Jewish Peace News

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Israel activist endorses Boycott, Divestment, Sanctios

Michel Warschawski (Mikado) - a veteran activist in struggles against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and to democratize Israel since shortly after the 1967 war - replies to Uri Avnery's rejection of the tactic of Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions. Mikado argues that "peace" is not a goal in itself, since that would reflect the existing balance of forces in the region and globally. Rather, peace is a means to achieve "basic individual and collective rights, end of domination and oppression, decolonization, equality, and as-much-justice-as-possible." BDS is a tactic aimed at involving the international community to rectify the imbalance of forces so as to achieve the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people (a concept not in the lexicon of the "pro-Israel, pro-peace" forces). Mikado also argues that the political debate is not between those who favor one or two states as a resolution of the conflict. Rather it is between those who regard
peace as an end in itself and those who believe that because Israel is a colonial settler state, justice cannot be achieved without decolonizing Israel (which I would say entails ending the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and installing a democratic domestic regime) and that "whether the final result of that de-colonization will be a one-state solution, two democratic states (i.e. not a "Jewish State"), a federation or any other institutional structure is secondary." Mikado concludes with a call for Israelis to join the "Boycott from Within" campaign and chides those who have rejected armed struggle that it [would] be outrageous that this strategy too will be disqualified. –Joel Beinin

YES to BDS!
An answer to Uri Avnery
Michel Warschawski
International Viewpoint, October 2009
http://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1733

The call for BDS – Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions – has finally reached Israeli public opinion. The decision of Norway to divest capitals from Israeli corporations involved in settlement buildings made the difference, and provided the first big success to that important campaign.

Moreover, the group of Israelis supporting BDS, under the label "Boycott from Within" is gaining some momentum, thanks, among other, to a public appeal by Naomi Klein to Israeli activists when she came to Tel Aviv to present the Hebrew version of her "Shock Doctrine".

The fact that there is an (even small) Israeli voice to support the international BDS campaign makes a lot of difference, and, among other, helps to disarm the infamous accusation of Anti-Semitism raised by the Israeli propaganda machine against everyone who dare to criticize the colonial policies of the Jewish State. Moreover, as I will argue towards the end of this article, the Israeli supporters of BDS are in fact expressing the true and long-term interests of the Israeli people. Reading recently two texts of Uri Avnery criticizing BDS convinced me that it was important to clarify how positive is that campaign and why should it be supported by as many Israelis as possible.

I sometimes disagree with Avnery's opinions – though much less than in the past – but I have great respect for the man, the journalist, the activist and the analyst, and since the bankruptcy of Peace Now during the Oslo process, we have been closely active together. I may even say that we became friends. This is why I feel compel to react to his criticism of the BDS campaign.

In order to present in the most accurate way Uri's position, I will not use paraphrases, but quote what I think to be his main arguments.

(…) I HAVE no argument with people who hate Israel. That's entirely their right. I just don't think that we have any common ground for discussion.

I would only like to point out that hatred is a very bad advisor. Hatred leads nowhere, but to more hatred. That, by the way, is a positive lesson we can draw from the South African experience. There they overcame hatred to a remarkable extent, largely thanks to the "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" headed by Archbishop Tutu, where people admitted their past offenses.

One thing is certain: hatred does not lead towards peace. Let me be quite explicit about this, because I sense that some people, in their righteous indignation over Israel's occupation, have lost sight of this.
Peace is made between enemies, after war, in which awful things invariably happen. Peace can be made and maintained between peoples who are prepared to live with each other, respect each other, recognize the humanity of each other. They don't have to love each other (…)

I ALSO have no argument with those who want to abolish the State of Israel. It is as much their right to aspire to that as it is my right to want to dismantle, let's say, the USA or France, neither of which has an unblemished past.

Reading some of the messages sent to me and trying to analyze their contents, I get the feeling they are not so much about a boycott on Israel as about the very existence of Israel. Some of the writers obviously believe that the creation of the State of Israel was a terrible mistake to start with, and therefore should be reversed. Turn the wheel of history back some 62 years and start anew.

What really disturbs me about this is that almost nobody in the West comes out and says clearly: Israel must be abolished. Some of the proposals, like those for a "One State" solution, sound like euphemisms. If one believes that the State of Israel should be abolished and replaced by a State of Palestine or a State of Happiness – why not say so openly?
Of course, that does not mean peace. Peace between Israel and Palestine presupposes that Israel is there. Peace between the Israeli people and the Palestinian people presupposes that both peoples have a right to self-determination and agree to the peace. Does anyone really believe that racist monsters like us would agree to give up our state because of a boycott? (…)

THE REAL argument is among those who want to see peace between the two states, Israel and Palestine. The question is: how can it be achieved? This is an honest debate and is generally conducted in a civil manner (…)
The advocates of boycott believe that the main, indeed the only way to induce Israel to give up the occupied territories and agree to peace is to exert pressure from the outside.

I have no quarrel with the idea of outside pressure. The question is: pressure on whom? On the government, the settlers and their supporters? Or on the entire Israeli people?

(…) The struggle is on, it is a hard struggle against determined opposition, and we should do all we can to help Obama's peace policy to prevail. We must do this as Israelis, from inside Israel, and thereby show that this is not a struggle of the US against Israel, but a joint struggle against the Israeli government and the settlers.

It follows that any boycott must serve this purpose: to isolate the settlers and the individuals and institutions which openly support them, but not declare war on Israel and the Israeli people as such. In the 11 years since Gush Shalom declared a boycott of the products of the settlements, this process has been gaining momentum. We must laud the Norwegian decision, this week, to divest from the Israeli Elbit company because of their involvement with the "Separation Fence" that is being built on Palestinian land and whose main purpose is to annex occupied territories to Israel. This is a splendid example: a focused action against a specific target, based on a ruling of the International Court.

(…) I have been asked about the Palestinian reaction to the boycott idea. At present, Palestinians do not boycott even the settlements, indeed it is Palestinian workers who are building almost all the houses there, out of economic necessity. Their feelings can only be guessed. All self-respecting Palestinians would, of course, support any effective measure directed against the occupation. But it would not be honest to dangle before their eyes the false hope that a world-wide boycott would bring Israel to its knees. The truth is that only the close cooperation of Palestinian, Israeli and international peace forces could generate the necessary momentum to end the occupation and achieve peace.

This is especially important because our task in Israel today is not so much to convince the majority of Israelis that peace is good and the price acceptable, but first that peace is possible at all. Most Israelis have lost that hope, and its revival is absolutely vital on the way to peace (…)

Let's start with what I consider to be a false debate. First: "Hatred is a very bad advisor" writes Uri, and I will be the last to disagree with him. I know also that he will agree with me if I add that, in our political context, hatred is understandable. Second: "Israel is not South Africa". Of course it isn't, and every concrete reality is different from the other. Nevertheless, these two countries have some similarities: both are racist states with (different kinds of) apartheid systems (the literal meaning of apartheid being "structural separation"). Both countries were established as "European states" in a national/ethical environment composed of non-European who were considered as a hostile environment, and rightly so.

We do also agree – and this is even more important – that in order to achieve substantial results in our struggle, we need to build a joint dynamics including the Palestinian national resistance, the Israeli anti-occupation forces and the international solidarity movement. Ten years ago, I call it "the winning triangle".

A lot in common indeed until comes Uri's misrepresentation of his political opponents: "(They) have despaired of the Israelis". If it would have been so, why those Israeli BDS campaigners would spare so much of their time in building, together with Uri Avnery, an Israeli movement against war, occupation and colonization? The true debate is not between those who aim to "change the Israeli society" and those who don't, but how and for what.

The political goal of Uri Avnery is "an Israeli-Palestinian peace", i.e. a compromise that should satisfy the majority of the two communities, on a symmetrical basis (in another important article, he called it "truth against truth"). Such symmetry is the result of another important political assumption by Avnery: the conflict in Palestine is a conflict between two national movements with equal legitimacy.
Many supporters of the BDS campaign disagree on both assumptions: our goal is not peace as such, because "peace" in itself doesn't mean anything (almost every war in modern history was initiated under the pretext of achieving peace). Peace is always the reflection of relation of forces when one side cannot impose to the other all what he considers being its legitimate rights.

Unlike Uri, our goal is the fulfillment of certain values like: basic individual and collective rights, end of domination and oppression, decolonization, equality, and as-much-justice-as-possible. In that framework, we obviously may support "peace initiatives" that can reduce the level of violence and/or achieve a certain amount of rights. In our strategy, however, this support to peace initiatives is not a goal in itself but merely a means to achieve the mentioned-above values and rights.

That difference about "peace" and "justice" is connected to the divergence concerning the second assumption of Uri Avnery, the symmetry between two equally legitimate national movements and aspirations.
For us, Zionism is not a national liberation movement but a colonial movement, and the State of Israel is and has always been a settlers' colonial state. Peace, or, better, justice, cannot be achieved without a total decolonization (one can say de-Zionisation) of the Israeli State; it is a precondition for the fulfillment of the legitimate rights of the Palestinians – whether refugees, living under military occupation or second-class citizens of Israel. Whether the final result of that de-colonization will be a "one-state" solution, two democratic states (i.e. not a "Jewish State"), a federation or any other institutional structure is secondary, and will ultimately be decided by the struggle itself and the level of participation of Israelis, if at all.

In that sense, Uri Avnery is wrong when he states that our divergences is about "one state" or "two states". As explained above, the divergence is on rights, decolonization and the principle of full equality. The form of the solution is, in my opinion, irrelevant as long as we are speaking about a solution in which the two peoples are living in freedom (without colonial relationships) and equality.

Another important divergence with Uri Avnery concerns the Israeli psyche and the dialectics between the Palestinian National liberation agenda and the so-call Israeli peace camp. While it is obvious that the Palestinian national movement needs as many Israeli allies as possible to achieve liberation as quick as possible and with as less suffering as possible for both people, one cannot expect the Palestinian movement to wait until Uri and the other Israeli anti-colonialists will convince the majority of the Israeli public opinion. For two reasons: first, because popular national movements do not wait to fight oppression and colonialism; second, because history has taught us that changes within the colonialist society has always been the result of the liberation struggle, and not the other way round: when the price for occupation is becoming too high, more and more people understand that it is nor worth to continue it.

Generally speaking, one can say that the Israeli mind is shaped by two realities, or, more accurately, one reality and one perception of reality. The reality shaping the Israeli psyche is the colonial reality of the Israeli existence, the feeling of being surrounded by a hostile environment which, to say the least, feels threaten by the dynamics of Zionist colonization. The other factor shaping Israeli collective mentality is anti-Semitism (real and constructed) strengthen by the experience of the Nazi judeocide.

Like any other people, the Israelis want to be accepted, loved even. They have, however a double difficulty: to pay the needed price for this acceptance, i.e. behaving in a civilized manner, and to trust the other in his attempt to normalize relations with them.

Yes, a hand extended for co-existence is needed, but together with an iron fist fighting for rights and freedom. The failure of the Oslo process confirms a very old lesson of history: any attempt for reconciliation before the fulfillment of rights strengthens the continuation of the colonial domination relationship. Without a price to be paid, why should the Israelis stop colonization, why should they risk a deep internal crisis?

This is where the BDS campaign is so relevant: it offers an international framework to act in order to help the Palestinian people achieving its legitimate rights, both on the institutional level (states and international institutions) and the civil society's one. On the one hand it is addressed to the international community, asking it to sanction a State that is systematically violating international law, UN resolutions, the Geneva Conventions and signed agreements; on the other hand, it is addressed to the international civil society to act, as individuals as well as social movements (trade-unions, parties, local councils, popular associations etc) to boycott goods, official representatives, institutions etc. that represent the colonial State of Israel.

Both tasks (boycott and sanctions) will eventually be a pressure of the Israeli people, pushing it to understand that occupation and colonization have a price, that violating the international rules may, sooner or later, made the State of Israel a paria-country, not welcomed in the civilized community of nations. Like South Africa in the last decades of apartheid. In that sense, and unlike Uri's claim, BDS is addressed to the Israeli public and, right now, is the only way to provoke a change in its attitude towards occupation/colonization. If one compares it to the anti-apartheid BDS campaign that took twenty years to start bearing real fruits, one cannot but be surprised how efficient the anti-Israeli occupation campaign has already been, and even in Israel we can already witness its first effects.

The BDS campaign was initiated by a broad coalition of Palestinian political and social movements. No Israeli who claims to support the national rights of the Palestinian people can, decently, turns it back to that campaign: after having claimed for years that "armed struggle is not the way", it will be outrageous that this strategy too will be disqualified by those Israeli activists. On the contrary, we have all together to join "Boycott from within" in order to provide an Israeli backup to that Palestinian initiative. It is the minimum we can do, it is the minimum we should do.

Michel Warschawski is a journalist and writer and a founder of the Alternative Information Center (AIC) in Israel. His books include On the Border (South End Press) and Towards an Open Tomb - the Crisis of Israeli Society (Monthly Review Press).

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Jewish Peace News editors:
Joel Beinin
Racheli Gai
Rela Mazali
Sarah Anne Minkin
Judith Norman
Lincoln Z. Shlensky
Rebecca Vilkomerson
Alistair Welchman
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Jewish Peace News archive and blog: http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com
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Friday, October 9, 2009

Mahmoud Abbas collaborates with Israel and US to suppress the Goldstone report

This week the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva was to vote on a resolution to refer the report of the UN fact finding mission led by South African jurist Richard Goldstone to the UN Security Council for further action. Goldstone's investigation concluded that both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes during Israel's assault on Gaza in December 2008-January 2009. Israel and the US worked overtime to get the Human Rights Council to postpone considering the resolution for six months. Ha-Aretz correspondent Amira Hass reports that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas instructed the PLO representative in Geneva to collaborate with the US-Israeli effort and abandon support for the resolution. Abbas's action aroused a storm of protest among Palestinians around the world (for an example of the vociferous Palestinian denunciations of Abbas see the editorial of Ali Abunimah on the Electronic Intifada website, http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10807.shtml). Hass argues
that Abbas could have adopted the path of pursuing "negotiations as part of a popular struggle anchored in the language of the universal culture of equality and rights." Abandoning that option means that, "Hamas is the real national leadership." If this conclusion is correct, its implications are potentially far reaching. If the Palestinians who Israel is willing to negotiate with (in principle, even if not in practice) do not constitute a credible national leadership, then there is no prospect for a negotiated resolution of the conflict in the foreseeable future. – Joel Beinin

Ha-Aretz, Oct. 7, 2009

Mahmoud Abbas' Chronic Submissiveness
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1118892.html

By Amira Hass

In a single phone call to his man in Geneva, Mahmoud Abbas has demonstrated his disregard for popular action, and his lack of faith in its accumulative power and the place of mass movements in processes of change.

For nine months, thousands of people - Palestinians, their supporters abroad and Israeli anti-occupation activists - toiled to ensure that the legacy of Israel's military offensive against Gaza would not be consigned to the garbage bin of occupying nations obsessed with their feelings of superiority.

Thanks to the Goldstone report, even in Israel voices began to stammer about the need for an independent inquiry into the assault. But shortly after Abbas was visited by the American consul-general on Thursday, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization got on the phone to instruct his representative on the United Nations Human Rights Council to ask his colleagues to postpone the vote on the adoption of the report's conclusions.

Heavy American pressure and the resumption of peace negotiations were the reasons for Abbas' move, it was said. Palestinian spokespeople spun various versions over the weekend in an attempt to make the move kosher, explaining that it was not a cancelation but a six-month postponement that Abbas was seeking.

Will the American and European representatives in Geneva support the adoption of the report in six months' time? Will Israel heed international law in the coming months, stop building in the settlements and announce immediate negotiations on their dismantlement and the establishment of a Palestinian state in the occupied territories? Is this what adoption of the report would have endangered? Of course not.

A great deal of political folly and short-sightedness was bared by that phone call, on the eve of Hamas's celebration of its victory in securing the release of 20 female prisoners. Precisely on that day, Abbas put Gaza in the headlines within the context of the PLO's defeatism and of spitting in the face of the victims of the attack - that is how they felt in Gaza and elsewhere.

Abbas confirmed in fact that Hamas is the real national leadership, and gave ammunition to those who claim that its path - the path of armed struggle - yields results that negotiations do not.

This was not an isolated gaffe, but a pattern that has endured since the PLO leadership concocted, together with naive Norwegians and shrewd Israeli lawyers, the Oslo Accords. Disregard for, and lack of interest in the knowledge and experience accumulated in the inhabitants of the occupied territories' prolonged popular struggle led to the first errors: the absence of an explicit statement that the aim was the establishment of a state within defined borders, not insisting on a construction freeze in the settlements, forgetting about the prisoners, endorsing the Area C arrangement, etc.

The chronic submissiveness is always explained by a desire to "make progress." But for the PLO and Fatah, progress is the very continued existence of the Palestinian Authority, which is now functioning more than ever before as a subcontractor for the IDF, the Shin Bet security service and the Civil Administration.

This is a leadership that has been convinced that armed struggle - certainly in the face of Israeli military superiority - cannot bring independence. And indeed, the disastrous repercussions of the Second Intifada are proof of this position. This is a leadership that believes in negotiation as a strategic path to obtaining a state and integration in the world that the United States is shaping.

But in such a world there is personal gain that accrues from chronic submissiveness - benefits enjoyed by the leaders and their immediate circles. This personal gain shapes the tactics.

Is the choice really only between negotiations and armed-struggle theater, the way the Palestinian leadership makes it out to be? No.

The true choice is between negotiations as part of a popular struggle anchored in the language of the universal culture of equality and rights, and negotiations between business partners with the junior partner submissively expressing his gratitude to the senior partner for his generosity.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Omar Barghouti: UN must immediately adopt and act on Goldstone report

Barghouti sees the capitulation to Israeli and US demands by the Palestinian Authority (PS) and its president, Abbas, as "the most blatant case yet of PA betrayal of palestinian rights and surrender to Israeli dictates."
This is not only a betrayal of Palestinian civil society, but "also betrayal of the global solidarity movement that has worked tirelessly and creatively, mainly within the framework of the fast spreading BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions] campaign, to end Israel's impunity and to uphold universal human rights."

Barghouti calls on the PA to disband - gradually and responsibly, so as not to create power vacuum, and on the PLO to democratize and become the representative of *all* Palestinians
from the grassroots up.

Racheli Gai.

Omar Barghouti: UN must immediately adopt and act on Goldstone report
October 05, 2009

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/22782

Palestinian civil society has strongly and almost unanimously condemned the Palestinian Authority's latest decision to delay adoption by the UN Human Rights Council of the report prepared by the UN Fact-Finding Mission, headed by justice Richard Goldstone, into the recent Israeli war of aggression against the Palestinian people in the occupied Gaza Strip. A common demand in almost all Palestinian statements issued in this respect was for the UN to adopt the report and act without undue delay on its recommendations in order to bring an end to Israel's criminal impunity and to hold it accountable before international law for its war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza and, indeed, all over the occupied Palestinian territory.

Succumbing to US pressures and unabashed Israeli blackmail, the president of the PA himself reportedly was himself responsible for the decision to defer discussion at the Council of the Goldstone report, dashing the hopes of Palestinians everywhere as well as of international human rights organizations and solidarity movements that Israel will finally face a long overdue process of legal accountability and that its victims will have a measure of justice. This decision by the PA, which in effect delays adoption of the report at least until March 2010, giving Israel a golden opportunity to bury it with US, European, Arab and now Palestinian complicity, constitutes the most blatant case yet of PA betrayal of Palestinian rights and surrender to Israeli dictates.

This is not the first time, though, that the PA has acted under orders from Washington and threats from Tel Aviv against the express interests of the Palestinian people. The historic advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice in July 2004 that found Israel's Wall and colonies built on occupied Palestinian territory illegal had presented a rare diplomatic, political and legal opportunity that could have been used to isolate Israel as apartheid South Africa was after a similar ICJ decision in 1971 against its occupation of Namibia. Alas, the PA squandered it and systematically -- quite suspiciously, actually -- failed to even call on world governments to comply with their obligations stated in the advisory opinion.

The whole clause on Israel and Palestinian rights that was to be discussed at the recent UN Durban Review Conference in Geneva was dropped after the Palestinian representative gave his green light. Efforts by non-aligned nations and the former UN General Assembly president, Father Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, to push for a UN resolution condemning Israel's war crimes in Gaza and establishing an international tribunal were thwarted mainly by the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, causing several prominent diplomats and international law experts to wonder which side the official Palestinian representative was on.

The Mercosur-Israel Free Trade Agreement was almost ratified by Brazil this last September after the Palestinian ambassador there expressed approval, only urging Brazil to exclude Israeli settlement products from the Agreement. With prompt action by Palestinian and Brazilian civil society organizations and eventually by the PLO's Executive Committee, this ratification was averted and the Brazilian parliamentary committee in charge of this file recommended that the government refrain from approving the FTA until Israel complies with international law.

In all these cases and many similar ones, the instructions to the Palestinian representatives came from Ramallah, where the PA government has illegally appropriated the PLO powers to lead Palestinian diplomacy and set foreign policy, conceding Palestinian rights and acting against the Palestinian national interests, without worrying about accountability to any elected representatives of the Palestinian people.

This latest forthright collusion of the PA in Israel's campaign to whitewash its crimes and undermine the application of international law to punish these crimes came a few days after the far-right Israeli government publicly blackmailed the PA, demanding that it withdraw its support for adopting the Goldstone report in return for "permitting" a second mobile communications provider to operate in the occupied Palestinian territory. It therefore undermines the great efforts by human rights organizations and many activists to bring justice to the Palestinian victims of Israel's latest massacre in Gaza: the more than 1400 killed (predominantly civilians); the thousands injured; the 1.5 million who are still suffering from the wanton destruction of infrastructure, educational and health institutions, factories, farm lands, power plants, and other critical facilities, and from the long criminal Israeli siege against them.

It is nothing short of a betrayal of Palestinian civil society's effective Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, with all its recent, remarkable growth and achievements in mainstream western societies and among leading unions.

It is also betrayal of the global solidarity movement that has worked tirelessly and creatively, mainly within the framework of the fast spreading BDS campaign, to end Israel's impunity and to uphold universal human rights.

It is crucial to remember that the PA does not have any legal or democratic mandate to speak on behalf of the people of Palestine or to represent the Palestinians at the UN or any of its agencies and institutions. The current PA government has never won the necessary constitutional approval of the democratically elected Palestinian Legislative Council. Even if it had such a mandate, at best it would only represent the Palestinians living under Israel's military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, excluding the great majority of the people of Palestine, particularly the refugees.

Only the Palestine Liberation Organization, the PLO, can theoretically claim to represent the entirety of the Palestinian people: inside historic Palestine and in exile. For such a claim to be substantiated and universally accepted by Palestinians everywhere, though, the PLO would need to be revived from the grassroots upwards, in a transparent, democratic and inclusive process that involves Palestinians everywhere and encompasses all the political parties that are outside the PLO structures today. In parallel with this democratic reclamation or popular take-back of the PLO by the people and their representative unions and institutions, the PA must be responsibly and gradually dismantled, with its current powers, particularly the representation seats at the UN and other regional and international institutions, returned to where they belong, to the real representative of all the people of Palestine, the revived and democratized PLO. This dissolution of the PA, however, must at all
times avoid creating a legal and political vacuum, as history shows that hegemonic powers are often the most likely to fill such a vacuum to the detriment of the oppressed.

The fact is the PA has been gradually and irreversibly transformed since its establishment 15 years ago from a mere -- often powerless, obsequious and coerced -- sub-contractor of the Israeli occupation regime, relieving it of its most cumbersome civil duties, like the provision of services and tax collection, and, most crucially, very effectively helping it safeguard the security of its occupation army and colonial settlers, into a willing collaborator that constitutes Israel's most important strategic weapon in countering its growing isolation and loss of legitimacy on the world stage as a colonial and apartheid state. Israel's hundreds of nuclear weapons and its fourth largest army in the world proved impotent or at least irrelevant before the growing BDS movement, particularly after Israel's acts of genocide in Gaza. The almost unlimited diplomatic, political, economic and scientific support Israel receives from the US and European governments and its unparalleled impunity have
also failed to protect it from the gloomy fate of apartheid South Africa.

Even before Israel's war on Gaza, many unions around the world had joined the BDS campaign, from Canada to South Africa, and from the UK and Norway to Brazil. After Gaza, though, the four years of preparing the ground and spreading BDS, the international shock at the sight of Israel's white phosphorus showers of death visited upon the children of Gaza cowered in UN shelters, and the universal feeling that the international order has failed to hold Israel to account or to even end its slaughter of civilians, not to mention its ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign in the occupied West Bank, particularly in East Jerusalem, BDS leaped into a new, advanced phase. It finally reached the mainstream.

In February, weeks after the end of Israel's bloodbath in Gaza, the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU) made history when it refused to offload an Israeli ship in Durban. In April, the Scottish Trade Union Congress followed the lead of the South African trade union federation, COSATU, and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions in adopting BDS against Israel to bring about its compliance with international law. In May, the University and College Union (UCU), representing some 120,000 British academics, reiterated its annual support for the logic of boycott against Israel, calling for organizing an inter-union BDS conference later this year to discuss effective strategies for implementing the boycott.

Most recently, this last September, the Norwegian government's pension fund, the third largest in the world, divested from an Israeli military contractor supplying equipment to the illegal Wall in violation of the ICJ ruling. Shortly after that, a Spanish ministry excluded an Israeli academic team representing a college illegally built on occupied Palestinian land from participating in an academic competition. Also in September, the British Trades Union Congress, representing over 6.5 million workers, adopted the boycott, ushering in a new chapter in the spread of BDS that reminds observers of the beginning of the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa. According to concrete, persistent and mounting indicators, Palestinians are witnessing the arrival of their "South Africa moment."

Amidst all this comes the Goldstone report, quite surprisingly -- given the judge's strong connections with Israel and Zionism -- providing the straw that may well break the camel's back: irrefutable evidence, meticulously researched and documented, of Israel's deliberate commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Despite its clear shortcoming, this report presented Israel with the daunting and not entirely improbable prospect of standing trial at an international tribunal, a development that would effectively end Israel's impunity and open the possibility of finally applying international justice to its crimes and persistent violations of international law. In this dire context for Israel, only one strategic weapon in its arsenal could be used to fend off the foretold crushing legal and political defeat: the PA. And it did use it indeed at the right time, in a fatal way, almost killing the Goldstone report.

Ultimately, the failure of the UN Human Rights Council to adopt the Goldstone report is another proof, if any is needed, that Palestinians cannot hope at the current historical moment to obtain justice from the US-controlled so-called "international community." Only through intensified, sustainable and context-sensitive civil society campaigns of boycott and divestment can there be any hope that Israel will one day be compelled to end its lawlessness and criminal disregard of human rights and recognize the inalienable Palestinian right to self determination. This right, as expressed by the great majority of the Palestinian people, comprises ending the occupation, ending the legalized and institutionalized system of racial discrimination, or apartheid, and recognizing the fundamental, UN-sanctioned right of the Palestine refugees to return to their homes of origin, like all other refugees around the world, including Jewish refugees of World War II.

We simply cannot afford to give up on the UN, though. Human rights organizations and international civil society must continue to help the Palestinian struggle to pressure the UN, at least its General Assembly, to adopt and act upon the recommendations of the Goldstone report at all levels. If the UN fails to do so it will send an unambiguous message to Israel that its impunity remains intact and that the international community will stand by apathetically the next time it commits even more egregious crimes against the indigenous people of Palestine. This would gravely undermine the rule of law and promote in its stead the law of the jungle, where no one will be protected from total chaos and boundless carnage.

Omar Barghouti is a founding member of the BDS movement (www.BDSmovement.net)

Monday, October 5, 2009

Manufacturing Right

For years, Israel dismissed the legal applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention to the West Bank and Gaza, claiming that they were and are not under occupation but rather "liberated" or at least "disputed" territories. For the most part, this verbal/legal sleight-of-hand did not and has not convinced world civil society. But it joined other strategies, such as the active erasure of the 1949 armistice "green" line by Jewish settlement and infrastructure projects, in obfuscating reality for a sufficient number of Israelis to uphold a sense of public indignation at accusations of illegality.

Almost as old as the occupation itself, the basic strategy of word-washing and mind-tricks has been reused repeatedly by Israel, also assisting its evasion of International Humanitarian Law as well as other international standards and conventions.

The opinion piece below is a vehement, pointed accusation leveled by journalist Gideon Levy against the extensive group of Israeli philosophers, thinkers, lawyers, jurists and leading academics who have, over many years now, readily and faithfully provided the language and concepts for these strategies of evasion. First and foremost among the conscience-clearers, he writes, is Prof. Asa Kasher who is "the one responsible for that toxic 'IDF spirit' – which holds that when … protecting soldiers, anything goes".

As Levy intimates, despite his seminal importance, Kasher, who "glossed over every transgression during this war" [i.e. Israel's last major assault against Gaza] is just a single, though prominent, instance of the complicity and collaboration of a vast community of intellectuals in maintaining Israel's freedom and capacity to go on enforcing a criminal, horrific occupation and committing war crimes with impunity.

Rela Mazali

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Lincoln Shlensky adds:

Eliot Weinberger, the American translator and political critic, turns a sardonic eye on the use of white phosphorus by US forces in his widely disseminated anti-war essay "What I Heard about Iraq in 2005," published in The London Review of Books <http://bit.ly/zySZc> (an excellent article by Scott Saul on Weinberger's three decades-long role as a cultural critic appears in the September 30 issue of The Nation <http://bit.ly/Iq3nv>):

"I heard that, in Fallujah and elsewhere, the US had employed white phosphorus munitions, an incendiary device, known among soldiers as 'Willie Pete' or 'shake and bake', which is banned as a weapon by the Convention on Conventional Weapons. Similar to napalm, it leaves the victim horribly burned, often right through to the bone. I heard a State Department spokesman say: 'US forces have used them very sparingly in Fallujah, for illumination purposes. They were fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters.' Then I heard him say that 'US forces used white phosphorus rounds to flush out enemy fighters so that they could then be killed with high explosive rounds.' Then I heard a Pentagon spokesman say that the previous statements were based on 'poor information', and that 'it was used as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants.' Then I heard the Pentagon say that white phosphorus was not an illegal weapon, because the US
had never signed that provision of the Convention on Conventional Weapons."

As Weinberger's commentary on the US-led war in Iraq emphasizes, Israel is not the only country recently to have used white phosphorus in violation of international humanitarian law -- signed or, as in this case, unconscionably unsigned.

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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1118638.html

Haaretz, Sunday October 4 2009

It's all kosher for Kasher
by Gideon Levy

Whoever said that intellectuals are keeping silent? Who claimed that academia is ensconced in an ivory tower? And who dared to think that Israel lacks a moral voice? One day, when historians take the time to examine Israel's brutal offensive in Gaza, otherwise known as "Cast Lead," they will settle a score with political leaders and officers who were responsible for committing war crimes. They will delve deep and denounce the enablers of this nation, the whitewashers and apologists, those who let the Israel Defense Forces win at any cost, even if it was the heaviest moral cost possible.

The main target on their list will be Mr. Ethics, Prof. Asa Kasher, the Israel Prize-winning philosopher and author of the IDF's Code of Conduct. Kasher glossed over every transgression during this war. He's the one responsible for that toxic "IDF spirit" - which holds that when it comes to protecting soldiers, anything goes for the IDF.

This flimsy fig leaf of a man bears as much moral responsibility as the political leaders who made the decisions and the soldiers who carried out their orders. He's the philosopher who removed the reins, the intellectual who whitewashed everything. It is thanks to him and those of his ilk that Israelis can feel so self-righteous. When the world said in near unison, "War crimes," Kasher said, "We are the most moral army in the world, no one is better than us." If this is how a philosopher of ethics speaks, who needs propagandists?

He wasn't always like this. He now says in every possible forum, "If it comes down to a choice between a neighbor and an IDF soldier, the preference is the soldier," and "The lives of our soldiers is of more interest to me than the dignity and well-being of the Palestinians." He has also said that there is no justification for endangering the lives of soldiers in order to prevent the killing of civilians living "next to a terrorist." But he once thought and wrote differently.

As a radical activist at the height of the first Lebanon war, Kasher, who is also one of the founders of the soldiers' refusal movement Yesh Gvul, courageously appeared at a news conference with Nathan Zach, Dan Miron and Yeshayahu Leibowitz. Kasher, who for some reason sees Leibowitz as his patron and mentor, wrote in a letter to Haaretz: "Against the backdrop of news reports on thousands of noncombatant Lebanese and Palestinians who were harmed during Israel's military operations, and given the complete justification of these instances given by the prime minister, it is every decent man's duty to express unreserved opposition to the prime minister's treatment of innocent civilians who are caught in the middle of a war he initiated."

What has changed since then? Kasher has changed. Every decent man continues to believe that unnecessary killing of civilians is a criminal act. The war in Gaza was no less cruel than the war in Lebanon. Universal ethics remain today what they were then. Only Kasher's ethics have radically changed. If only his statements hadn't been so damaging, we could ignore the bewildering change in his positions. Yet for years he has been co-opted by the defense establishment and the IDF as their rubber stamp, solely because of the profound change he underwent. Now he serves as their flack and rationalizer, the philosopher lackey.

In recent days, the United Nations' Goldstone report has been denounced as "anti-Semitic propaganda," and white phosphorus bombs have become "legitimate weapons." Why? Kasher heard from an IDF colonel that when a phosphorus bomb fell near him, nothing happened to him. And what about the 200 children who were killed? They were of "legal adult age - 15 to 18 years - and they took an active part in the war." What about the killing of Dr. Ezzeldeen Abu al-Aish's daughters? He is responsible for their deaths. The bombing of hospitals? This, too, is permitted. Kasher knows that terrorists were hiding in their basements.

The IDF Spokesman's Office could not have phrased it any better. The Foreign Ministry's spin doctors could not have deceived any better. This is how Kasher has whitewashed the assassinations and resultant killing of innocent civilians. He also thought that the IDF did not do enough killing in Jenin. The army, Kasher thought, should have warned the civilians beforehand, and "whoever stayed, let the blood be on his head." This is how generals who try to justify their criminal actions speak. But an intellectual? An expert on ethics?

What is the world coming to? Listen to Kasher and look at us. This is the man who symbolizes our morality and this is how we behave. Why should we complain about Defense Minister Ehud Barak? Why should we excoriate Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi? What is so objectionable about a general who planned and a soldier who carried out the order, when above them hovers this toxic spirit that emanates directly from the halls of humanism, philosophy and ethics, and which through mere words provides cover for this awful abyss?

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Abunimah: Abbas helps Israel bury its crimes in Gaza

True colors were revealed at the UN when the PA delegate abandoned a resolution to send the Goldstone report to the Security Council. The effect of this will be to make the recommendations of the Goldstone report, which criticized Israeli as well as Hamas actions during last year's assault on Gaza, much more difficult to implement, both politically and logistically.

As Ali Abunimah documents in the article below, this is just one more recent example of the Abbas leadership's complicity with the Israeli occupation, and its failure to represent the interests of the Palestinians under occupation, a stance generally registered in the media by describing the PA as "moderates."

Judith Norman

Abbas helps Israel bury its crimes in Gaza
By Ali Abunimah
The Electronic Intifada 2 October 2009

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10807.shtml

Just when it seemed that the Ramallah Palestinian Authority (PA) and its leader Mahmoud Abbas could not sink any lower in their complicity with Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the murderous blockade of Gaza, Ramallah has dealt a further stunning blow to the Palestinian people.

The Abbas delegation to the United Nations in Geneva (officially representing the moribund Palestine Liberation Organization) abandoned a resolution requesting the Human Rights Council to forward Judge Richard Goldstone's report on war crimes in Gaza to the UN Security Council for further action. Although the PA acted under US pressure, there are strong indications that the commercial interests of Palestinian and Gulf businessmen closely linked to Abbas also played a part.

The 575-page Goldstone report documents evidence of shocking Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity during last winter's assault on the Gaza Strip which killed 1,400 Palestinians, the vast majority noncombatants and hundreds of them children. The report also accuses the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas of war crimes for firing rockets into Israel that killed three civilians.

Goldstone's report was hailed by Palestinians and supporters of the rule of law worldwide as a watershed; it called for suspects to be held accountable before international courts if Israel failed to prosecute them. Israel has no history, ever, of holding its political and military leaders judicially accountable for war crimes against the Palestinians.

Israel was rightly terrified of the report, mobilizing all its diplomatic and political resources to discredit it. In recent days, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that if the report were acted on, it would "strike a severe blow to the war against terrorism," and "strike a fatal blow to the peace process, because Israel will no longer be able to take additional steps and take risks for peace if its right to self-defense is denied."

Unsurprisingly, an early ally in the Israeli campaign for impunity was the Obama Administration, whose UN ambassador, Susan Rice, expressed "very serious concerns" about the report and trashed Goldstone's mandate as "unbalanced, one-sided and basically unacceptable." (Rice was acting true to her word; in April she told the newspaper Politico that one of the main reasons the Obama Administration decided to join the UN Human Rights Council was to fight what she called "the anti-Israel crap.")

Goldstone, whose daughter has publicly described her father as a Zionist who loves Israel, is a former judge of the South African Supreme Court, and a highly respected international jurist. He was the chief prosecutor at UN war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.

That the Goldstone report was a severe blow to Israel's ability to commit future war crimes with impunity is not in doubt; this week bolstered by the report, lawyers in the UK asked a court to issue an arrest warrant for visiting Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. That action did not succeed, but Israel's government has taken extraordinary measures in recent months to try to shield its officials from prosecution, fearing that successful arrests are just a matter of time. Along with the growing international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions, the fear of ending up in The Hague seems to be the only thing that causes the Israeli government and society to reconsider their destructive path.

One would think, then, that the self-described representatives of the Palestinian people would not casually throw away this weapon. And yet, according to Abbas ambassador Ibrahim Khraishi, the Ramallah PA shelved its effort at the request of the Americans because "We don't want to create an obstacle for them."

Khraishi's excuse that the resolution is merely being deferred until the spring does not pass muster. Unless action is taken now, the Goldstone report will be buried by then and evidence of Israel's crimes -- necessary for prosecutions -- may be harder to collect.

This latest surrender comes less than two weeks after Abbas appeared at a summit in New York with US President Barack Obama and Netanyahu despite Obama abandoning his demand that Israel halt construction of Jewish-only settlements on occupied Palestinian land. Also under US pressure, the PA abandoned its pledge not to resume negotiations unless settlement-building stopped, and agreed to take part in US-mediated "peace talks" with Israel in Washington this week. Israel, meanwhile, announced plans for the largest ever West Bank settlement since 1967.

What makes this even more galling, is the real possibility that the PA is helping Israel wash its hands of the blood it spilled in Gaza for something as base as the financial gain of businessmen closely linked to Abbas.

The Independent (UK) reported on 1 October:

"Shalom Kital, an aide to defense minister Ehud Barak, said today that Israel will not release a share of the radio spectrum that has long been sought by the Palestinian Authority to enable the launch of a second mobile telecommunications company unless the PA drops its efforts to put Israeli soldiers and officers in the dock over the Israeli operation." ("Palestinians cry 'blackmail' over Israel phone service threat," The Independent, 1 October).

Kital added that it was a "condition" that the PA specifically drop its efforts to advance the Goldstone report. The phone company, Wataniya, was described last April by Reuters as an "Abbas-backed company" which is a joint venture between Qatari and Kuwaiti investors and the Palestinian Investment Fund with which one of Abbas' sons is closely involved. Moreover, Reuters revealed that the start-up company apparently had no shortage of capital due to the Gulf investors receiving millions of dollars of "US aid in the form of loan guarantees meant for Palestinian farmers and other small to mid-sized businesses" (See "US aid goes to Abbas-backed Palestinian phone venture," Reuters, 24 April 2009).

Just a day before the Abbas delegation pulled its resolution in Geneva, Nabil Shaath, the PA "foreign minister" denounced the Israeli threat over Wataniya as "blackmail" and vowed that the Palestinians would never back down.

The PA's betrayal of the Palestinian people over the Goldstone report, as well as its continued "security coordination" with Israel to suppress resistance and political activity in the West Bank, should banish all doubt that it is an active arm of the Israeli occupation doing tangible and escalating harm to the Palestinian people and their just cause.

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Adam Horowitz and Philip Weiss: Israel vs. Human Rights

Jerry Haber, who blogs at http://themagneszionist.blogspot.com/ says at the conclusion of Horowitz and Weiss's article:
"Israel's only recourse, after it violates the rights of Palestinians, is to deny that such rights exist." But as time goes by, the denial, and especially the suppression of such rights is spreading to include human rights workers and other dissenters within Israel proper and anywhere else. The most prominent example at the moment is the attacks Israel and its "supporters" have been heaping on Richard Goldstone. (See, for example, Cecilie Surasky's report at http://www.muzzlewatch.com/2009/10/01/anne-bayefsky-is-an-anti-semite-and-a-hypocrite-attacks-on-goldstone-cross-the-line/ ).

Racheli Gai.

Israel vs. Human Rights

Adam Horowitz & Philip Weiss: Israel vs. Human Rights

September 30, 2009

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091019/horowitz_weiss

The Human Rights Watch reports that were sharply critical of Israel's killing of civilians in Lebanon represent the latest battle for Jewish hearts and minds in the ideological war over the Middle East.

The head of the UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, Judge Richard Goldstone, was "upset" by the speech. "It is disingenuous, to put it lightly, what Netanyahu said," he told The Nation. "The idea that this is aimed at delegitimating the state of Israel--that is the last thing I would want to do." Goldstone, a Jew and a Zionist, said that Israel's leaders were behaving contemptuously, "ignoring the specific allegations and simply launching a broadside."

Those broadsides began not long after the ascension of the right-wing Netanyahu government in March, when his ministers began painting human rights and peace groups as a fifth column for terrorists. "For the first time the Israeli government is taking an active role in the smearing of human rights groups," says Sarah Leah Whitson of Human Rights Watch.

Traditionally that job had gone to Israel's friends. The executive director of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, for instance, condemned human rights groups this past spring as part of an international "campaign" to dehumanize the Jewish state to the point where "Israel stands alone, isolated and at risk." But as one international report after another accused Israel of war crimes during the Gaza assault, the Israeli government joined the fight. The government refused to cooperate with Goldstone's investigation, forcing him to enter Gaza from Egypt. Israeli witnesses had to be flown to Geneva to be interviewed.

The Israeli government has also sought to quash domestic dissent. In April it targeted the anti-militarism organization New Profile, seizing computers and detaining activists. In July, when a group of Israeli veterans called Breaking the Silence released dozens of anonymous soldiers' testimonies from the Gaza assault describing indifference to civilian targets, the Israeli government went, well, ballistic. It threatened to cut off the financial support the group receives from the Dutch, Spanish and British governments and warned those governments that their support was illegal. Israel indicated that it would look into foreign support that Israeli human rights groups B'Tselem and Machsom Watch receive as well.

Ron Dermer, a Netanyahu adviser who was raised in Florida, struck a fearsome tone: "We are going to dedicate time and manpower to combating these groups. We are not going to be sitting ducks in a pond for the human rights groups to shoot at us with impunity."

Shooting back meant calling out New York-based Human Rights Watch for raising money in Arab countries, an anti-Arab theme that was echoed in a September attack on Human Rights Watch published by the Jerusalem-based advocacy group NGO Monitor. The critique listed staff members who are allegedly "anti-Israel," with some of the charges as flimsy as the fact that an official had been on the board of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. And as Judge Goldstone found, the Israeli government has refused to cooperate with Human Rights Watch investigations. "Over the last year they have not wanted to meet with us, even when we've presented them with very, very detailed questions about IDF conduct based on preliminary investigations," says program director Iain Levine.

Of course, Palestinian human rights activists are familiar with stonewalling, and much worse. A March 2006 UN report criticized the Israel Defense Forces for the "systematic targeting of peace and human rights activists" and noted that Israel seemed to use administrative detention to deter human rights work. That policy was underscored in September, when Israel arrested Mohammad Othman, a human rights activist, after a visit to Norway, where he had pushed for boycott, divestment and sanctions.

The impetus for the new Israeli strategy appears to be fear of shifting international opinion. As analyst Michael Wahid Hanna of the Century Foundation puts it, Goldstone's stunning findings may well "take on a life of their own...and make diplomatic life much more tricky." The Netanyahu government is counting on the United States to block a potential UN Security Council recommendation for an international war crimes tribunal and has warned the Obama administration that the Goldstone report can only hinder the peace process. Certainly human rights reports have emboldened Israel's critics. Just two days after the release of the report, the British Trade Union Congress, representing more than 6.5 million workers, endorsed the boycott movement against Israel, explaining that the decision was "the culmination of a wave of motions passed at union conferences this year, following outrage at Israel's brutal war on Gaza."

We are used to accounting for the costs of the Israeli occupation in concrete terms: so many checkpoints, so many colonies, so many dead civilians. The new Israeli effort suggests an even larger cost: that of the very idea of human rights. The government has yet to question one factual allegation Goldstone has made, says progressive Zionist blogger Jerry Haber. "Israel's only recourse, after it violates the rights of Palestinians, is to deny that such rights exist."

Thursday, October 1, 2009

The human cost of "Progress" - an interview with Arundhati Roy / democracynow.org

An interview with Arundhati Roy as her new book comes out. The book is titled: "Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers". Roy talks about the human costs of "progress" - in India and elsewhere, on how the term "Democracy" has come to mean free market and globalization. In the service of "Progress" and markets indigenous people got slaughtered in the past, and are being dispossessed and put down right now.
While the interview sheds light mostly on events in India, it compares and connects them to a larger picture. It's a dark, even terrifying, portrayal of the kind of grim reality we're all facing, but Roy still has hope. The interview ends by her saying:
"What gives me hope is the fact that this way of thinking is being resisted in a myriad ways in India, you know, from the poorest person in a loincloth in the forest saying, "We're going to fight," right up to me, who's at the other end, you know. And all of us are joined together by the determination that, even if we lose, we're going to fight, you know? And we're not going to just let this happen without doing everything we can to stop it. And that gives me a tremendous amount of hope."

Racheli Gai

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/9/28/author_arundhati_roy_on_conflicts_and

Author Arundhati Roy on the Human Costs of India's Economic Growth, the View of Obama from New Delhi, and Escalating US Attacks in Af-Pak

We're joined from the Indian capital of New Delhi by the Booker Prize-winning novelist, political essayist and global justice activist Arundhati Roy. Her books include the Booker Prize-winning novel The God of Small Things and her latest essay collection, Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers. We speak to Roy about India's conflict with Maoist rebels, the occupation of Kashmir, ongoing Indian-Pakistani tensions, Obama's war in "Af-Pak," and more. [includes rush transcript]

AMY GOODMAN: We turn to a woman the New York Times calls India's most impassioned critic of globalization and American influence, Arundhati Roy, world-renowned Indian author and global justice activist. Her first novel, The God of Small Things, won the Booker Prize in 1997. She has a new book; it's called Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers. An adapted introduction to the book is posted at tomdispatch.com, called "What Have We Done to Democracy?" Arundhati Roy joins us now from New Delhi, India, on the country's biggest national holiday of the year.

Arundhati, we welcome you to Democracy Now! And as you listen to this report from the streets of G-20 by our producer Steve Martinez, talk about globalization and what has happened to democracy.

ARUNDHATI ROY: Well, that's a huge subject, Amy. And I think my book—in my book, I discuss it in some detail in terms of what's happening to India. But as we know now, because of the way the global economy is linked, countries are not—you know, the political systems in countries are also linked, so democracies are linked to dictatorships and military occupations and so on. We know that. We know that some of the main military occupations in the world today are actually administered by democracies: Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir.

But what I think is beginning to be very clear now is that we see now that democracy is sort of fused to the free market, or to the idea of the free market. And so, its imagination has been limited to the idea of profit. And democracy, a few years ago, maybe, you know, even twenty-five years ago, was something that, let's say, a country like America feared, which was why democracies were being toppled all over the place, like in Chile and so on. But now wars are being waged to restore—to place democracy, because democracy serves the free market, and each of the institutions in democracy, like you look at India, you know, whether it's the Supreme—whether it's the courts or whether it's the media or whether it's all the other institutions of democracy, they've been sort of hollowed out, and just their shells have been replaced, and we play out this charade. And it's much more complicated for people to understand what's going on, because there's so much shadow play
.

But really we are facing a crisis. And that's what I ask. You know, is there life after democracy? And what kind of life will it be? Because democracy has been hollowed out and made meaningless. And when I say "democracy," I'm not talking about the ideal. You know, I'm not saying that countries that live in dictatorships and under military occupation should not fight for democracy, because the early years of democracy are important and heady. And then we see a strange metastasis taking over.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Arundhati Roy. She's joining us from New Delhi, India, the world-renowned author, global justice activist. Her book The God of Small Things won the Booker Prize, well known all over the world. Now she has written a new book. Today we will talk about it for the first time in the United States in a national broadcast, Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers. We'll be back with her for the rest of the hour in a minute.

AMY GOODMAN: We continue with Arundhati Roy, speaking to us from New Delhi, India, talking about India, war and globalization. I'm here with co-host Anjali Kamat. Anjali?

ANJALI KAMAT: The Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers met in New York Sunday on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meeting but failed to agree on a timetable for negotiations. Talks continue to be stalled by the fallout of the November 2008 attack on Mumbai that killed 163 people. India blames Pakistani militants for the attack and has emphasized the need for Pakistan to prosecute those responsible. The Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna told reporters he raised these concerns with his Pakistani counterpart Shah Mehmood Qureshi.

S.M. KRISHNA: As you are aware, we do have serious and continuing concerns about terrorist and extremist groups in Pakistan, which are—which are a national security risk for us and for our people. Foreign Minister Qureshi conveyed to me the seriousness of his government in bringing to book, through their legal process, those responsible for the terrorist outrage in Mumbai ten months ago.

ANJALI KAMAT: Meanwhile, inside India, the focus has shifted to a different adversary. The stage is set for a major domestic military offensive against an armed group that the Indian prime minister has repeatedly called the country's, quote, "gravest internal security threat."

Operation Green Hunt will reportedly send between 75,000 and 100,000 troops to areas seen as Maoist strongholds in central and eastern India. In June, India labeled the Naxalite group, the Communist Party of India—Maoist—a terrorist organization, and earlier this month India's home minister came to the United States to share counterterror strategies.

The Indian government blames the deaths of nearly 600 people this year on Maoist violence and claims that Maoist rebels are active in twenty out of the twenty-eight states in the country. The Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh outlined the threat to a conference of state police chiefs earlier this month.

PRIME MINISTER MANMOHAN SINGH: In many ways, the left-wing extremism poses perhaps the gravest internal security threat our country faces. We have discussed this in the last five years. And I would like to state, frankly, that we have not achieved as much success as we would have liked in containing this menace.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, to help make sense of what's unfolding inside the world's largest democracy, we continue with the Booker Prize award-winning novelist, political essayist, global justice activist Arundhati Roy. She won the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize in 2002. She's the author of a number of collection of essays and the novel The God of Small Things. Her latest book is called Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers.

Can you make sense, Arundhati, of what is happening inside India for an audience around the world?

ARUNDHATI ROY: Well, let me just pick up on what Anjali was talking about just now, about the assault that's planned on the so-called Maoists in central India. You know, when September 11th happened, I think some of us had already said that a time would come when poverty would be sort of collapsed and converge into terrorism. And this is exactly what's happened. The poorest people in this country today are being called terrorists.

And what you have is a huge swath of forest in eastern and central India, spreading from West Bengal through the states of Jharkhand, Orissa and Chhattisgarh. And in these forests live indigenous people. And also in these forests are the biggest deposits of bauxite and iron ore and so on, which huge multinational companies now want to get their hands on. So there's an MoU [Memorandum of Understanding] on every mountain, on every forest and river in this area.

And about in 2005, let's say, in central India, the day after the MoU was signed with the biggest sort of corporation in India, Tatas, the government also announced the formation of the Salwa Judum, which is a sort of people's militia, which is armed and is meant to fight the Maoists in the forest. But the thing is, all this, the Salwa Judum as well as the Maoists, they're all indigenous people. And in, let's say, Chhattisgarh, something like the Salwa Judum has been a very cruel militia, you know, burning villages, raping women, burning food crops. I was there recently. Something like 640 villages have been burned. Out of the 350,000, first about 50,000 people moved into roadside police camps, from where this militia was raised by the government. And the rest are simply missing. You know, some are living in cities, you know, eking out a living. Others are just hiding in the forest, coming out, trying to sow their crops, and yet getting, you know, those crops burnt down,
their
villages burnt down. So there is a sort of civil war raging.

And now, I remember traveling in Orissa a few years ago, when there were not any Maoists, but there were huge sort of mining companies coming in to mine the bauxite. And yet, they kept—all the newspapers kept saying the Maoists are here, the Maoists are here, because it was a way of allowing the government to do a kind of military-style repression. Of course, now they're openly saying that they want to call out the paramilitary.

And if you look at—for example, if you look at the trajectory of somebody like Chidambaram, who's India's home minister, he—you know, he's a lawyer from Harvard. He was the lawyer for Enron, which pulled off the biggest scam in the history of—corporate scam in the history of India. We're still suffering from that deal. After that, he was on the board of governors of what is today the biggest mining corporation in the world, called Vedanta, which is mining in Orissa. The day he became finance minister, he resigned from Vedanta. When he was the finance minister, in an interview he said that he would like 85 percent of India to live in cities, which means moving something like 500 million people. That's the kind of vision that he has.

And now he's the home minister, calling out the paramilitary, calling out the police, and really forcibly trying to move people out of their lands and homes. And anyone who resisted, whether they're a Maoist or not a Maoist, are being labeled Maoist. People are being picked up, tortured. There are some laws that have been passed which should not exist in any democracy, laws which make somebody like me saying what I'm saying now to you a criminal offense, for which I could just be jailed. Even sort of thinking an anti-government thought has become illegal. And we're talking about, you know, as you said, 75,000 to 100,000 security personnel going to war against people who, since independence, which was more than sixty years ago, have no schools, no hospitals, no running water, nothing. And now, now they're being—now they're being killed or imprisoned or just criminalized. You know, it's like if you're not in the Salwa Judum camp, then you're a Maoist, and we can
kill
you. And they are openly celebrating the Sri Lanka solution to terrorism, to terrorism.

ANJALI KAMAT: Arundhati Roy, can you explain a little bit more about how India has so successfully hidden this side of it, this underbelly of democracy that you bring out in your book—murder, disappearances, torture, rapes, thousands—millions of people displaced, whether it's for development projects or in the process of fighting wars, tens of thousands disappeared in Kashmir, the insurgency that's being fought, the military that's fighting the insurgency in the northeast? How is India, on a global stage, continues to be seen as this successful democracy, a place where investors are flooding to?

ARUNDHATI ROY: Well, precisely because it is a democracy for some of its citizens, you know? And so, in a way, it has—this whole system has somehow created an elite that is now suddenly enriched in the last, you know, twenty years since the advent of the corporate free market. We have a huge middle class that is hugely invested in this sort of a police—or, you know, a police state that isn't acknowledged as one. So you have—it's not just a small sort of coterie of generals, like in Burma, or a kind of military dictatorship that's supported by the US in America. You have a huge constituency in this country that completely supports this whole enterprise, and you have a free media where 90 percent of the turnover of those media houses comes from corporate advertisements and so on. So they're also free, but free to also embrace this particular model, in which, you know, a small section of people—well, not a small section; there are millions and millions of people, but
they
are not the majority of the people of this country. The light shines upon this rising middle class, which is, as I said, such a huge number that it's a very, very attractive market for the whole world.

So, when India opens its markets, you know, because it has opened its markets, and because it's—you know, international finance is flooding in, and all of that is so attractive, it is allowed to commit genocide in Gujarat; it's allowed to commit civil war in the center; it's allowed to have a military occupation in Kashmir, where you have 700,000 soldiers, you know, patrolling that little valley; it's allowed to have laws like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act in the northeast, which allows the army to just kill on suspicion. And yet, it's celebrated. It's allowed to displace millions of people, but yet it's celebrated as this real success story, because it has all these institutions in place, even though they've been hollowed out.

So you have, for example, a Supreme Court in which there are very erudite judges, and there are some very erudite judgments, but if you look at how it's actually functioning, it has hollowed out. To criticize the court is a criminal offense. And yet, you have judgments where a judge openly says something like—you know, that—I've forgotten the exact words, but how corporate—you know, a corporate company cannot basically commit anything illegal, cannot commit an illegal act, you know? Or you have a judge in court openly talking about, let's say, Vedanta, which is mining in Orissa for bauxite. And the Norwegian government had pulled out of that project because of the human rights violations and so on; and, you know, for a whole lot of ethical reasons, they pulled out. And in India, you know, the company was taken to court, and a judge openly, in an open court, says that, "OK, we won't give this contract to Vedanta. We'll give it to Sterlite, because Sterlite is a very
good company. I have shares in it," omitting to mention that Sterlite is a subsidiary of Vedanta.

You know, but there's so much fancy footwork. If it was a military dictator, they have would have just said, "Shut up" and "Vedanta will get the project." But here, there are affidavits and counter-affidavits and a little bit of delay and everything; everyone thinks it's democracy. You know, you have the Supreme Court hearing on, let's say, the Parliament attack, where openly the Supreme Court of the world's greatest democracy says, you know, on the one hand, "We don't have evidence to prove that the person who was charged is—belongs to a terrorist group," and a few paras later says, "but the collective conscience of society will only be satisfied if we sentence him to death." And it's just said so, blatantly, out there, you know? And you can't criticize it, because it's a criminal offense.

AMY GOODMAN: Arundhati Roy, talk about Kashmir. I think it's something, certainly here in the United States, a conflict people understand very little.

ARUNDHATI ROY: Well, Kashmir—Kashmir was an independent sort of kingdom in 1947 at the time of independence and partition. And when—I mean, just to cut a very complicated story short, when partition happened, both India and Pakistan fought over it and hived off parts of it, and both now have military presence in this divided Kashmir. But to give you some idea of the military presence, it's—you know, let's say the US has 165,000 troops in Iraq. India has 700,000 troops in Kashmir.

Kashmir used to have a Hindu king and a largely Muslim population, which was very, very backward and so on at the time, because at the time, you know, Muslims were discriminated against by that princely—in that princely state.

But now, for—I mean, in 1990, after a whole series of events, which culminated in a sort of fake election, a rigged election in 1987, there was an armed uprising in Kashmir. And really, since then, it's been convulsed by militancy and military occupation, encounters, disappearances and so on. Last year, there was a—you know, last year, they began to say everything is normal, you know, tourists are going back to the valley. But, of course, that was just wishful thinking, because there was a huge nonviolent uprising in which hundreds of thousands of people, you know, flocked the streets, day and night, demanding independence. It was put down with military force.

And now, once again, you have a situation where you can hardly walk from, you know, twenty meters without someone with an AK-47 in your face. Sometimes in places like Srinagar, which is the capital, it's well hidden. But it's a place where every action, every breath that people, you know, breathe in and breathe out, is kind of controlled by military force. And this is how—you know, people are just being asphyxiated; they cannot breathe.

And, of course, there's a huge publicity machine. You know, I mean, I'd say that the only difference between what's happening in Palestine and Kashmir is that, so far, India has not used air power on the people of Kashmir, as they are threatening to do, by the way, in Chhattisgarh, you know, to its own poorest. It has not—you know, the people, technically, they are able to move around, unlike the people of Gaza and the West Bank. Kashmiris are able to move around in the rest of India, though it isn't really safe, because their young get picked up and disappeared and tortured and so on. So, you know, it's not something that they easily will do. And there has not been this kind of system of settlements, you know, where you're trying to sort of take over by pushing in people from the mainland. So, other than those three, I think we're talking about an outright occupation.

AMY GOODMAN: We're speaking with the great writer Arundhati Roy, social justice activist. She's speaking to us from New Delhi, India. When we come back, we'll talk about India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the view of President Obama from India. This is Democracy Now! Stay with us.

AMY GOODMAN: We continue with our exclusive global broadcast with Arundhati Roy in New Delhi, India, the world-renowned author, social justice activist. Her first book, The God of Small Things, translated all over the world, won the Booker Prize in 1997. Her new book, just out: Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers.

I'm Amy Goodman with Anjali Kamat. Anjali?

ANJALI KAMAT: Arundhati, years ago, under the Bush administration, you called yourself a "subject of empire." Today, can you talk about what Obama's America looks like from India, from New Delhi, as the Obama administration expands the war from Afghanistan into Pakistan?

ARUNDHATI ROY: Well, I think, you know, when people would ask me what I thought of Obama, I said I hope that he would land the American empire gently, like the pilot who landed the—who crash-landed the plane in the Hudson.

Yes, he's expanding the war in Afghanistan. I think, basically, people, including Obama, just don't know what to do in Afghanistan, and expanding the war is certainly not going to end that war or create any kind of just peace in that region. It's, in fact, going to exacerbate the situation, draw Pakistan into it, and when Pakistan is drawn into it, so will India, and so on. So it goes.

I think, you know, the real change that has taken place in the last, you know, ten years is also the rise of India and China as kind of imperial powers, you know, playing out their games in Africa and also in parts of Latin America. So it's a very—and, of course, the rise of Russia.

So, I think the situation in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir is very volatile. And, of course, let's not forget that these are nuclear powers, even though a scientist recently has announced that India's nuclear tests were a damp squib and that they were not successful, but I don't know what that's about and why he's coming out with it now.

But I think we are headed for a lot of chaos. And in India, you know, as I said, while the situation in Kashmir—even now, as I speak in the studio, there's news coming in of what they call "encounter killings," you know, almost a few every day. So, obviously, given that nonviolent protest has been put down violently, things are going to go back to a previous era of some kind of militant violence there. And, you know, the heart of India being sort of hollowed out by this civil war and this assault on its poor.

I really don't know what to say or what to expect, except to say that this kind of pressure can never result in an orderly submission, even if people wanted to submit. What's going to happen and what is happening is that unpredictable kinds of battles and chaos is erupting all over the place, and, you know, the government is constantly firefighting and trying to douse those flames.

But out of this chaos, something new has to come, and will come, because it cannot go on like this. And I don't know whether that thing will be worse or will be better, but it can't go on like this. You know, the kind of polythene bag over our heads has to burst open at some point. You know, we have to be allowed to breathe. And this kind of surveillance and drone attacks and all this that's being planned is not going to be able to hold down millions of people who are just getting impoverished and hungry and homeless.

ANJALI KAMAT: Arundhati, can you talk about the state of the media in India? You talk about the different institutions of democracy. How would you assess the Indian media, and what is its role in this landscape?

ARUNDHATI ROY: Well, if I had to talk about the—you know, I mean, the mainstream sort of corporate media, and if I were to have to make a kind of crude statement, I'd say that the mainstream media right now here is not a little to the right of Fox News. You know, that's what's going on here. There's a kind of nationalist howl that I find pretty terrifying. Having said that, I think that, you know, now all we're left with is to try and find some sane sort of bubbles within that. And there are those.

And, of course, the fact that India is a country where—I mean, forget the media; people don't—you know, people don't have access to water and food and basic healthcare. The kind of reach and that mesmeric spell that the media casts in, you know, developed countries, the media can't in India. In fact, I was actually—you know, when I was in this place, Chhattisgarh, Dantewada, where the war is unfolding, a senior policeman told me, "You know, Arundhati, as a policeman, I can tell you that the police are not going to be able to solve the problem of these indigenous, you know, these Adivasi people"—"Adivasi" is the word for tribal people—"and I have told the government that the problem with these people is that they don't have any greed. So, the way to solve the problem is to put a TV in every house. Then we'll be able to win this war."

So, you know, you have a situation where more and more people are just outside the barcode. You know, they are what you would call "illegible." And we have a very, very serious situation here, where now they are planning, you know, once again, to make a—what do you call it—a electronic ID card. Of course, once again, to people who don't have water, who don't have electricity, who don't have schools, but they will have ID cards, and people who don't have ID cards are not going to exist.

But, sorry, I moved away from your question, which was a question about the media. I fear the media greatly here. You know, sometimes, like you see after the attacks in Mumbai, the government was more mature than the media. The media was spoiling for war. It was really—you know, the media and the elite and the urban middle class were spoiling for war. They were just pushing for a war with Pakistan. And so, I'd say highly irresponsible, with very little basis in fact. And a lot of my book is really a response to how the media has behaved over the last few years on very, very crucial issues. And it's very troubling to live in a place where the media has actually no accountability.

ANJALI KAMAT: Arundhati, can you talk a little bit about encounter deaths? You mentioned this a little earlier in the program. What are police encounters, fake encounters? This is something that's quite common in India. But can you explain to our audience what you mean by "encounter deaths"?

ARUNDHATI ROY: Well, what happens now is that, you know, one of the ways in which people—the police and the security establishment deals with, you know, dissent, resistance and terrorism, or what they call terrorism, is to just deliver summary justice: kill people and say, oh, they were killed in an encounter, in cross-firing, or so on, and so on. So, in places like Kashmir and in the northeast, in Manipur and Nagaland, it's an old tradition. In places like Andhra Pradesh, they had, you know, many, many hundreds of encounter deaths.

And, in fact, recently, there was a photo essay of an encounter death in Manipur, where the, you know, security grid just—security forces just surrounded this young boy. And it was a photo essay, you know. He was unarmed. He was a former militant, I think, who had laid down his arms, and he was in the market. And you just saw a policeman pulling out his gun, shooting him, and then they said, oh, he was killed in crossfire, you know.

So, it's a very—you have people—we have cops here who are given medals for being encounter specialists. You know, so the more people they've killed, the more medals they'll get. And in places like Kashmir, they actually get promotions. So, in fact, it's something to be proud of, an encounter killing, for, you know, both the army as well as the police and the counterinsurgency forces.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Arundhati Roy. She's speaking to us from New Delhi, India. She has just published a new book called Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers. Arundhati, why "listening to grasshoppers"?

ARUNDHATI ROY: Oh, it was the name of a lecture that I did in Turkey last year on the anniversary after the death of Hrant Dink, the Armenian journalist who was shot outside his office for daring to talk about the Armenian genocide of 1915, which you're not supposed to talk about in Turkey. And my lecture was really about the historical links between progress and genocide.

And "listening to grasshoppers" was—referred to the testimony an old lady called Araxie Barsamian, who's the friend—mother of my friend David Barsamian, who is Armenian and who talked about how, you know, the wheat had ripened in her village in 1915, and suddenly there was this huge swarm of grasshoppers that arrived. And the village elders were very worried about this and said it was a bad omen. And they were right, because a few months later, when the wheat had ripened, the Turks came, and that was the beginning of the Armenian genocide for her.

And so, I talk about—the whole lecture was really about how societies are prepared for genocide and how genocide is, you know, it's like part of free trade, and how, you know, genocides that are acknowledged, and denied, and prosecuted, all have to—all depend on world trade, and always have done, and about how I worry that a country like India, that is poised on the threshold of progress, could also be poised on the threshold of genocide.

And that essay was written in January of last year. And now, as you see, the troops are closing in on the forest areas where the poorest people live. And they will be sacrificed at the altar of progress, unless we manage to show the world that we have to find a different way of seeing and a different way of going about things.

But here in India, there's the smell of fascism in the air. Earlier, it was a kind of an anti-Muslim, religious fascism. Now we have a secular government, and it's a kind of right-wing ruthlessness, where people openly say, you know, every country that has progressed and is developed, whether you look at Europe or America or China or Russia, they have a quote-unquote "past," you know, they have a cruel past, and it's time that India stepped up to the plate and realized that there are some people that are holding back this kind of progress and that we need to be ruthless and move in, as Israel did recently in Gaza, as Sri Lanka has recently done with its hundreds of thousands of Tamils in concentration camps. So why not India? You know? Why not just do away with the poor so that we can be a proper superpower, instead of a super-poor superpower?

AMY GOODMAN: Arundhati Roy, we just have less than a minute. What gives you hope?

ARUNDHATI ROY: What gives me hope is the fact that this way of thinking is being resisted in a myriad ways in India, you know, from the poorest person in a loincloth in the forest saying, "We're going to fight," right up to me, who's at the other end, you know. And all of us are joined together by the determination that, even if we lose, we're going to fight, you know? And we're not going to just let this happen without doing everything we can to stop it. And that gives me a tremendous amount of hope.

AMY GOODMAN: Arundhati Roy, we thank you very much for being with us from, well, not far from your home, in New Delhi, India, in this international global exclusive broadcast on the publication of your book, Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers, published by Haymarket Books.