"Black Americans, who have experienced apartheid at home and fought successfully against it in Africa," feel most intensely the need to register their opposition to Israel's version of apartheid. Yet their elected officials cower at the feet of the pro-Israel lobby, which has successfully targeted independent-minded Black officials for defeat. A boycott Israel movement will have to roll over cowardly Black elected officials, but so be it. "If solidarity with Palestinians who suffer the aggressions of a regime as fundamentally racist as apartheid South Africa is not a compelling enough reason - and it surely is - then self-defense against Zionist subversion of domestic Black politics should move us to action."
"The corporate Right and the Israel lobby act in tandem."
African Americans must take a leadership role in the movement to boycott and disinvest in Israel, both for reasons of elemental justice and to defend our own people from the raging rightwing, corporate assault, of which the pro-Israel lobby is an integral component. If solidarity with Palestinians who suffer the aggressions of a regime as fundamentally racist as apartheid South Africa is not a compelling enough reason - and it surely is - then self-defense against Zionist subversion of domestic Black politics should move us to action. There can be no prospect of global peace or domestic progress while Israel runs amok in the Mid-East and its operatives wreak havoc in the African American political arena.
The moral imperative to answer the call "to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era," is overwhelming - so much so that failure to act amounts to a kind of self-mutilation, a defiling of one's legacy. Every iota of African American past and present existence tells us that no people can be allowed to superimpose themselves, their history, their supra-national rights on another people and their land, thus negating the Other's humanity - the essential facts of Zionism.
"There can be no prospect of global peace or domestic progress while Israel runs amok."
1948 saw the creation of civilization's greatest document to date - possibly the founding document of the truly modern era - the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The year also witnessed the founding of a state based on the antithesis of those values: Israel.
Both Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. tapped the deep reservoirs of the Declaration in their struggle for African Americans' human rights, and both understood the indivisibility of freedom. "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," wrote Dr. King in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny." Malcolm counseled Black activists that "if they would expand their civil rights movement to a human rights movement it would internationalize it."
That movement was internationalized, culminating in the 1980s South Africa corporate disinvestment and boycott campaign. As Black writer/activist Kevin Alexander Gray wrote in a piece earlier this year, calling for a similar campaign against Israel:
"What's happening in Palestine is not fundamentally different from what occurred in apartheid South Africa. Kids are being killed. People have been herded into the (more deadly) equivalent of Bantustans. Political leaders are targeted for assassination.... Israel's behavior demands the same response from the world human rights community as was mustered against South Africa."
"African Americans are represented in public offices by abject cowards."
The obligation to respond is felt most intensely among Black Americans, who have experienced apartheid at home and fought successfully against it in Africa - but who are represented in public offices by abject cowards. Thirty members of the Congressional Black Caucus shamed themselves and us by endorsing a Resolution affirming the Jewish State's "right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza" and absolving Israel of any blame for the slaughter. Seven Black lawmakers sought cover in voting "present" - as if that would cloak their slavish fear of the Israel lobby - while only two voted Nay: Reps. Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Gwen Moore (D-WS).
The man- and womanhood was scared out of the Black misleadership class in general, and the Congressional Black Caucus in particular, in 2002, when the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) joined with corporate moneybags to unseat two Black lawmakers. Reps. Cynthia McKinney, of suburban Atlanta, and Earl Hilliard, from Alabama, could not be counted on to bend their knees to Israel. They had to go.
"Reps. Cynthia McKinney and Earl Hilliard could not be counted on to bend their knees to Israel."
As Hilliard told me in July, 2002, tons of money suddenly rained down on his opponent, Artur Davis, "not just [from] corporations, but organizations like AIPAC. Mostly Republican operatives and Jewish operatives that were sent by different organizations and groups and corporations."
Was it their intention to make a public display of their power, I asked? "Oh, definitely - the seed of fear," Hilliard replied. "It sends a message to every member of Congress."
The same message was sent the next month, with Cynthia McKinney's defeat in Georgia. "I was targeted by AIPAC and others for my opposition to the Israeli occupation of and genocidal policies toward Palestine," said McKinney, who last year ran for president on the Green Party ticket.
2002 was the beginning of a joint corporate/pro-Israel offensive to subdue or eject "unreliable" Black Democrats. The dramatic deterioration of the Congressional Black Caucus, as an agent for progress on Capitol Hill, dates from that year. The corporate Right and the Israel lobby act in tandem. Their purge of Black politicians has been so successful, they're running out of live targets. Maxine Waters and Gwen Moore are the last two righteous sisters standing on Capitol Hill - where Black manhood is extinct. Down the street at the White House, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel stands guard - although President Obama appears to be an entirely voluntary captive of Israel.
So we see that the tentacles that strangle Gaza and once helped South Africa build nuclear weapons, are throttling the life out of independent Black politics in the United States. Boycott and disinvest in Israel! If not in solidarity, in self-defense.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
Comments
Congressional Black Carcass
There needs to be a running list of those CBC members who have voted against the wishes of their constiuencies and all moral principle. Far too many public servants are not serving their public and the almost automatic renewal of their terms really need to stop. I'm very interested to see if the lines that formed to vote Obama in will be equally as long to vote these jokers out.
As for Israel and the Zionists - I must say they have weaved a masterful diabolical plot. The revising of "holocaust" history to aggress upon a defenseless people - undertowed by literally criminalizing intellectual conversation of the his-story is just a continual head shaker. But, I do see signs of more people being brave enough to at least question this aspect of history and that's being forced by the Zionists own rapacious inhumanity. Hopefully there will be some Palestinians left when the dust clears.
"Preemptive Strike" ...
For those who weigh in that BAR is fixated on Israeli-Palestinian issues to the neglect of other international issues I'll say this:
First, a huge swath of the American electorate, regardless of whether they identify as Christians on the "left," "right" or "middle" unwaveringly accept the Christian Dispensationlist view that the spiritual and literal Armegeddon begins and ends in Israel. There's nothing the Israeli or US "left" can do to thwart Zionism, most don't have the guts or courage though that's changing. So whether or not you are atheist, agnostic doesn't matter, what matter is that the US Electorate is swayed by the "Israeli Myth."
Second, and more pragmatically. The greatest risk of nuclear war and indeed the countries that have openly, arrogantly, dangerously voiced those threats are Israel,(and US) especially towards Iran a NPT signatory. Here's what Israel's preeminent military scholar stated publicly in 2003, of course the MSM never reported it. Interestingly, he's the only foreigner whose works is required reading for US Military Officers.
(IAP News) — An Israeli professor and military historian hinted that Israel could avenge the holocaust by annihilating millions of Germans and other Europeans.
Speaking during an interview which was published in Jerusalem Friday, (2003) Professor Martin Van Creveld said Israel had the capability of hitting most European capitals with nuclear weapons.
"We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets of our air force."
Creveld, a professor of military history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, pointed out that "collective deportation" was Israel's only meaningful strategy towards the Palestinian people.
"The Palestinians should all be deported. The people who strive for this (the Israeli government) are waiting only for the right man and the right time. Two years ago, only 7 or 8 per cent of Israelis were of the opinion that this would be the best solution, two months ago it was 33 per cent, and now, according to a Gallup poll, the figure is 44 percent."
(and rising I might add)
Creveld said he was sure that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wanted to deport the Palestinians. "I think it's quite possible that he wants to do that. He wants to escalate the conflict. He knows that nothing else we do will succeed."
Asked if he was worried about Israel becoming a rogue state if it carried out a genocidal deportation against Palestinians, Creveld quoted former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan who said "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
www.pakalert.wordpress.com
1-26-09, title: "Israeli Professor: We Could Destroy all European Capitals." by Nadim Laki.
www.ademmm.deviantart.com/journal/22823791/
The Israel elections just moved Israel further to the right, the Gaza assault was brutal, "local politics" at it's worse. Does Israel now have, post-Gaza, "the right man or woman for the right time?" It is likely that soon it will be a crime for an Israeli citizen to criticize the government, a law aimed primarily at Israel-Arabs and the Israeli "Left." The settlements are expanding as we write. Obama is viewed by the MSM as preoccupied with the financial crisis, all of a sudden now a greater threat, according to US Intelligence, than dirty bombs, biological weapons, or SARS.
Given current conditions, Israel is poised to do something gansterish, criminal, and bold, in his remarks Van Crevald said that Israel had no problem being labeled a "rogue state." The Middle East and Israel is the tipping top for nuclear war, until Israel is reigned in the end of the world as we no it looms on the horizon. There are no depths to the brutality of the Zionist State, not my words, theirs.
It's Official: the "Librul" Voice of America, the Paper of Reco
"Obama's War on Terror May Resemble Bush's in Some Areas.", Charlie Savage, 2-17-09. "Say what?" I said, "Obama's War on Terror May Resemble Bush's in some Areas." No shit! Hate to say it, "but we told you so."
Remember, you heard it from the "Liberal" and American "Paper of Record" those first "scribes" of history, the New York Times. Will you now believe that Obama is Bush's sepia clone? This is not Fox News yall. Ha Ha
www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/us/politics
IT'S TIME!
It's astonishing that nearly 90% of Israeli citizens supported the slaughter and genocide of Palestinians. Yet, these are the same people who constantly whine about the holocaust while committing a 4 decade holocaust against the Pals.
Also, let us not forget Israel's very close collaboration with the former racist and apartheid occupiers of South Africa. Israel was a big part of the death and destruction that was imposed on the liberation struggles in southern Africa. Israel supplied S.A. with powerful milatary weapons, including nuclear. And it was the jewish persausion in S.A. that coined the word "terrorist" in describing resistance fighters.
As Lou has mentioned, the Jews of Israel and their manical leadership are the most dangerous and most cowardly people on earth.
Lets join the rest of humanity and condenm and sanction these racist monsters!
Black people wrongly fear Israel
Black Americans are raised to fear Jews because the Bible says they are God's chosen people. What our parents and churches don't teach us is that European Jews are not the Jews the Bible is talking about. The original Jews are the Black Hebrews which is why you don't read of white people in the Bible. There were none. If there had been there skin would be darker. White Jews are Khazars that converted to Judaism about 200 AD and co-opted the religion for themselves later on like they often do with black culture. Black Americans are more Jewish than anyone in Europe if being a Jew has any sense of ethnicity to it. White convert Jews are Ashkhenazi Jews and comprise over 90% of the world's white so-called Jews. Notice the "nazi" on the end of that word. It is not a coincidence and the star on Israel's flag is not the star of David. It is actually a Satanic symbol and black Christians are worshiping the wrong God which gives power to these evil Zionist Jews.
Israel has been using their falsified holocaust, while ignoring the African holocaust, to justify murder and mayhem all over the world in pursuit of power, control and global government. Who will stop them? If not the original Jews, the Black Hebrews and their descendants who are us, then who? It is out duty to expose the charade for what it is and to reject the Hamatic myth started by these wannabee Jews to oppress us. Jews made more money than anyone off the African slave trade and now sit atop the world at our collective expense. Farrakhan knows exactly what he is talking about when it comes to these parasitic white Zionist Jews. They are impostors and must be exposed and made to pay for their crimes against nature and humanity.
There are some good white Jews like the Neturei Karta who oppose Zionism but many white Jews prefer to stand on the sidelines hoping to benefit while their genocidal and megalomaniacal government pilfers and pillages the world with impunity just like white Americans who do not speak out against the atrocities committed by this government.
Black Christians are drunk with the Christian Kool-Aid. We need not fear the white Jews because of the Bible. God was talking to us!!!! We are the original Jews!!!! And God is on our side. Read "We the Black Jews" by Yosef ben-Jochannon about how this ruse has been perpetrated on Christians and the world in general. Jews control almost every major media company in the world. You cannot find the truth on television people. If you are not willing to work for you freedom then you will not have it. We need to stop competing with each other within the confines of this system of oppression and work toward its destruction and creation of something better and more humane for all peoples.
If you don't believe that evil Zionist Jews run the world see the 911 missing links videos at www.911missinglinks.com. . To see how the holocaust was staged see the www.onethirdoftheholocaust.com web site and read/listen to Daryl Bradford Smith at www.amthewitness.com. The truth is out there. Now is the time to act to save ourselves from these subhuman beasts of depravity and destruction.
Hamas
I believe I've heard every reproach available for Israel's treatment of Palestinians. And as much I agree with the bulk of the reproaches, I continue to be amazed by the dirth of cricism for Hamas.
In fact, as in the this article, there is none. If I came from another planet, and I read this article, I would view Israel as a tyrannical warmonger that kills innocent Palestinians for fun.
But I'm from the U.S. And so I know better.
How come Hamas can launch qassam missiles into Israel, and, I assume, conscientious peace-loving people not say anything about it? It appears to me that every government's primary job is to protect its citizens from foreign threats. Hamas isn't launching missiles into Israel for fun. It intends to kill jewish citizens. Although qassam rockets are very ineffective, the intent is there: to kill innocent Israelis.
And what is porpotionate force? Does that mean exchanging a life for a life? What a vague concept. I imagine that the Israeli government wants to break Hamas's back so that it will stop firing missiles. But what is Hamas thinking?
Everytime Israel goes to attack Hamas, Palestinian civilians get killed. I would think that Hamas would stop provoking Israel after awhile. But it continues to fire those inept missiles.
Personally, I believe that Hamas is willing to expend its citizens in hopes of arousing global support for its cause. And people will buy into it.
To think that a government is willing to put its citizens at risk for its own political gains is disgusting. Israel has done it and so has Hamas. But WHY focus solely on Israel?
I will not support any boycott so long as the full story isn't being told. Oh...I forgot, MSNBC is biased so progressives should be biased too!! Right? Wrong!!
Why should any of us stop doing what's right b/c it would be easier to start doing wrong?
Try to remain the light of truth.
Right On Target, Glen.
Great radio editorial on high risk behavior last week
I listen to your editorials every week on KPFA-FM (on Kolhatkar's show) in Berkeley. Last week's was downright brilliant.
Keep up the good work.
Khalil
Kenyatta
You sound like you do come from another planet...Planet Zion!
No Critique Of Hamas
Robin,
Equating someone who questions 1) the absence of criticism of Hamas by progressive media; and 2) the intentions of Hamas desiring further conflict with Israel with being a zionist, makes about as much sense as calling someone who is critical of Israel anti-semitic.
Unlike some, I am critical of all parties involved in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Criticism of Israel abounds. Just listen to Pacifica Radio. But where's the criticism of Hamas? Are zionists the only people who question Hamas? Does progressive radio support Hamas? What is Hamas' objectives?
Some follow without question.
hamas
...is an Israeli creation (see: http://whatreallyhappened.com/content/how-israel-helped-spawn-hamas ) Perhaps many people will see this differently, but to compare what amounts to a toy rocket against the world's fourth ranked military power is disingenuous at the very least.
To tell you the truth I have very serious doubts as to whether it is actually hamas or any "terrorist" shooting these toy rockets. If, as many claim, that the arab nations want to see Israel destroyed and are helping hamas or whatever other "terrorist" groups achieve that end, they could surely do better than a qassaam (sp?) rocket.
False flag anyone?
I support boycott and disinvestment
and I also support ideas such as deducting the cost of repairing Gaza, from aid to Israel. I think the US government is complicit, as Noam Chomsky suggests in his writing on Zcommunications. I like Glen Ford's work. I'm Jewish. I did not like having to learn about what Israel has been doing to Palestinians for a long time. It's painful, but I did it. I'm a NYC person, an American and ... I notice the reluctance of people I know to discuss the Gaza attack by Israel, Jews who ignored the protest art I sent them. (I made art in protest, a limited edition of multiples on paper.) I've made protest art before about Israel. Mostly about US government policies...
Get A REAL Perspective!
@ Kenyatta
You continue to post with all of these half-azz truths. If you are going to "Tell the story", then tell the WHOLE story.
Hamas shooting at Israelis(phony Jews) would be like the Indigenous population here shooting at white people and the Amerikkkan gov't. People are quick to kiss Israel's azz with this "Hamas and the rockets" crap. However, if someone comes into my home, forces me to live in the bathroom, and also beats the shyt out of me constantly, I am DAMN WELL within my right to use ANY MEANS NECESSARY to expel that scourge from my house.
So, whatever so called violence Hamas is using is SELF_DEFENSE!!!!! Get it right and do some history.
And, PLEASE dont give me that unfounded rhetoric about the Jews having "Holy right" to the land, because the people who run Israel and the entire white population of Israel HAVE NO BLOODLINE CONNECTION TO ABRAHAM WHATSOEVER. They are living and selling the world a lie.
It seems YOU are one of the ones who fell for it.
Kenyatta,The MSM only blamed Hamas
This is from an article on Global Research written by Nicola Nasser on where the MSM placed the blame for the Massacre that occured in Gaza
"Stubbornly insisting on getting the carriage before the horse as the approach to a "durable and sustainable" ceasefire in Gaza Strip, U.S. and European diplomacy in particular is building on an Israeli misleading premise that the 22 – day military operation, dubbed "Cast Lead," against the Palestinian Gaza Strip was a reaction and not a premeditated long planned scheme that found in the change of guards in Washington D.C. an excellent timing. It was "not simply a reaction," but "a calculation," Daniel Klaidman wrote in Newsweek on January 10.
U.S. and European diplomats are reiterating the Israeli propaganda justification: "What would any normal country do if they were threatened by rocket fire? They would act." U.S. President Barak Obama was the last western leader to uphold this Israeli claim. "But Israel is not a normal country, it is an occupying country," former Palestinian - Israeli member of Knesset Azmi Bishara said. Moreover what country would tolerate an eight –year siege and not consider it an act of war without any national reaction? Why should western diplomacy judge Palestinians in Gaza as universally abnormal.
Also, the Poster above,six five son of a slave, has it right. Those Europeans occupying Palestine today do not belong there. "They are living and selling the world a lie."
I support boycott
we should boycott the isralis prodacts and sport the palistian prodacts if there any one want to saport me at my cantry can call me at 599 133 125 and my name is mohammad ayyash from balat refuge camp ok and my email is ayyash79@gmail.com
pace for all
F****k Kenyttta and those of his ilk
Who have the audacity to come in here talking about media balance. It's obvious they don't know shit from shinola. I question whether he's even AA. If so, he's probably an ignorant born-again Christian ( some have critical thinking faculties, most don't). Comparing the 3rd or 4th military on earth with folks making rockets in their garages in an area the size of Central Park, NY shows intellecutal shallowness beyond chutzpah. Comparing targeted assassinations and collective punishment with poorly designed, ineffective rockets is insanity. Kenyatta obviously has no clue that the rockets Hamas fired into Israel landed on land where they actually lived before the Israeli's stole it. There were pictures of the Israeli's who bore the brunt of the "rocket attacks" picnicking and sipping coke while they watched their army shoot fish in a barrel.
If Hamas wanted to "destroy" Israel they'd get their hands on chemical or biological weapons or a "dirty bomb." As a previous poster noted, Israel created Hamas as a counterweight to Fatah.
Kenyatta probably believes the White Racist European Jewish Converts are the chosen people. His "Bible" no doubt won't let him question this false premise, even if you told him an Israeli anthropologist discovered the first habitants of Israel looked like Africans.
I suggest we swoop down on Kenyatta's home and evict his ass, make him live in the county land-fill and control his access to medicine, food, and employment, give him a license and license plate with a different color scheme, channel his comings and goings by making him drive on "separate" roads through humiliating checkpoints, treat him subhuman and put his ass under a medieval siege. And shoot the shit out of him if he even thinks about bitching about it. Then he might know what it's like to live in Gaza or the West Bank.
I bet you 10 to 1 his "judgment" is clouded by his "religious beliefs" because no critically thinking person would even deign to compare over a thousand dead in Gaza with about 10 dead in Israel, half from friendly fire.
From the Dissident Voice, "Palestinians Will Never Forget, 1-07-09, Susan Albuhawa:
"A recent study by the Red Cross showed that 46 percent of Gazan children suffer from anemia. Malnutrition affects 75 percent of Gaza's population, half of whom are under the age of 17. There has been widespread deafness among children due to Israel's intentional and frequent sonic booms from low overflights. An alarming number have stunted growth and serious mental disorders due lack of food. The only way they have been able to survive thus far has been due to the tunnels that smuggle food and goods from Egypt.
Half of Gazan children under 12 have lost their "will to live." Can anyone fathom the kind of oppression that leads small children en mass to lose their will to live?
This is what Israel has done to Gaza over the past two years. They ghettoized Gaza and turned it into an open air prison – a concentration camp of civilians with no way to earn a living, no way to defend themselves and no place to run from the slaughter bombarding them from air, land, and sea. From the white phosphorous disemboweling young and old alike."
Don't you love...
when the imposters come on using AA names like 'kenyatta' and 'leroy'. ha
Beware the rightward turn of Israel, you pathetic cheerleaders o
Beware. We ain't seen nothing yet. The lying ass, MSM won't even tell the story (Kenyatta) about Israel's nose-dive into religious and racial extremism. Here's Bibi and Livni trying to hatch a "government" by courting Lieberman. To get a perspective on Lieberman, an avowed racist, read J. Raimondo's piece, "A Jewish Hitler?" The Rise of Avignor Lieberman
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=9923
From Jim Lobe:
"Last week's election produced a clear majority for right-wing parties led by the Likud Party of former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who has repeatedly declared his opposition to a settlement freeze, territorial concessions, and the creation of a viable Palestinian state.
"Even if the more-centrist Kadima leader, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, can patch together a government of national unity, the right-wing parties will be able to effectively block major concessions in any peace talks, in the absence of any external pressure.
Although Netanyahu has been the most outspoken, virtually the entire Israeli political and military establishment has described Iran's alleged nuclear ambitions as an "existential" threat to the Jewish state and suggested that Israel should be prepared to unilaterally attack Tehran's key nuclear facilities as early as within the next year if it cannot persuade Washington to do so.
Jim Lobe, www.antiwar.com, "U.S.-Israeli Storm Clouds Ahead."
Keep enabling the apartheid, terrorist state of Israel; look the other way as they attack and Iran, and then sit back and watch the already doomed ventures in Iraq and Afghanistan implode at warp speed. Do you idiot "enablers" even understand that the US needs either Russian or Iranian cooperation (or both) to even supply the camps & brigades in Afghanistan for Obama's foolish "surge"? What will the Shiite controlled government do to the the US supply lines from Kuwait if Israel strikes Iran?
How long will it take before a vicious civil war in Iraq ignites? What shape will the spillover affects take?
Some of you obviously either don't like yourself or your country too much, if you are willing cannon fodder for Israel's deceit, xenophobia and bellicosity. Accordingly, we have absolutely no patience for your self-hatred and stupidity.
Boycott Israel with all your might. It's a shame that any AA Church would set foot in Israel on a so-called "Holy Tour."
Hypocrit Hill?
Anyone hear the Bamster's Sec of State saying effectively that human rights abuses in China were no big deal, or shouldn't stand in the way of making some money? According to that logic, we shouldn't hear any more about Zimbabwe, Sudan, or the Congo, and their alleged abuses, right? She speaks for the Bamster so apparently they are speaking out of both sides of their mouths.
Smart Power = Hypocrit Hill & Obushco
The Obama charade will consist of 4 years of speaking out of both sides of that Administration's mouth. Sen. Kerry and Hypocrit Hill want to send the "impression" that US is friendly, kindler and gentler to Muslim world and the Gazans. Yet Kerry refuses to meet with Hamas leadership, refuses to acknowledge Israel's war crimes and Hypocrit Hill mouthes the same tired, bullshit about our "special relationship" with Israel. Hamas (or anybody on earth for that matter) would be a goddamn fool to disarm. Tell Americans to disarm and then so will Hamas.
Smart Power my ass, just a better propaganda line, wouldn't be surpised if he got it from Karl Rove.