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'Palestinian Gandhi' Convicted for Protesting; U.S. Silent
Last week, an Israeli military court convicted Abdallah Abu Rahmah, whom progressive Zionists have called a "Palestinian Gandhi," of "incitement" and "organizing and participating in illegal demonstrations" for organizing protests against the confiscation of Palestinian land by the "Apartheid Wall" in the village of Bilin in the West Bank, following an eight month trial, during which he was kept in prison.
The European Union issued a protest. But as far as I am aware, no U.S. official has said anything and no U.S. newspaper columnist has denounced this act of repression; indeed, the U.S. press hasn't even reported the news. To find out what happened, someone could search the wires where they'll find this AFP story, or go to the British or Israeli press.
AFP reported:
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton expressed deep concern "that the possible imprisonment of Mr Abu Rahma is intended to prevent him and other Palestinians from exercising their legitimate right to protest against the existence of the separation barriers in a non-violent manner," her office said.
"The EU considers the route of the barrier where it is built on Palestinian land to be illegal," it quoted her as saying in a statement.
The failure of the New York Times to report the news is particularly striking, because the New York Times reported last August on the protests in Bilin, quoting Abu Rahmah in particular; and because this July New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, writing from Bilin with the provocative headline "Waiting for Gandhi," weighed in on the subject of Palestinian nonviolent protest.
Last August, Ethan Bronner reported in the Times:
Abdullah Abu Rahma, a village teacher and one of the organizers of the weekly protests, said he was amazed at the military's assertions [of protester violence, including of "rioters" throwing "Molotov cocktails"] as well as at its continuing arrests and imprisonment of village leaders.
"They want to destroy our movement because it is nonviolent," he said. He added that some villagers might have tried, out of frustration, to cut through the fence since the court had ordered it moved and nothing had happened. But that is not the essence of the popular movement that he has helped lead.
Kristof wrote patronizingly in his column last month that "some Palestinians are dabbling in a strategy of nonviolent resistance," but is seems that Kristof was "dabbling" in his fleeting expression of concern about the fate of the Palestinians.
Under the "law" of the Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank since 1967, "incitement" is defined as "the attempt, verbally or otherwise, to influence public opinion in the Area in a way that may disturb the public peace or public order", and carries a maximum 10 year sentence. Abu Rahmah's sentencing will take place next month, and the prosecution is reportedly expected to ask for a sentence of at least two years.
In December 2008 Abdallah received the Carl Von Ossietzky Medal for Outstanding Service in the Realization of Basic Human Rights from the International League for Human Rights in Berlin, as Amnesty International noted following his arrest.
This February, former President Jimmy Carter wrote on behalf of the Elders, the group of global leaders brought together by Nelson Mandela to promote peace:
We are especially concerned to hear that Abdallah Abu Rahma, the coordinator of the Popular Committee against the Wall and Settlements in Bil'in, was detained in a night raid on 10 December last year and faces charges of incitement, stone throwing and organizing and participating in illegal marches. [...] Abu Rahma is a middle-aged school teacher who eschews violence including stone throwing.
Catherine Ashton, Europe's Hillary Clinton, protested the conviction. Why hasn't Hillary done so?
Perhaps the failure of the U.S. media to simply report the news might have something to do with it?
You can ask Secretary of State Clinton to speak out, as Europe's Catherine Ashton has, by calling the State Department's comment line at 202-647-6575 and pressing 1.
Or you can use the State Department's web form, choosing "E-mail a Question/Comment," and topic "U.S. Foreign Policy/Middle East." You could use a subject like "Conviction by Israeli court of Abdallah Abu Rahmah for nonviolent protest," and a question like "I urge Secretary Clinton and other State Department officials to speak out against the conviction by Israeli military court of Abdallah Abu Rahmah for organizing nonviolent protests against the Israeli separation barrier in the West Bank, which has confiscated Palestinian land."
You can write a letter for publication to the New York Times here; you can contact the Times' news editors here; you can write to the Times' Public Editor here.
UPDATE: (8/29): CNN, The Guardian, and The Independent reported the news; Amnesty International and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu protested the conviction.
- Posted in
28 Comments so far
Show AllWatch one Ashraf Abu-Rahma (a relative of Abdallah Abu Rahmah?) being shot a rubber bullet in the leg, at close range, by IDF thugs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly2I5AzfnrY
I'm sure Robert Naiman knows full well that stories that don't fit the dominant paradigm don't get published in America unless it can't be helped. One example is the flotilla attack and even then only with the approved spin.
"Catherine Ashton, Europe's Hillary Clinton, protested the conviction. Why hasn't Hillary done so?"
Meh. Hillary Clinton is still living down her kissy-boo with Mrs. Arafat. And she'll be living it down as long as she desires access to power, in other words: until the grave or Alzheimer's gets her. She's now a reliable Zionist; that's was a necessary condition for her getting the SoS gig; she ain't changing.
Just ask the family of Furkan Dogan, who got a vapid, meaningless promise from her.
Thank you for posting this, and for including contact information for those of us who want lodge at least a pro forma protest.
Curious...there was no protest from China, India, Russia, Japan either, but that wasn't mentioned. Why would that be?
Because neither China, India, Russia, nor Japan is Israel's bitch.
q
None of those countries supplies Israel with billions of dollars a year in aid. None of those countries support the Zionist state and have sense enough to mind their own business. America is the enabler of the apartheid state and it should be reported on and commented on in our news. What does China, India, etc. have to do with throwing people in prison for non violent protest? Or maybe you are just a stupid Zionist hack pushing your propaganda and excuses for supporting an apartheid state.
India,China,and Russia have not embraced the Zionist postion that Hamas or Hizbullah are terrorist organization. Hamas leaders visit Russia, China( Not sure of India) as official. These countries's support of Palestine is well known. May be they dont need to dilute thier support by focussing on "non violence" startegy. But it wont hurt if they came out loudly against Israeli oppression and American silence.
India used to be one of the strongest supporters of the Palestinian people - at least in moral terms. Yasser Arafat was received like any other head of state when Indira Gandhi was India's Prime Minister. Unfortunately, a different type of elite have moved in to control India's policies in the last few years, although they have not taken over completely. So India is trying to do some silly balancing act lately, that is only undermining its credibility.
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From "A breach of trust", Frontline (a popular magazine in India):
www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2125/stories/20041217000405900.htm
"INDIA has enjoyed a long-standing friendship with the Palestinian people. Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru had in their writings and speeches talked about the injustice meted out to Palestinians. Gandhi was against the partitioning of Palestine and said that Palestinians should not pay for the crimes of Europeans. Until the early 1990s, New Delhi's stance towards the Palestinian cause was a principled one. India spoke loudly at various international fora on behalf of Palestinians.
When the Palestine Liberation Organisation and its leader Yasser Arafat were vilified as being "terrorist", India allowed the PLO to open an office in its capital. In the early 1970s, delegations representing the PLO and Al Fatah, its main constituent, started making regular visits to India and soon built strong links with the Congress and the Left parties. A veteran Palestinian diplomat, who was part of the first Al Fatah delegation to India, recalled that all the political parties barring the Jan Sangh welcomed it. The Jan Sangh, the earlier avatar of the the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), organised a demonstration outside the hotel in which the delegates stayed.
Arafat enjoyed a close political and personal rapport with Indira Gandhi, whom he affectionately called his "sister", and Rajiv Gandhi, who succeeded his mother as Prime Minister. Because of his frequent visits to India, Arafat's face became instantly recognisable to the man on the street in India. The Palestinian leader was present at the funeral of both Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. He was virtually inconsolable when the last rites for Indira Gandhi were being performed.
India was the first non-Arab country to recognise Palestinian statehood. It would have been a fitting gesture had Prime Minister Manmohan Singh gone to the Egyptian capital of Cairo for the funeral ceremony of the Palestinian leader. It would have also been a timely message of solidarity to the beleaguered Palestinian and Arab people. The South African and Indonesian Presidents attended the funeral. India was represented by External Affairs Minister K. Natwar Singh and Railway Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav." [End quote]
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So in your world view, if all these countries did not report this then it is OK?
You just discovered that the Israel Lobby is headquartered in the US media? Our politicians have known that for years. Its publicity/propaganda keeps our Congress dancing to the Lobby's music.
How do you say 'Sieg Heil' in Hebrew?
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My aim here is not to preach but to insist upon my right, and others’, to a conversation full of respect and free of intimidation, one that presumes no monopolies on suffering, one in which all racism and anti-Semitism—whether against Semitic Jews, Semitic Christians, Semitic Druzes or Semitic Muslims—is equally impermissible. I am troubled that Dershowitz escaped former University President Lawrence H. Summers’ criticism when he endorsed Israel’s torture of Palestinian prisoners. And Wisse’s ghastly 1988 description of Palestinian refugees as “people who breed and bleed and advertise their misery” elicited no demand for retraction.
In my country, people tremble in the fear of losing their friends, jobs, advertising revenues, campaign contributions, and alumni donations if they question Zionism or Israeli policy—despite the billions of our tax dollars paid annually for Israel’s defense and sustenance.
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Ruth Wisse, who was so troubled by breeding of Palestinians and their miserable existence—one suspects she would like nothing better than to put them out of their misery—was awarded the National Humanities Medal a few months after above article was printed in a ceremony at the White House.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=519498
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2007/11/white-house-awards-pipes-and-wisse-humanities-medals/
Until Israel's stranglehold on our government and our news media is broken, there will be no more democracy in America. It is one thing to make it impossible to elect a president who is anything other than servile to Israel and Zionism. It is another to use our own media to spoon-feed Israeli propaganda, while enforcing a news black-out.
So you think that Israel controls both our government and our news? So much so that democracy no longer exists here, huh? Wow, that's SOME stranglehold!
And now it's impossible to elect a president who isn't under Israel's control? And our vast media companies now exist solely to disseminate Israeli propaganda?
Boy o boy. Aren't we lucky that someone like you is around to tell us all what time it is! Everyone else may be under the spell of those Zionist mind-control specialists, but since YOU really know what's going on we still have a chance. Just keep posting in the comment section of random news blogs... we'll break free from their fascist stranglehold yet brother!
I have been using the net for news, since 1995 and before that I really never realized how bad the American Corporate Media was in its canards of spin, manufacturing consent,brainwashing, propaganda, cheerleading the MIC's wars; lying and half truths, filtering out stories; not reporting important news and reporting childish, unimportant news ect. No wonder America is so full of the sheeple like the the ones at Beck and Palin's rally!
"incitement" is defined as "the attempt, verbally or otherwise, to influence public opinion in the Area in a way that may disturb the public peace or public order--
Jewish columnist and TV anchors are gulity of inciting hatred against muslims over not -Ground Zero not-mosque and in the past over Virginia -Tech shooting by this definition and also over Iraq and Iran war , only on a global scale, both in magnitide of verbal influence and the ensuing destruction .
Hey, once Israel attacks Iran for The United States or sets up another "False Flag Attack" for The United States so that The United States can amplify the attack, The Mission of taking over control of the World's Oil and "A New World Order" can be established.....
The New York Times' Leadership has been attending meetings of The Council on Foreign Relations and Bilderberg Club for years. "They" know what the plan is!
Don't forget 10 American Warships, including an aircraft carrier were moved through the Suez Canal June 6, 2010 and then positioned in The Persian Gulf after two weeks of practice......If Dr. Rauni Kilde is right, September is the month to watch.....
Israel is a "National Security State" and so is The United States.....protests by the people are unacceptable!
“Global Anti-Semitism: A Crisis of Modernity".
The conference, which was organized in cooperation with the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA), opened with a speech from an official from the Israeli embassy and featured seminars such as "The Central Role of Palestinian Antisemitism in Creating the Palestinian Identity", "The Jihad Flotilla to Gaza: Provocative – Antisemitic – Not Humanitarian”, and "Lawfare, Human Rights Organizations and the Demonization of Israel".
Amongst the "experts" leading these seminars were retired Israeli army officer Jonathan Fighel, Anne Herzberg of NGO Monitor (whose mission is to suppress criticism of Israel by undermining the credibility of human rights organizations), and an Israeli settler named Itamar Marcus."
www.mondoweiss.net 08/30/10
Is there any hope ? Can a Ghandhi beat a nefarious scheame that is out in the open being organized in US ( at Yale )?
2 years ago the great grandson of Ghandhi was called antisemite in a most viruent personal diatribe by US apologist for raisng voices against Israeli activities in Gaza.
No. He was called an anti-semite for writing an extremely offensive and naive article where he accuses Jewish identity as a whole of being centered around "the Holocaust experience" and fixated on a culture of violence that he thinks will destroy the world.
"We have created a culture of violence (Israel and the Jews are the biggest players) and that Culture of Violence is eventually going to destroy humanity."
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/arun_gandhi/2008/01/jewish_identity_in_the_past.html
The article had nothing to do with specific Israeli policies and didn't even mention Gaza. It focused instead on making obnoxious generalizations about Jewish culture, predicting a bleak future for Jewish identity because of Jews' seeming inability to move beyond past injustices.
Oh, and apparently Israel and the Jews are the most violent people on earth and we are going to destroy humanity. Unfortunately I don't think anyone bothered to tell India or Pakistan about that though... nothing in the history of Israel or all of Judaism can come close to touching the sort of violence exhibited during Partition.
The problem of Israel is vastly more complicated than an either "for" or "against" position on the various issues confronting both the Jewish people both inside and outside Israel, the Palestinians, and the international community. The first problem is that we can't let it happen again (despite Ghandhi saying that a European problem should not be foisted on the Arabs), we simply can't - if the Jewish people were again decimated the world would hang its head in shame for centuries! But Ghandhi also had a point: why do the Palestinians have to suffer for what was indeed a European crime against the Jews! How do you achieve justice for the Palestinians, and preserve Jewish security in the shared space of Israel/Palestine? This is a problem worthy of saint Augustin and his how many angels can dance on the head of a pin riddle!! Probably an imposed settlement is the only thing which will work, and guaranteed militarily. Only the USA can do this. Does it have the bottle? If not, we probably really are in for another major war (with Iran) since Israel will not allow this threat to go on maturing. Such a war would of course neither guarantee Israel's security or help human society forward. On the contrary, it would be another devastating setback for everybody. If this isn't clear: what is!
Yawn,
In your op-ed above, would it be OK to decimate the invading people in Palestine in they were not Jewish?
Complicated? Yes. But your comment is naive. We do not owe the Israeli Jews anything. What happened to them happened before most of us were born. They are now behaving just like the fascist nazi's of Germany. I am tired of hearing about their "victimhood". THEY are not now, in anyway victims. By continuing on with this narrative we will continue to watch these awful people stealing the ancestral lands of Palestinians, the rightful owners of this land...(and when I say Palestinian, I refer also to the many Jews and Christians that have also inhabited this land for thousands of years). The European Jews are not the ancient Hebrews, btw. This is a narrative that many of their scholars have instituted over the years and have indoctrinated on the European Israeli Jews. Read Shlomo Sand's book (He is an Israeli Jew who teaches in Tel Aviv) "Thin invention of the Jewish People". It is very academic read. Very good.
We cannot forget the millions of Christian Russians that were slaughtered by Jewish Leadership during the era of Bolshevism. This is not something Jews want the history teachers to mention. It was a holocaust in its own right.
Also, we need to focus on the current crimes being committed. By the U.S.A. / Great Britain / Israel.
You want to see what you and I are guilty of? Go look at the pictures of Iraq.
The Euro-Israli Jews are committing the most heinous of crimes, and they have attacked our people of the U.S. Philip Giraldi had an article recently about their on-going spying in the U.S. while the Justice Department turns it's head.
Jane Harmon is one such spy, while she works as a "representative" for the people. Hmmmm?
"Yes. But your comment is naive."
He is actually an apologist for Israel, but he tries too hard to paint himself as some wise neutral philosopher.
Do not let shills like him take you for a ride.
James Joyce would vomit if he knew his name was being used by this weasel.
Impressive. You managed to hit upon many of the major popular anti-Semitic memes floating around these days within just a few short paragraphs.
The Jews are the new Nazis. Ashkenazi Jews have no real connection to Palestine. (Incidentally, the premise of the book you mentioned was flattened by genetic tests that prove a legitimate historical link.) Oh, and my favorite... the Jewish Communists killed millions of Christians, and the Jews are trying to keep it under wraps because it supposedly means something about something I guess. (Nothing like a good, old-fashioned blood libel to spice up an anti-Zionism screed, right?)
And finally, the Palestinians are the rightful owners of Israel, of course. We should support Palestinian leaders like Arafat who fought to regain their ancestral lands... Regardless of whether they're even from Palestine or are really Egyptian Arabs or whatever themselves.
Incidentally, I'm kind of curious as to where you live. I certainly hope it isn't anywhere that is rightfully owned by someone else.
Who said the Palestinians were suffering because of the Holocaust?
The I/P conflict is its own thing, unrelated to the Holocaust, both pre-dating and outlasting it by decades in either direction. The Arab states have been oppressing Palestinians for decades... it certainly isn't because of Hitler. The Great Arab Uprising in 1936 had nothing at all to do with Fascism.
Anti-semitism isn't merely a European problem. Gandhi was proven very wrong on this point by the Arab states treatment of their indigenous Jewish populations. Anti-Semitism is a global issue requiring a global solution.
The Arab world is incredibly vast with huge deposits of mineral wealth and almost limitless resources. Yet allowing the Jews to have a tiny sliver of resource-barren desert is an unsolvable crime? When the Arab world kicked out all its Jews and stole all their land and posessions Israel managed to allow them all to emigrate, solving the problem. Yet the Palestinian refugees are still in fetid camps 60 years later.
It has nothing to do with the Holocaust.
It is really sad when people write of Hillary Clinton as if she is supporter of democracy and freedom for the people. Hillary Clinton is an Israel-firster. She will stand by all illegal activities of this nation, then come back to U.S. and pretend like she is a lover of freedom. The woman's best friend is Lynne Rothschild. Of course Lynne likes being called "Lady Lynne de Rothschild" as if we serfs should bow down to her and her family which has been largely behind and directing much of the bloodshed, via their financial empire, in the middle eastern nations that do not support western ways (of course I am not talking about the fascist dictatorships of Saudi's, Dabai, Egypt, and jordan).
Hillary is not a "friend" of the people. Very disturbing that people are not doing their homework on "our" leaders. If they did, we may have a shot at re-gaining much of the freedom and liberties that she and her republican predecessors have scratched.