ACTION ALERT: Hampshire Admin threatens Re-Investment!

Note from Hampshire SJP on the administration bowing to pressure from Zionists to re-invest in companies doing business with Israel. The struggle is far from over, and they need our support!

Dear supporters,

After the initial response from the Administration which attempted to downplay and de-politicize the divestment move to the press, things have gotten worse.

Due to pressure from Alan Dershowitz and Abraham Foxman from the Anti-Defamation League, President of the college Ralph Hexter is caving in.

Dershowitz has made demands of Hexter, including he publicly discredit SJP. So far, Hexter has complied, as he is being bribed with a "large donation" to the college from Dershowtiz. Now, the Administration is threatening to re-invest in two of the companies we divested from: Terex and Motorola, to appease Dershowitz and others.

Sign this letter to Ralph Hexter, keep Hampshire College free of investments in the Israeli occupation!

http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/641/t/2439/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26737

Thanks for your support, keep the pressure on and the movement strong!

Solidarity,

Hampshire SJP

What We're Up Against

A recent unsigned and hence "official" editorial in the Duke Chronicle exhorts us to "Take Back student activism." The article discusses the recent occupation of NYU by a group of students there.

While the article makes a couple of substantive critiques, noting that some groups in the Take Back NYU coalition weren't even informed of the takeover or included in the drafting of its demands, the editorial itself comes not from a position of sympathy, but one of hostility. In fact, it concludes that "this is not the model of student activism that we should look up to."

It also seems to bear the imprint of administrative anxiety about the potential for similar actions to catch on at Duke. It suggests that "In contrast to the 70s, there now exist many channels of communication between students and the administration." I'm sure the Duke administration couldn't agree more - less action, more dialogue.

But perhaps the most reactionary moment in the editorial comes when it denounces "several extreme demands [that] diluted the legitimacy and power of Take Back's general platform." The demands it finds extreme include "13 scholarships per year for students from Palestine, an acknowledgement of the right of graduate students to unionize and public access to the NYU library."

That's right, the editorial actually openly opposes solidarity with Palestinians following the recent devastation wrought by Israel in Gaza, the right to unionize, and public access to a university library!

Following shortly after the observation that "our generation is often [rightly] criticized for its complacency," one begins to wonder what the Chronicle staff thinks our generation's mission is, if not a broad-based movement for social justice for ALL oppressed people. Presumably they prefer the continued domination of the few by the many. They certainly oppose militant direct action to defend and extend our right as Duke students and members of the Duke community to directly control our community's affairs.

It's true that we need to "take back" student activism. But we need to take it back from both the conservative "go slow" approach of the Chronicle, as well as the flawed-yet-inspiring example of NYU students.

As the young organizers of SNCC used to say, we need to engage in "slow, patient work." Doing so will make our actions in the world more likely to succeed.

How to Support Divestment at Hampshire College

(What follows is a letter posted by Hampshire SJP about how folks can support their struggle.)

Dear Supporters,

Over the last 48 hours, there has been a huge response from students, parents, journalists, activists, public figures, political organizations, and individuals such as yourselves from across the country and the world congratulating us for our historic achievement this week. We are impressed and heartened by your passion in supporting us in this exciting campaign.

There have been many developments since SJP went public with the divestment, so it might be hard to keep track of the flurry of updates that have been published all over the internet. Please visit our website for the most recent statements (http://www.hsjp.org/). Also, Phillip Weiss's blog (http://www.philipweiss.org/) is a particularly good resource, as he's been following the events closely.

Your support so far has been so helpful, especially since we've been working non-stop since we broke the news. There's so much more to be done, so we've come up with a few specific ways to demonstrate your solidarity with SJP and the movement. Here they are:

1) E-mail the administration and the President to voice your concern over their refusal to own up to the divestment decision. Express your disappointment that President Hexter has done nothing to condemn Alan Dershowitz's threatening phone calls to SJP's spokespeople (see update on website). Forward your letters of congratulations that you sent to us to them too. Make sure they know that divestment is not just a college—it's a movement!

A script is attached to the end of this e-mail as a guide if you would like to use it.

Contact:

Ralph Hexter (President): rhexter@hampshire.edu

President's Office: 413-559-5521

2) Hampshire's endowment is very small which means that most of the college's year-to-year operating budget comes from tuition fees. For those who have donated, your contributions are greatly appreciated and important as the school is already in a troubled financial state. What we would like you to do for now is e-mail us every time you make a donation with the amount and your name so we can keep track of the funds and the support network. If you haven't donated already, here's the link:

https://alumni.hampshire.edu/giving/waysToGive/giveOnline.aspx

3) Contribute to our video series, "Voices of Divestment." We are trying to show the world that this isn't about a small group of activists, but a wide range of people from all different walks of life. We would like you to make short 30-second to 1-minute clips and send them to us by uploading the video to YouTube and emailing us the link.

Keep them informal, but stay passionate! Improvise. We want to hear why you support divestment in your own words.

Check out existing videos here: http://www.hsjp.org/voices-of-divestment/

Or alternatively: http://voicesofdivestment.wordpress.com/

4) Build momentum! This isn't just about us; we've been getting a lot of e-mails about help and advice for starting similar BDS campaigns at other schools, and this is one of the most important ways you can help. If the BDS movement spreads rapidly, it will become clear to the public and the media that this is not just a local administrative dispute, but that we have finally reached a critical threshold in the United States.

Many groups and individuals have contacted us asking about going on speaking tours and giving trainings for campus divestment movements. We are very excited about the prospects of helping to spread divestment to many campuses and are investigating the logistics of how to make this happen. For now if you are interested in hosting us for a speaking tour in some capacity, please email us at HampshireSJP@gmail.com with the subject "SPEAKING"

http://www.hsjp.org

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=55085942212

Script:
Hello, my name is _____. I am calling/e-mailing to express my congratulations to Hampshire College for your historic decision to divest from the Israeli Occupation. This move should be an example to all institutions of higher learning across the world.

However, I am disappointed that the administration has been trying to distance itself from the decision and de-politicize the powerful statement that divestment sends. In your response to the Student's public campaign, you have repeatedly insisted that the divestment decision had a "variety of reasons" for going through, and that it had no regional or political significance. However, the length & intensity of the campaign that the Students for Justice in Palestine have run makes it clear that it was their efforts that brought this divestment to the table. I sincerely hope that you will reconsider your position on divestment and express your support for the students’ efforts in an official statement soon.

Lastly, your failure to condemn the threats Alan Dershowitz has made towards SJP’s spokespeople is deplorable. Dershowitz has called for a boycott on the College and you have still maintained your "neutral" position, hurting the students, the college, and yourself. I urge you to protect your students and their right to speak out on this monumental occasion.

Thank you.

Update on NYU Occupation

Check out the NY Times coverage of the occupation here.

Also, here is the website of the group conducting the occupation. Folks might also want to check out the New School student website here. These are the same folks that conducted a successful sit in a month or so ago at the New School in NYC. Finally, check out the Washington Square News, NYU's paper, for up-to-the-minute updates.

If you're interested in supporting them, they have a facebook group. Check it out!

Next Meeting

Our next general meeting will be Tuesday (February 24th) 7:00 pm in 107 Friedl, Duke East Campus. We'll spend sometime discussing the following two readings before moving onto other matters:

"You and the Atomic Bomb," by George Orwell, October 1945:
http://www.telelib.com/words/authors/O/OrwellGeorge/essay/misc/atomicbomb.html

Introduction, "Beyond Resistance: Everything--An Interview with
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos," by El Kilombo (entire text available
online but just read the introduction)
http://www.elkilombo.org/documents/beyondresistance.pdf

NYU BUILDING TAKEOVER!!!

(Important development from NYU)

At approximately 10pm tonight (Feb. 18), students of Take Back NYU! took over the Kimmel Marketplace. They have blockaded the doors and declared an occupation! They presented their demands to the NYU administration. They read as follows:

DEMANDS

We, the students of NYU, declare an occupation of this space. This occupation is the culmination of a two-year campaign by the Take Back NYU! coalition, and of campaigns from years past, in whose footsteps we follow.

In order to create a more accountable, democratic and socially responsible university, we demand the following:

1. Full legal and disciplinary amnesty for all parties involved in the occupation.

2. Full compensation for all employees whose jobs were disrupted during the course of the occupation.

3. Public release of NYU's annual operating budget, including a full list of university expenditures, salaries for all employees compensated on a semester or annual basis, funds allocated for staff wages, contracts to non-university organizations for university construction and services, financial aid data for each college, and money allocated to each college, department, and administrative unit of the university. Furthermore, this should include a full disclosure of the amount and sources of the university's funding.

4. Disclosure of NYU's endowment holdings, investment strategy, projected endowment growth, and persons, corporations and firms involved in the investment of the university's endowment funds. Additionally, we demand an endowment oversight body of students, faculty and staff who exercise shareholder proxy voting power for the university's investments.

5. That the NYU Administration agrees to resume negotiations with GSOC/UAW Local 2110 – the union for NYU graduate assistants, teaching assistants, and research assistants. That NYU publically affirm its commitment to respect all its workers, including student employees, by recognizing their right to form unions and to bargain collectively. That NYU publically affirm that it will recognize workers' unions through majority card verification.

6. That NYU signs a contract guaranteeing fair labor practices for all NYU employees at home and abroad. This contract will extend to subcontracted workers, including bus drivers, food service employees and anyone involved in the construction, operation and maintenance at any of NYU's non-U.S. sites.

7. The establishment of a student elected Socially Responsible Finance Committee. This Committee will have full power to vote on proxies, draft shareholder resolutions, screen all university investments, establish new programs that encourage social and environmental responsibility and override all financial decisions the committee deems socially irresponsible, including investment decisions. The committee will be composed of two subcommittees: one to assess the operating budget and one to assess the endowment holdings. Each committee will be composed of ten students democratically elected from the graduate and under-graduate student bodies. All committee decisions will be made a strict majority vote, and will be upheld by the university. All members of the Socially Responsible Finance Committee will sit on the board of trustees, and will have equal voting rights. All Socially Responsible Finance Committee and Trustee meetings shall be open to the public, and their minutes made accessible electronically through NYU's website. Elections will be held the second Tuesday of every March beginning March 10th 2009, and meetings will be held biweekly beginning the week of March 30th 2009.

8. That the first two orders of business of the Socially Responsible Finance committee will be:
a) An in depth investigation of all investments in war and genocide profiteers, as well as companies profiting from the occupation of Palestinian territories.
b) A reassessment of the recently lifted of the ban on Coca Cola products.

9. That annual scholarships be provided for thirteen Palestinian students, starting with the 2009/2010 academic year. These scholarships will include funding for books, housing, meals and travel expenses.

10. That the university donate all excess supplies and materials in an effort to rebuild the University of Gaza.

11. Tuition stabilization for all students, beginning with the class of 2012. All students will pay their initial tuition rate throughout the course of their education at New York University. Tuition rates for each successive year will not exceed the rate of inflation, nor shall they exceed one percent. The university shall meet 100% of government-calculated student financial need.

12. That student groups have priority when reserving space in the buildings owned or leased by New York University, including, and especially, the Kimmel Center.

13. That the general public have access to Bobst Library.

Along with this, students have issued a

SOLIDARITY STATEMENT

We, the students of Take Back NYU! declare our solidarity with the student [sleepovers] in Greece,
Italy, and the United Kingdom, as well as those of the University of
Rochester, the New School for Social Research, and with future
[sleepovers] to come in the name of democracy and student power. We stand
in solidarity with the University of Gaza, and with the people of
Palestine.

Afghanistan and Terror - Old Patterns Emerge

Some important developments regarding war in Afghanistan and the broader war on terror.

First, Obama plans to send 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan. The top American commander in Afghanistan stressed, following the announcement of the troop increase, that this “is not a temporary force uplift.” These troops were part of a build-up that is there for the long term - as long as five years. As we have pointed out numerous times on this blog, this is a ratcheting up of "the good war" that antiwar activists must oppose on principle.

Regarding the war on terror, while Obama "thrilled civil liberties groups" with early moves to end some of the Bush administration's most egregious crimes against "suspected terrorists," more recently, and quietly, his position has changed. The NY Times notes that,

"In little-noticed confirmation testimony recently, Obama nominees endorsed continuing the C.I.A's program of transferring prisoners to other countries without legal rights, and indefinitely detaining terrorism suspects without trials even if they were arrested far from a war zone.

The administration has also embraced the Bush legal team’s arguments that a lawsuit by former C.I.A. detainees should be shut down based on the “state secrets” doctrine. It has also left the door open to resuming military commission trials.

And earlier this month, after a British court cited pressure by the United States in declining to release information about the alleged torture of a detainee in American custody, the Obama administration issued a statement thanking the British government “for its continued commitment to protect sensitive national security information.”

Perhaps most telling is the fact that outspoken defenders of Bush's policies on the war on terror are delighted by the continuities between Bush and Obama's prosecution of it. According to the Times, an editorial last Friday in the Wall Street Journal argued that " 'it seems that the Bush administration's antiterror architecture is gaining new legitimacy' as Mr. Obama's team embraces aspects of Mr. Bush's counterterrorism approach.

All this simply means that antiwar activists have our work cut out for us.

Gaza Teach In Tonight

Gaza Teach-In his Wednesday, Feb. 18th at 7 pm, in Soc. Pysch classroom 130, Duke Campus.

- Laila El-Haddad is a freelance journalist from Gaza. Her blog, "Raising Yousuf and Noor: Diary of a Palestinian Mother,"
explores the complex relationships between the personal and the political as she raises her children while negotiating
displacement and occupation. http://a-mother-from-gaza.blogspot.com/

- Rann Bar-On is an Israeli activist and graduate student at Duke University. He has worked with the International Solidarity
Movement in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Rann advocates for an end to the Occupation and resistance to militaristic
Israeli government policies. He is especially interested in the Shministim - a group of Israeli high-school students who are
imprisoned for daring to refuse to serve in Israel's occupying army.

-Dr. miriam cooke is a Professor of Arabic in the Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Department. She also co-teaches a class on
the Arab-Israeli conflict through literature and film in the fall. Dr. cooke is also the Education Director of Duke's Islamic
Studies Center.

- Abdullah Antepli is Duke's first Muslim Chaplain. Apart from being a Chaplain, he teaches courses on introductory Islam in
Duke's Divinity School. Antepli has also worked on a variety of faith based humanitarian and relief projects in Myanmar
(Burma) and Malaysia with the Association of Social and Economic Solidarity with Pacific Countries.

TONIGHT!

Join us tonight, Tuesday February 17, 7pm in the Duke Coffeehouse! Duke Against War will be looking at the U.S. war in Afghanistan through a feminist lens. Has the U.S. saved Afghan women from the Taliban? What is the status of Afghan women's safety, education, and political freedom? What will Obama's plans for increased troops to Afghanistan mean for women? There will be a presentation on these issues, followed by discussion. Some brief readings, articles, and videos are available for those who wish to learn more beforehand:

Excerpt from Chapter 19 “Updating the Gendered Empire: Where are the Women in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan?” in The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire by Cynthia Enloe, 2004, University of California Press. Get pdf here.

Laura Bush Radio Address, November 17, 2001.

Video of Laura Bush speech, November 2006 (1 min).

Radio interview with Eman of RAWA on Uprising Radio, November 13, 2008.

"Lives on the Line." Ms. Magazine, Winter 2009. Get pdf here.

President Obama on Afghanistan, Press Conference, February 9, 2009.

Hampshire Divestment

Hampshire College Students and Official Argue Over Divestment Decision

A dispute has emerged between officials at Hampshire College and student organizers over the school’s recent decision to divest from a mutual fund run by State Street Global Advisors. Activists with the group Students for Justice in Palestine said the move came after it had pressured Hampshire’s Board of Trustees to divest from six companies that provide the Israeli military with equipment and services in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza. Hampshire College officials admit they reviewed the State Street fund after receiving a petition from the group, but the school said the divestment decision “did not pertain to a political movement or single out businesses active in a specific region or country.” The trustees said they divested from the fund after learning the fund held stocks in more than 200 companies engaged in business practices that violated the college’s policy on "socially responsible investments.” The six companies that formed the basis of the student group’s complaints were Caterpillar, United Technologies, General Electric, ITT Corporation, Motorola and Terex. Students for Justice in Palestine are hailing the divestment decision as a major victory. They say Hampshire has become the first college in the country to break financial ties with companies specifically because they do business with Israel. In 1977, Hampshire became the first college in the nation to divest its South African holdings.

from DemocracyNow.org

Gaza Teach In this Wednesday!

Gaza Teach-In his Wednesday, Feb. 18th at 7 pm, in Soc. Pysch classroom 130.

- Laila El-Haddad is a freelance journalist from Gaza. Her blog, "Raising Yousuf and Noor: Diary of a Palestinian Mother,"
explores the complex relationships between the personal and the political as she raises her children while negotiating
displacement and occupation. http://a-mother-from-gaza.blogspot.com/

- Rann Bar-On is an Israeli activist and graduate student at Duke University. He has worked with the International Solidarity
Movement in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Rann advocates for an end to the Occupation and resistance to militaristic
Israeli government policies. He is especially interested in the Shministim - a group of Israeli high-school students who are
imprisoned for daring to refuse to serve in Israel's occupying army.

-Dr. miriam cooke is a Professor of Arabic in the Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Department. She also co-teaches a class on
the Arab-Israeli conflict through literature and film in the fall. Dr. cooke is also the Education Director of Duke's Islamic
Studies Center.

- Abdullah Antepli is Duke's first Muslim Chaplain. Apart from being a Chaplain, he teaches courses on introductory Islam in
Duke's Divinity School. Antepli has also worked on a variety of faith based humanitarian and relief projects in Myanmar
(Burma) and Malaysia with the Association of Social and Economic Solidarity with Pacific Countries.

Some news

So Hamas says it may be on the verge of an 18-month ceasefire. A prisoner exchange may be in the deal, something Israel has said is a precondition. We'll see if this goes anywhere.

Iraq's Minister of Women's Affairs has resigned, saying that lo and behold, the Shi'a fundamentalist government is not giving her Ministry adequate support. She is Sunni, which may also be a factor.

The "Good War" ? A Feminist Look at Afghanistan

Join us this Tuesday February 17, 7pm in the Duke Coffeehouse! Duke Against War will be looking at the U.S. war in Afghanistan through a feminist lens. Has the U.S. saved Afghan women from the Taliban? What is the status of Afghan women's safety, education, and political freedom? What will Obama's plans for increased troops to Afghanistan mean for women? There will be a presentation on these issues, followed by discussion. Some brief readings, articles, and videos are available for those who wish to learn more beforehand:

Excerpt from Chapter 19 “Updating the Gendered Empire: Where are the Women in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan?” in The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire by Cynthia Enloe, 2004, University of California Press. Get pdf here.

Laura Bush Radio Address, November 17, 2001.

Video of Laura Bush speech, November 2006 (1 min).

Radio interview with Eman of RAWA on Uprising Radio, November 13, 2008.

"Lives on the Line." Ms. Magazine, Winter 2009. Get pdf here.

President Obama on Afghanistan, Press Conference, February 9, 2009.

Hampshire College Divests!

Hampshire College has become the first college in the U.S. to divest from Israeli apartheid.

Congratulations to Hampshire College SJP for all the work they've done to make this dream a reality!

Check out the group's website for more info or to congratulate them yourself!

Far Right Gains in Israeli Elections

The openly racist Yisrael Beitenu party won 15 seats in Israel elections Tuesday. With Likud grabbing 27, Kadima 28, and the ultra-orthodox Shas party 11, it is increasingly likely that Likud will form a government with Yisrael Beitenu and Shas. This bodes very, very ill for Palestinians within Israel as well as in the West Bank and Gaza. Yisrael Beitenu has suggested Palestinians in Israel take a loyalty oath, and promised "no citizenship without loyalty." Netanyahu, head of Likud, has supported expanding West Bank settlements, and said recently that the war in Gaza ended too soon and didn't go far enough.(Netanyahu was also part of a right-wing rebellion against Ariel Sharon when Sharon sought to disengage from Gaza in 2005.)

(Those interested in a very in-depth analysis of political parties in Israel should consult Jews sans frontieres' primer on Israeli elections.)

What is clear is that these elections represent a significant shift to the right among the Israeli people.

In addition, still more voices are joining the chorus proclaiming the possibilities of a two-state solution dead. Juan Cole recently declared as much, and none other than Stephen Walt, of "The Israel Lobby" fame and no wild-eyed radical by any means, wrote an editorial in Foreign Policy online magazine asking "what do we do if the two state solution collapses?"

As always, a picture is worth a thousand words. The one accompanying this article says it all: Univesity College London, bedecked with a Palestinian flag by militant students. In the US, students at the University of Rochester recently occupied a building in solidarity with Palestine, and won significant demands. Palestine solidarity activism is sweeping across the UK and Canada, and it looks like it is coming to the US as well. Militant young folks are providing the answers policy wonks like Cole and Walt fail to imagine - direct, people-to-people solidarity with Palestine, standing up to the powerful interests of the status quo.

Free Palestine!

The Case Against the "Good War"

Here are a couple articles on Afghanistan that might be helpful for folks to check out as we prepare for our event coming up next Tuesday.

1. Jonathan Neale, "Afghanistan: The Case Against the 'Good War'"
2. Tariq Ali, "Afghanistan, Mirage of the Good War"

South African Dock Workers Boycott Israeli Ships

This from DemocracyNow.org:

As Israel blocks aid ships from reaching Gaza, dock workers in South Africa are refusing to unload Israeli goods at their ports. The South African Transport and Allied Workers Union says it will no longer unload Israeli ships in solidarity with Palestinians. Last year, South African dock workers refused to unload a Zimbabwe weapons shipment in protest of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.

Palestine Solidarity in Canada on the Rise

Check out an important article discussing the development of the Palestine solidarity movement in Canada over the past few years. It discusses the development of the apartheid analysis of Israel, along with the Zionist response, both right wing and liberal (the liberal response, the article notes, is "dialogue"), as well as the movement's growth beyond university campuses into communities and high schools.

This is definitely an encouraging sign and it is worth asking how this history compares to that of the Palestine solidarity movement in the US.

Netanyahu eases toward Lieberman's position

So, builiding on the last post.

Lieberman and Yisrael Beitanu are polling third before Tuesday's elections, according to the NY Times. But the frontrunner is not looking much different. Ha'aretz reports that Netanyahu has backed Lieberman's anti-Arab campaign as "legitimate." This is the man who will likely be the next Prime Minister.

Just to reiterate what Mike said: divest, boycott, sanction.

Transfer of Palestinians in Israel a Possibility

The Wall Street Journal is reporting troubling news. It looks like Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beiteinu party are gaining in polls, currently running third to Likud and Kadima. The Journal notes that this puts Yisrael Beiteinu in the position of being "kingmaker of Israeli politics when it comes time to negotiate a coalition government after the vote."

This is very troubling, considering a couple of Yisrael Beiteinu's stated policies. Again, according to the WSJ, "a central tenet in Mr. Lieberman's campaign is a proposal to redraw Israel's borders to transfer most of the country's 1.2 million Arab citizens to Palestinian control, in exchange for land in the West Bank occupied by Jewish settlers. He also wants to make it mandatory for Israeli citizens to take an oath of loyalty in order to get citizenship, the right to vote, and social services."

The article also notes that such positions are not new. In the '80s, Meir Kahane was elected to the Knesset on a similar platform. The difference is that Israeli society has moved far to the right since then, so much so that Tzipi Livni, leader of Kadima, "said in December that if elected she would tell Israel's Arab citizens "your national aspirations lie elsewhere," comments widely interpreted as an endorsement of Mr. Lieberman's plan to transfer Israel's Arabs to Palestinian control."

In other words, transfer of the Palestinians in Israel is going to be a real possibility following the upcoming elections February 10.

Divestment from this racist state is needed now more than ever.

CBS Declares Two State Solution Dead

Over at the blog Mondoweiss, they posted the following video from "60 Minutes" arguing that Israel has 3 options before it - ethnic cleansing, apartheid or democracy.



Here's a key excerpt that the folks from Mondoweiss highlighted, as well as some of their analysis.

Demographers predict that within ten years Arabs will outnumber Jews in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Without a separate Palestinian state the Israelis would have three options, none of them good. They could try ethnic cleansing, drive the Palestinians out of the West Bank, or they could give the Palestinians the vote. That would be the democratic option but it would mean the end of the Jewish state. Or they could try apartheid - have the minority Israelis rule the majority Palestinians, but apartheid regimes don't have a very long life.

"Unfortunately, and I have to say to you that apartheid is already in place," Dr. Barghouti argued.

Apartheid? Israel is building what it calls a security wall between the West Bank and Israel. The Palestinians are furious because it appropriates eight percent of the West Bank. Not only that. It weaves its way through Palestinian farms, separating farmers from their land. They have to wait at gates for soldiers to let them in. Settlers get a lot more water than Palestinians, which is why settlements are green and Arab areas are not.

Moderate Israelis who deplore the occupation used to believe passionately in a two-state solution. That is no longer the case.

Meron Benvenisti used to be deputy mayor of Jerusalem. He told Simon the prospects of the two-state solution becoming a reality are "nil."

"The geopolitical condition that’s been created in '67 is irreversible. Cannot be changed. You cannot unscramble that egg," he explained.

Mondoweiss continued:

"What made the piece so good is that it did not equivocate. It did not excuse the Israeli occupation as an "unfortunate necessity guided by security concerns". It did not blame Hamas or Palestinian governance for a plan successive Israeli governments have been carrying out for over 40 years (if not longer). Instead, it showed a family in Nablus who can't leave their home while its taken over by Israeli soldiers. It showed a man fighting to protect his home from demolition in Jerusalem. It juxtaposed the verdant green lawns of a settler community with the parched starved landscape of the Palestinian West Bank. And while Tzipi Livni swoops in at the end to tell the world they have nothing to worry about, that the Israeli government has this under control, settler Daniella Weiss displays a supreme arrogance and confidence to end the story that tells you all you need to know - she doesn't plan on going anywhere.

As I watched it I was slightly frustrated that it didn't deal with Gaza, or Jerusalem (the settler population is over 500,000 with Jerusalem, not the 280,000 in the story), or the refugees. But then I realized that that is part of what made it so powerful. Those are the "difficult" issues that are supposedly always standing in the way of peace. Here was the "easy" issue of the illegal Israeli settlers, and Simon was saying that that alone has torpedoed the two-state possibility. Israel has made the two-state solution impossible.

When the two-state solution was first raised in the early 1970s it was a radical notion. Golda Meir wouldn't even acknowledge that Palestinians existed, let alone deserve a state. But the idea slowly built credibility, then gained official endorsements, and now represents political common sense. How many news stories include the passage "the basic parameters of an eventual peace deal have been known for some time . . ." and then goes on to describe a two-state solution? Two states have been assumed, it was just a matter of a little land here, some more walls there. Tonight, 60 Minutes put an end to all that. Everything is back on the table. Even better they laid out three options for the future: ethnic cleansing, apartheid or democracy. Which one do you think the world is going to support?"

US Out of Central Asia

It looks like the Kyrgyz and Russian elites are collaborating to make the US's war plans in Afghanistan more difficult. A recent NY Times article reports that the Kyrgyz president ordered a US base at Manas, in Kyrgyzstan closed, and the Kyrgyz parliament is expected to second the decision.

This means that "the Obama administration" is going to have to "come up with an alternative to a crucial United States air base in Central Asia, used to supply the growing military operation in Afghanistan." The article underscored the importance of the base by noting that "about 15,000 personnel and 500 tons of cargo pass through Manas each month. The base is also the home of large tanker aircraft that are used for in-air refueling of fighter planes on combat missions over Afghanistan."

Russia is presumed to play a key role in the move. The article noted that it "was using an offer of more than $2 billion in loans and grants to Kyrgyzstan to force the United States out of the region" In short, a State Department official summarized the situation by saying that "fundamentally it comes to money, and the Russians are trying to buy us out."

This is the latest episode in an ongoing, subtle chess match between the US and Russia throughout Central Asia and Central and Eastern Europe, extending all the way back to the fall of the Soviet Union, and more recently including the "color" revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyztan, as well as the recent rumblings about independence for Kosovo and the semi-autonomous regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia within Georgia.

International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network Statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day

Important statement from the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network on Holocaust Remembrance Day, 2009

How does the city sit solitary, that was full of people! How is she become as a widow!...
She weeps sore into the night, and her tears are on her cheeks:
among all who loved her she has none to comfort her.
(Book of Lamentations)

Last week, after murdering 1400 people – of whom 400 were children – after bombing hospitals and mosques, schools, universities and humanitarian supplies, and tens of thousand of homes, Israel declared a cease-fire. A shameful parade of European leaders immediately went to Jerusalem to embrace the mass murderers and to pledge their support for the continuing siege of Gaza.

The primary purpose of this massacre was to break the spirit of the Palestinian people until they surrender and accept their fate as lesser human beings. As former Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon said in 2002, "The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people." European leaders support this goal, as did previous U.S. administrations, as do the ruling elites of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi-Arabia, despite the fury of their peoples. We wait to see if the freshly inaugurated Obama Administration will break with sixty long years of attack on the Palestinian people armed and financed by the U.S. and Europe.

We grieve with the people of Gaza. We see the faces of the children, of the women and the men; we hear their voices. We also hear the silence of the leaders of Western countries, intermittently broken by evasive platitudes. And we are reminded of the time when the world turned a blind eye while our forebears, our families, were slaughtered.

100,000 Palestinians were made homeless in Gaza this month. Most of them became refugees in 1948 when they were expelled at gunpoint from their towns and villages. Now they are homeless again, even in their land of exile, and at risk of being driven out from Palestine altogether.

Yet on January 27, Holocaust Remembrance Day, the leaders of the U.S. and Europe will be joined in honoring the memory of our dead. Even as we seek to remember and to honor the immensity of that loss, we struggle to find words to convey the hypocrisy of these ceremonies, in which those who are silent today pay homage to the victims of yesterday's silence.

The radical Jewish writer Walter Benjamin, who died while fleeing the Nazis, wrote, "not even the dead will be safe from the enemy, if he is victorious. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious." The Third Reich was defeated, and yet, "the enemy has not ceased to be victorious." Racism, mass murder, and genocide continue to be accepted tools of statecraft. Even our dead are not safe. They have been called up, disturbed, dredged from their mass graves and forced to testify against their fellow human beings in pain, to confess a hatred that was alien to them and to offer themselves up as justification for a new cycle of suffering in Palestine. Their ghosts have been enlisted to help displace fellow Jews from Arab homelands, and to bequeath to them that same alien hatred, conscripting those of us descending from Arab lands to become enemies of our own memory and past.

The Jewish British MP Gerald Kaufman spoke in anguish while the massacres in Gaza were taking place: "My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza." We share and echo that refusal. Let not the memory of Jews murdered by the Nazi regime serve as cover for the attempted destruction of the Palestinian people!

Although the guns are relatively silent, this genocidal assault on the Palestinian people isn't over. The siege, the lack of food and fresh water, the disease-threatening broken sewage system, and economic collapse and humanitarian crisis persist in Gaza with the full support of the U.S., Europe and the Egyptian government. As the siege of Gaza continues, so does the slow ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the home demolitions, the building of the apartheid wall, the settlement build-up, the economic devastation of the towns and villages strangled by checkpoints, the assault on Palestinian neighborhoods in Jaffa, Akka, Lydda, the Galilee and the Negev, the mass imprisonment of Palestinians (over 11,000), and all the large and small ways by which Israel is seeking to crush the spirit and erase the presence of the Palestinian people in their homeland.

Faced with the threat of annihilation in Europe, Jews resisted. From ghettos to concentration camps and within countries under occupation, Jews led resistance to the Nazi regime. Today, from the ghetto of Gaza to the Bantustans of the West Bank and from the neighborhoods of Jaffa and Akka to cities across the globe, Palestinians resist Israel's attempt to destroy them as a people. On January 27th, honoring the memory of our dead is for us inseparable from honoring more than sixty years of Palestinian survival and resistance. Only when the Palestinian people regain their freedom will the dead rest safely. Then we will all celebrate another victory for life.