace voters because it means he plans to keep U.S. military bases in Iraq.

Senator Obama’s recent promise to escalate the number of troops in Afghanistan by 10,000 is certainly not the direction peace voters would advocate.  Even stalwart Obama supporter and peace activist Tom Hayden has described Obama’s policy as trading two wars for one – the two being Afghanistan and Pakistan.   More troops will not help in Afghanistan. Already the U.S. is bombing wedding parties and killing civilians.  Isn’t that making more enemies rather than less?  And as far as capturing Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda and Taliban leaders, wouldn’t precision military and intelligence activities be more effective than a force of 10,000?  Afghanistan is better stabilized by less military and more foreign aid to show them that the U.S. is trying to build up the country and improve the lives of Afghanis rather than further destroy it with military force. Such an approach would weaken support for al Qaeda and the Taliban, while increased military activities could strengthen them.

Another concern of peace voters was Senator Obama was his speech before AIPAC — his words revealing a policy seemingly more hawkish than Senator McCain’s.  In the speech Obama ad-libbed a promise to do everything necessary to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons — repeating ‘everything’ three times — a clear signal that Obama would use military force to accomplish this objective. Indeed, one of the few issues on which he has not wavered is keeping the military option on the table for Iran.

At the same time, Sen. Obama has talked more about diplomacy and foreign aid. Those are the types of signals peace voters need to hear of more. 

By speaking of diplomacy and foreign aid, at this point, Obama is holding on to most peace voters  However, he has lost many to candidates like Cynthia McKinney, Ralph Nader and Bob Barr—third party and independent candidates who are clearly calling for withdrawal from Iraq while Obama wavers.  Many more peace voters are likewise wavering as they watch Obama’s pronouncements upon returning from his foreign tour.  Is he moving toward ending the mindset of war or increasing U.S. militarism?

The vast majority of Americans—a growing super majority—oppose continuing keeping U.S. troops in Iraq, bombing Iran and want a less military-based foreign policy. We, as peace voters, must do exactly as Senator Obama has requested and hold him accountable. Now is the time to let Senator Obama know he cannot take peace voters for granted.  Peace voters are the majority and we must insist that this majority opinion be respected.  Are peace voters willing to take a stand and demand a de-militarized foreign policy?

As a first step toward demanding peace, please join in signing this important petition below.  You can do so at www.VotersForPeace.US.  The petition urges Sen. Obama to begin to make good on his pledge to “end the mindset that got us into war in the first place.” 

Obama said: “I'm asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington... I'm asking you to believe in yours.” Let’s begin by believing we can change the direction of Sen. Obama’s on foreign policy.
 
Petition to Sen. Obama: It is time to work to "end the mindset" of war
 
In recent comments you have urged voters to "hold you accountable" and make policy demands on you.  On January 31, 2008 you said "I want to end the mindset that got us into war in the first place."  This is the standard we urge you live-up to - the statement for which we write to hold you accountable.

Your recent writings and speeches on Iraq indicate that you have not backtracked, and it is critical that you do not do so.  Many in the peace movement are reasonably concerned with some of your positions, particularly the incomplete withdrawal that leaves tens of thousands of residual troops in Iraq, more than 100,000 private military forces, and a combat strike force in Kuwait, while continuing to threaten Iran.  DO NOT TAKE AMERICANS OPPOSED TO WAR FOR GRANTED.  Anti-war voters - the growing majority of Americans - have many options.  We do not have to donate time or money to your campaign. We can vote for clearly anti-war third party and independent candidates or we can not vote at all.
 
As you travel through Europe, the Middle East and Afghanistan as the putative Democratic nominee, now is the time to begin to "end the mindset" of war.  When you visit Israel, urge them to not bomb Iran; tell the Israelis and Palestinians that peace is the priority. Urge U.S. commanders in Iraq to speed up the withdrawal that you have proposed and to make it a complete withdrawal-- do not leave residual troops, mercenaries, a strike force in Kuwait or any long-term bases. When you are in Afghanistan, emphasize non-military solutions to the conflict there.  Militarism dominates U.S. statecraft. Now is the time for greater emphasis on negotiation, diplomacy, multi-lateralism and foreign aid.  The people demand it.

War is not the answer to any of these conflicts.  The U.S. is not made more secure by creating new enemies and draining our treasury.  The U.S. military budget is sapping the economic strength of the nation and making it impossible to face up to the urgent needs of a new energy economy, upgraded infrastructure, health care for all and other necessities of the American people.  When you "end the mindset" that led to the Iraq War, it will allow for a re-prioritization of resources at home and abroad, moving the U.S. away from a military economy toward a civilian one.  Now is the time to begin to end the mindset of war.
 
-Kevin Zeese is executive director of Voters For Peace (www.VotersforPeace.us). He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

By Stuart Littlewood - London
 
I and my dog Mortimer apologise most sincerely to the world, and especially to Arab friends, for our prime minister's crass speech to the Knesset.

Britain, like the US, has an uncanny knack of producing one silly leader after another from a limitless supply that thrust themselves on an unsuspecting public in order to perpetuate the Great Betrayal and the Nakba. Brown is the latest high-flier from our political swamp. Judging by his performance so far, we Brits are destined to live our lives in a state of perpetual and excruciating embarrassment.

Let it be known that this prime minister doesn't speak for me or anyone I know when he says: "Britain will always stand firmly by Israel's side." And nobody of my acquaintance, or their dog, would ever sign up to "an unbreakable partnership based on shared values of liberty, democracy and justice" with Israel. It is quite obvious that none of our values of liberty, democracy and justice is practised by that regime.

However, it was faintly amusing to hear Brown say that "we will do more than oppose what is wrong. We will show those who would give licence to terror the way home to what is right too - showing them that the path to a better future runs not through violence, not by murder, and never with the killing of civilians but by liberty's torch, through justice's mighty stream, and across tolerance's foundation of equality." That should have had Knesset members squirming in their seats, but the irony was obviously lost on them, and on Brown himself.

"I think of David Ben Gurion," he blurted, "who from humble beginnings in Poland built up the Jewish National Institutions and in 1948 said it was not enough for the Jewish state simply to be Jewish, it had to be fully democratic offering equal citizenship to all residents: a democracy not just of one people but of all your peoples..."
 
Mentioning Ben Gurion in the same breath as democracy and equality is not a good idea. This is the same guy who said: "I support compulsory transfer [i.e. ethnic cleansing]. I don't see anything immoral in it." On another occasion he admitted: “If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel… We have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it is true, but 2,000 years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country.”

Brown even praised Menachem Begin but was careful not to mention the Irgun. It was Begin's terror gang, the Irgun, that declared war on the British mandate government while Britain was still fighting Nazi Germany. And our prime minister must have forgotten that in 1946 the Irgun under Begin's leadership blew up British headquarters in Jerusalem's King David Hotel, killing 91.

But Brown woffled on, oblivious to the heavily larded insults his words conveyed. "...This sixtieth anniversary on the achievement of 1948: the centuries of exile ended, the age-long dream realised, the ancient promise redeemed - the promise that even amidst suffering, you will find your way home to the fields and shorelines where your ancestors walked... And your sixty-year journey from independence is evidence for all to see that good can come out of the worst of times." So never mind the countless thousands of Palestinians that were murdered, dispossessed, imprisoned, starved and abused in the process.

"You are truly global citizens - often the first to offer help or medical aid..." burbled the unstoppable Brown. Tell that to the chronically sick, who suffer and die in agony because Israel's siege blocks the supply of medication and hospital spares and prevents them leaving Gaza for proper treatment. How strange that Brown didn't actually mention Gaza, or the siege, or what some call 'the slow genocide' in his whole tiresome speech.

How dare this grey suit use our good name to offer such brazenly partisan approval to a territorial hi-jack that daily brings misery, disaster and cruel injustice to those who are crammed into the impoverished remnants - the crumbs - of what used to be their Palestine homeland. Fortunately Brown's days are numbered. Unfortunately another I'm-a-Zionist nutter is waiting in the wings.

And I greatly resent, as do others, any leader of my nation playing the religious card and cloaking himself in the mantle of Christianity (in this case his upbringing in the Church of Scotland) in order to give credence to his support for Israel's pitiless pursuit of its Zionist programme, the purpose of which is to wipe Palestine off the map.

Another prime minister  whose young mind hadn't come under the influence of a Hebrew-speaking, Israel-loving, church-minister father and later the Israel lobby, might have delivered a very different speech to the Knesset:

"Listen up. Your exclusive claim to the whole territory cuts no ice with the rest of the world. Say goodbye to the West Bank, dismantle the Wall as instructed by the International Court of Justice, compensate the Palestinians for the injury and wreckage of the past 60 years, give them back their water, stop interfering with their freedom of movement, quit throttling their economy and hands off their trade.

"Israel's security is no more precious than the security of its neighbours and their right to live in peace. End the siege of Gaza and your occupation of Gazan airspace, airwaves and coastal waters. Release the 10,000 Palestinians, including women and children, cooped up in your jails. And it's time your troops hightailed it out of  Jerusalem - it was designated an international city 60 years ago and you'll share it on equal terms with the other great faiths.

"Renounce your nuclear weapons, sign the non-proliferation treaty and open up your nuclear facilities to international inspection just as you expect your neighbours to. Also sign, ratify and meticulously observe the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty.

"Until Israel renounces terror, violence, murder, assassination, indiscriminate arrest, false imprisonment and torture, it can forget about the EU-Israel Agreement, the preferential exports and all the other benefits - trade, science, research, path-breaking academic and cultural partnerships and new cooperative ventures. Try and be nice for a change, guys. Remember, ordinary British and European folk, unlike the despised political class, wish to do nice business with nice people. If you continue to bully and humiliate our friends in the Holy Land, which you gate-crashed 60 years ago, you will not be welcome in civilised society.

"And before we all get too carried away about Iran, when is Israel going to comply with the 30 or 40 UN resolutions regarding its multiple breaches of international law? Maybe we'll talk again when you have reined in your militants and extremists, and when you have read, understood and shown proper respect for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
 
"By the way, when the Freegaza voyagers set out from Cyprus on 5 August to sail through international and Palestinian waters to Gaza, Royal Navy warships will be on hand to make sure they aren't molested."

Come on Mortimer... walkies.
 
-Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. For further information please visit www.radiofreepalestine.co.uk.

By Ramzy Baroud

For some folks interested in genealogy, tracing one's roots is a stimulating activity. It's immensely interesting and meaningful to learn where one's life started. DNA testing has made it possible to trace one's roots back many generations and there are even free web sites that can help users trace their family history based on a few simple clues.

Recent findings in my own personal history have been interesting indeed. The present task of tracing my family roots was inspired by a book project with Pluto Press, narrating the story of my father, as once a fighter from Gaza who died recently under tragic circumstances in the same refugee camp to which he was expelled, along with his family sixty years ago.

Just weeks into my research, I found myself stumbling into the details of a massacre, one that is conveniently overshadowed by the dust of the battle, the rigidity of academic research and the lack of media access of those who have survived.

And now, what started as a mere phase of my father's torn childhood in Palestine has morphed into being the core of my book's narrative.

My family came from the village of Beit Daras, one of the hundreds of villages destroyed by Zionist Jewish militias prior to the establishment of the state of Israel. Growing up in a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, decades after the destruction of Beit Daras, I heard many stories of our village that now only exist in memory. The objective behind the story was hardly a calculated intent to ensure that we don't forget what has befallen us. It was a daily narrative that simply defined our internal relationship as a community.

The "Bedrasawis" - the collective name of those originated from Beit Daras - were often stereotyped as "large headed" - literally - and stubborn. Although we Bedrasawis protested the recurring accusation, we also shared unspoken pride in it. But that reputation of zeal and prowess was fostered by the dramatic events of 1948, during the Zionist drive to evacuate Palestine from its inhabitants.

Israeli historian Benny Morris, in his volume, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, makes a couple of references to Beit Daras. Nothing notable, aside from the fact that a Haganah's unit, Givati, had shelled the village on May 10, 1948 "promoting the flight of its inhabitants." But there is more to what took place in Beit Daras than Morris's footnote. Arab historians, Walid Khalidi, Salman Abu Sitta, among others, provided the story within a greater context. Still, documenting the history of anywhere between 400 to 500 destroyed Palestinian villages in one volume is not a simple feat, thus much of Beit Daras' history is lumped as one of many: the Zionists attacked on day such and such, the Arabs resisted, then fled, then the village was blown up to ensure that the inhabitants would not return.

As sinister as the above summation is, much is left untold. Peoples, faces, stories and families were torn apart, often never to meet again, along with the decimated village's 401 homes, two mosques and lone elementary school. 

Those killed in the 'massacre of Beit Daras', according to Palestinian accounts, were 265, largely women, children and elders. The gender and age groups of the victims were not selective nor coincidental, but related to the nature of the battle, where the fighters of Beit Daras were engaged in fighting against successive Zionist army units, first involving militants from a nearby settlement, then Haganah forces and finally Givati units. The battle for Beit Daras was long and arduous, and duly mentioned in the writings of Jamal Abd Al-Nasser, the first president of Egypt, during his military service in southern Palestine, and of David Ben Gurion's War Diaries (1947-1949).

Morris's chronological research methods discounted the fact that although Beit Daras was located in southern Palestine - approximately 30 kilometers north of Gaza - the Zionist aggression to conquer the once peaceful village began earlier than the Givati's "Operation Lighting" (Mivtza Barak) of early May 1948, and that the village didn't fall for at least another month after the date he sketchily provides. Indeed, Beit Daras' strategic location, near important Zionist military hubs - located inside settlements bordering the village - and near the supply routes to the Negev, made it a target as early as March 16, and several times more in the same month; then, again, in April, and twice in May, and finally in June. Zionist losses were high and their attempts failed, time after time. There was much fury that a small village of roughly 2000 people would not surrender under intense bombardment. A single day of fighting resulted in the death of 50 Arabs, according to Ben Gurion's own account.

Um 'Adel is an 80-year-old woman who now lives in Gaza. Today she sells foodstuffs at a tiny and humble stand to help her family as they struggle to survive the siege on Gaza. She vividly recalls the events that lead to the massacre in 1948. It struck me how apolitical she was, and how, until this day, she is dumbfounded, not able to comprehend the dramatic events of those short months between March and June of 1948.

Until now, she views the fight for Beit Daras based on a simple equation: They tried to take our land, and we fought them off until the end. "They (The Zionist militias) knew well that we, Bedrasawis would not go down easily. They knew that their fight for that whole area was one battle, but to take over Beit Daras was another." As simple as the equation was, her confusion about the whole event haunts her until this day, and even now decades later, she is still baffled as to what happened and why the people of her village were betrayed. Beit Daras, lived up to its reputation of hard-headedness and tenacity, but many details remain murky, yet incredibly revealing and deserve more than a footnote.

One can only hope that the memory of the village survives without having to wait the authentication of an Israeli historian, which may or may not ever arrive. I know that I will do my part to make that happen. After all, I owe Beit Daras my (relatively) large head, and the tenacious spirit of my children, who carry the names of those who lived in Beit Daras, and died there.

-Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers and journals worldwide. His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle (Pluto Press, London).

By Stephen Lendman - Chicago

Jeff Halper is an American-born Israeli Professor of Anthropology as well as a peace and human rights activist for over three decades. In 1997, he co-founded the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions (ICAHD), and as its Coordinating Director "organized and led nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience against Israel's occupation policies and authorities."

ICAHD's mission is now expanded well beyond home demolitions. It helps rebuild them and resists "land expropriation, settlement expansion, by-pass road construction, policies of 'closure' and 'separation," and much more. Its aim is simple, yet hard to achieve - to end decades of Israeli-Palestinian conflict equitably and return the region to peace. For his work, Halper was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.

Besides his full-time work, he writes many articles, position papers, and authored several books. His latest and subject of this review is An Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel. Israeli-based journalist Jonathan Cook (jkcook.net) authored two insightful books on the conflict that are highly recommended. Information can be found on his web site and much more. He calls Halper's book "one of the most insightful analyses of the Occupation I've read. His voice cries out to be heard" on the region's longest and most intractable conflict.

Halper is a "critical insider" and insightful commentator of events on the ground that he witnesses first hand. This review covers his analysis in-depth - in two parts for easier reading. It exposes Israeli repression and proposes remedial solutions. It provides another invaluable resource on the conflict's cause, history, why it continues, and a just and equitable resolution.

Introduction

Halper's observation about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is accurate. Knowing how to end it isn't the issue. Overcoming fear and Israeli obstruction is at its heart. There are "no sides," and Halper stresses that as a "chief claim of (his) book." Critical discussion and effective action must involve everyone this conflict affects as the way to "get out of this mess" and achieve justice.

Thinking "out of the Box" is key, reframing the issue, offering an alternative way, and using it to open "possibilities for resolution foreclosed (by) security framing." Halper has a "clear, empowering message: if we the people lead, our governments will follow." But it takes empowering ourselves to do it and a commitment for the task. The goal - a "win-win" peace for all parties on a global scale taking into account "equality, human rights, international law, justice, peace and development." Make no mistake. Israel bears most responsibility for the conflict, continuing it, and preventing its just resolution. Overcoming that is no small task, and 60 years of trying so far have failed.

Part I: Comprehending Oppression - The Making of a Critical Israeli

One home demolition transformed Halper from a progressive, liberal-left Zionist to his post-Zionist state. It was a year after ICAHD's creation, but he'd yet to see demolitions firsthand. He described his background and values - third-generation American, small town midwest, Conservative Jew (as differentiated from Orthodox or Reformed), not religious, but believing in the "essential rules of life" that he learned as a child: play fair, don't hit other kids, ask forgiveness when fall short, and