Russell Tribunal on Palestine

“They’re White just like us and the people they’re killing ….. are Arabs,” a Zionist’s claim at the Russell Tribunal on Palestine.

“Our use of the phrase ‘the Dark Ages’ to cover the period from 699 to 1,000 marks our undue concentration on Western Europe. .. From India to Spain, the brilliant civiliztion of Islam flourished. What was lost to Christendom at this time was not lost to civilization, but quite the contrary – to us it seem that West-European civilization is civilization; but this a narrow view,” Professor Bertrand Russell in ‘History of Western Philosophy, page 419.

Inspired by BRussell Tribunal (established in 1967) – the Russell Tribunal on Palestine (RTP) was launched on March 4, 2009 in Brussels to seek and reaffirm the primacy of international law to find the solution to the Jewish occupation of Arab Palestine, based on justice and equality. It’s importance has increased since Israeli outright rejection of the United Nations’ Goldstone Report and the submission of US Congress to AIPAC in taking a similar stand. The Tribunal is named after the famed Western philosopher, Bertrand Russell (1872-1970).

The first international session of Russell Tribunal on Palestine was held in Barcelona on March 1-3, 2010. The members of the jury included Mairead Corrigan Maguire (Nobel Peace Prize holder from N. Ireland), Juan Tapia Guzman (Chile), Ronnie Kasrils (S. Africa), Michael Mansfield (UK), Giesele Hallimi (former French ambassador), Aminata Traore (Mali), Alberto San Juan (Spain) and Cynthia McKinney (former US Congresswoman - watch a video below).

Cynthia McKinney wrote her experience of the RTP and her discussins in European capitals:

“For those who have never left America’s shores, one need only look inside United States at the genocide of America’s indigenous people and the continued pillage of their land to understand how today’s life of largess was made possible by years of mistreatment, lawlessness and genocide committed gerations ago. In 1948, the cycle began again when Sionists eager to weild state power were placed in control of Palestine by Europeans, Britons and Americans and created State of Israel on the land where Palestinians lived.

I inquired of one Israeli testifying at the Tribunal what did Operation Cast Lead tells us about the nature of Sionism. And it was through this line of questioning that again heard something that I have heard all over the world, but never in the media: “I am an anti-Sionist Jew”. In the United States, Sionists at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) purport to speak for all Jews and they would have non-Jews to believe that criticism of them or Israel is criticism of all Jews. For many that I encounter in the world whose only previous information came from the media, their most startling discovery is that this is a lie. And I have heard some of the most impassioned critiques of Israel’s policies toward Palestinians from anti-Sionist Jews.

Given my experiences and reflections during this European tour that included the Russell Tribunal; a standing-room-only meeting of Congolese who came from all over Europe to Brussels; a standing-room-only crowd of young people in “the hood” of a Paris suburb attending an event organized by rapper Joe Dalton; and several events in London that included a standing-room-only 9/11 Truth – 7/7 Tube Truth event, I find the observation of the Russell Tribunal attendee both poignant and relevant: It is still possible for people battered by propaganda and lies, covert and false flag operations, and the meanest of media blackouts to see and hear those of us who dissent and act on conscience. Our message is being received. A growing global critical mass see the humanity that binds us together despite the lies and the screens of religion, race, ethnicity, language, gender, and sexual orientation–skillfully used in the past to divide us. The real message from my Russell Tribunal respondent is clear: Resistance to lies, injustice, war, and indignity is necessary and more people seeing that, join with us in our principled struggle.

Hebrew University professor Nurit Peled Ethanan in her statement at the RTP said: “In the Jewish Democratic state of Israel all human values have long wiped off by the blood of innocent babes. Racist discourse is legitimate and racist education is the only education allowed. Israeli children are raised on slogans such as love thy neighbour while being trained to kill their neighbours and their children, demolish their houses, torture their elders and deprive their ill and dying from medical help care. Jewish mothers raised their children with all the love and attention Jewish mothers have and then rejoice when their children turn into murderers, and are proud when their children turn into corpses in uniform. In the Jewish democracy of Israel, 324 children, most of them kidnapped from their beds in the middle of night by fully armed soldiers, are held in inhuman conditions of Israeli prisons. In the Jewish democracy of Israel, no-one is ever punished for killing Palestinian children; Israeli government trades in human life and human blood, in a market where non-Jewish blood and bones are worth much than Jewish ones; Israeli candidates who wish to be elected to the office of PM have to outscore their rivals in killing of Palestinians and make grand promises to kill and expel more and more and more. In the democracy of Israel 20% of citizen of the state are labeled in schoolbooks as demographic problem, threat and even demographic nightmare; their language, their culture, their rights and their hopes are erased from the face of the earth both physically and symbolically.

As an Israeli, it’s very painful to me to realize the word Israel has become the synonym of Oppression, Tyranny, ruthless Apatheid and Racism, and the star of David is equated in rallies all over the world to the Swastika. When the Jewish poet Bialik wrote after the pogrom against the Jews in Kishiniev, “Satan has not yet created Vengeance for the blood of a small child” – it did not occur to him that the child might be a Palestinian child from the Holy Land and his slaughterers – Jewish soldiers.”

India: Don’t tell your story

On March 6 BBC reported that former Bollywood actress-turned writer and social worker, Arundhati Roy, has offered her services to act as a representative on behalf of the Maoist resistance group fighting Indian Armed Forces and Security Services – in Maoist proposed peace-talks with Indian government. She is not in the good book of both Pro-Israel and Hindutva groups because she has compared Indian occupation of Muslim majority Kashmir with the Jewish illegal occupation of Palestine (watch her speech video at the end of the post). While New Delhi has blamed the communist groups in neighboring Nepal and Bangladesh for supporting the Indian Maoists. On the other hand, it is a common knowledge in India that Israeli Mossad (allegedly Mossad has close to one million “sleeping cells among the Jewish communities around the world) and its security services are training Indian Special Force officials in false-flag operation inside 223 out of 600 districts controlled by the Maoists rebels.

Arundhati Roy’s offer, while well-comed by the Maoist leadership – has irked Hindutva establishment.

Trevor Selvam, an journalist based in Chennai (India), wrote in March 28 article, titled In Defence Of The Bitch…:

“For the past few years, I have seen the hate that has been spewed out at Arundhuti Roy. There are various categories of Indian men and women who do not like her. Let us deal with the men first, as their hatred (camouflaged or obvious) for an intelligent female writer is nearly reflexive. Women on the other hand do not seem to have their hate mongering so mordant and merciless and generally do not spew out sexist hatred.

So, by all accounts she is a bitch, a cunt, a Muslim arse-licker and so much more. Who are these people who have such wonderful things to say about her? In the beginning I would not bother to read the responses and letters to various articles on the web. Now, I do scan through them, unpalatable as most of them are. Because they reflect on the psyche of the nation. They mirror the incredible mental descent and cultural depravity of a post-Bollywood, web-savvy class, cut off from historical precedent, unaware of India’s socio-economic past, unaware of rational, sensible discourse and debate, ignorant about India’s own philosophical traditions, let alone world history– about colonization and the genocide against aboriginal people. What vitriol, filth and misogyny runs through the veins of these Indians! When Sarojini Naidu, Aruna Asaf Ali, Mridula Sarabhai and other women spoke and wrote essays about their feelings about the people of India not a single misogynist invective was hurled at them. Today, when Medha Patkar, Vandana Shiva, Arundhuti Roy, Nandini Haksar and even Sania Mirza reflect on their experiences, Indian men of the above variety unleash their religious, sexual, tribal, super-nationalist, obscurantist prejudices immediately.

So, first there are the flag waivers and false-pride upholders of the Bharat Shining Bajrang Brigade. No matter what, for these people, there are certain aspects about their notion of India that immediately induces a knee-jerk response. And they have been toilet trained from birth to have this Pavlovian response. They must defecate on intelligent, conscious, articulate women who bring the facts out bluntly. With them you don’t bring up issues like India’s miserable record after 62 years of independence in literacy, social hygiene, health, body mass index of 80% of the population, female survival rate, diarrheal deaths, farmer suicides, mass deforestation (except in Maoist areas as agreed upon by the GOI) human development index (in the sub Sahara category), mass increase in poverty, (please do not compare with China or Brazil—because China doctors the numbers, no matter what and Brazil is a flash in the pan!! Even though the UN and the Economist have praised their performance in these areas in the last five years). So for them, Arundhuti Roy is a bitch. And they say so in responses to blogs, websites, newsline sites etc. They have no use for her. Rather than deal with the irrefutable facts and the content of what she raises, they end up fermenting in an anti-intellectualist bog. Responses sprinkled with undertones of religious and communalist hatred are rolled out. Like Barack Obama had to deal with his middle name of Hussein, Arundhuti has to deal with Suzanna. Like the USA has its pot bellied, red-necked, tea party activists shouting “nigger socialist” at Obama, India’s pan-chewing inarticulate Modi-men call her a Christian-Commie bitch.

One can dispute many of the tactics of the Maoists and one can critique many of their actions, but it is time for India’s intellectuals to comprehend that diminishing and ridiculing the stand taken by Arundhuti Roy will be a permanent scar on the evolving history of this nation. She is merely stating that the regular channels for genuine change in India are exhausted. Someone has to state this very clearly. That those who are attempting alternate methods are being violently suppressed. And it is their story that she wants to tell. It is time for all the alternative left and democratic opposition to come together on a common platform (even if they disagree on many issues) and jointly oppose this horrendous Green Hunt that is in full swing now, before full scale massacres start happening.

‘Save Darfur’ funds Israeli settlements

Israeli daily ‘The Jerusalem Post’ boasted on April 27, 2006: “Little known is that the ‘Save Darfur’ which has presented itself as alliance of over 130 diverse faith-based humanitarian and human-right organizations was actually begun exclusively as an initiative of the American Jewish community. It were the Jew who were leading the April 30 Washington DC rally and placing full-page advertisement in major newspapers and ubiquitous television spots. The newspaper adds are heavily weighted with a political (pro-Israel) and religiously (Islamophobia) diverse collection of local and national Jewish groups”.

One of the many Jewish and evangelican groups involved – reported by the paper was the Jewish Community Relation Council (JCRC) is well-known for its pro-Israel advocacy and is headed by no other than by the former top oancho of AIPAC, Thomas Dine. An Israeli flag was waving prominently at the rally. Another main organizer of the rally, according to JP, was former Manhattan bourough president Ruth Messinger and her pro-Israel AJWS group. It was Washington DC Holocaust Museum which first claimed that Khartoum is carrying out a ‘genocide’ (not Holocaust, because that term is reserved only for the sufferings of the Jewish world minority) in Darfur.

Anti-Sudan propaganda was initiated in 1993 by an Israeli advocate Charles Jacobs (co-founder of Israeli think tank CAMERA) over the issue of slavery (the self-denial Zionist did not want to admit that sex-slavey is legalized in Israel, as long as the victim is not Jewish). He was joined by Barbara Ledeen, wife of neocon columnist Michael Ledeen, and ‘Israel-First’ Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby.

Many independent analysts have reported that the so called “Dafur Genocide” is an anti-Muslim myth propagated by the pro-Israel lobby to demean Islam and the Muslim world – in order to divert world’s intention from Israeli facism. Now there are news filtering out that almost half of US$100 million fund raised in the name of the sufferings of the Darfurian Christians and African – has ended up in Israeli banks and is being used to expand Jewish settlements on the land stolen from Palestinian Muslim and Christian natives. The UN and international aid workers involved in the Dafur relief effort are quietly proud of the fact that Dafur refugees are the beneficiaries of one of, if not the largest, best run relief works in history. These aid workers also acknowledge the fact that the Sudanese government played a critical role in support of the relief effort, which could not have succeeded without such support. It doesn’t add up that on one hand the Sudanese government was committing genocide against the people of Dafur while at the same time playing a critical role in operating the largest best run relief works in history in support of the Dafur people.

Thomas C. Mountain in an article early this month wrote:

“Persons working with aid organizations assisting the victims of the Darfur conflict have passed on the news that they have confirmed through their contacts in the so called “Save Darfur Coalition” that millions of dollars raised to help the Darfur refugees have ended up in Israeli bank accounts. These accounts help fund programs that include illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. The Dafur funds were diverted to Israel by either co-mingling the funds with those used to support the Israeli projects or through a more complex system of grants to other “aid” or “relief” organizations that allowed the eventual destination of the funds to be almost impossible to trace.

As previously reported, a western funded genocide is being committed in the Ethiopian Ogaden by the Ethiopian government, but no genocide has ever been committed in Dafur. The whole “Dafur Genocide” campaign is nothing more than a smokescreen to vilify the Sudanese government in an attempt to promote western military intervention in oil and mineral rich Sudan, Africa’s largest and potentially wealthiest, country as well as to help divert attention from the real, western funded genocide being carried out in the Ogaden by the western cop on the beat in East Africa, Ethiopia.

The brazenness and breadth of this propaganda campaign has even surprised experienced observers of the long, dirty history of aid diversion in the Horn of Africa. Western governments, the UN, the western media, even Hollywood became part of the act with story lines “exposing” the Dafur “genocide” appearing in dramas such as Boston Legal amongst others. Bernie Maddoff went to prison for his fraud, but it is highly unlikely that an investigation will be launched into the “Dafur Genocide” scam. And only an investigation by the US Justice Department has the power to search, seize and subpoena that will be required to really expose this whole criminal fraud.

So next time you hear about a campaign to “save” Africans be suspicious and remember just how big a lie was told about Dafur and how your hard earned money ended up somewhere you least expected, helping building Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.”