BY GHASSAN RUBEIZ, Ph.D.
Columnist, Palm Beach Gardens, FL

Israel’s tolerance for “Palestine” is diminishing.  Some of Israel’s extra-conservative leaders think of war leading to the expulsion of Palestinians into neighboring Jordan as a solution.

Overt and direct ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is not likely to happen, but it may be achieved indirectly as a byproduct of a future regional war.

Eleven million people live in Israel and its occupied, annexed or controlled territories.  The population under Israeli authority is now half Arab and half Jewish. One of every five Israeli citizens is Palestinian. Half a million Israeli settlers live in the occupied West Bank and in East Jerusalem.  Gaza’s 1.6 million people live under the rule of Hamas, an Islamic resistance. But Gaza’s air space is closed and its borders are under siege.

Naturally, this mix of sovereignty and identities has always been tense and volatile. Demography is rapidly changing among the Palestinians and the Ultra Orthodox and Mizrahi Israeli Jews. Ideology is shifting to the right.  The Arab Spring is introducing reform as well as uncertainty. Israel is alarmed by the rise of political Islam emerging from successive regime change in the Arab world. The simultaneous ascendancy of political Islam and radical conservative Jewish politics is not a coincidence: one side reinforces the other.
Extreme elements in the Israeli cabinet wish to see Palestinians of the West Bank transferred to neighboring Jordan. Starting with the displaced refugees after the 1948 war, about three million Palestinians – constituting half the population -  now live in Jordan. Currently, a special committee in the Knesset discusses a new bill which identifies Jordan as the Nation State of the Palestinian People.

Discussions of the so called “Jordanian Option” for a future Palestinian state are already active in the US, Europe and Israel.  The outrageous claim that Palestine is historically absent or invented emanates from the fact that the victor often dictates history. The idea of “justified” ethnic cleansing of Palestinians within the occupied territories and Israel sounds immoral to most Israelis. But for those who have no interest in a two-state solution – or in a bi-national state scenario with equality for Arab and Jews- reducing Palestinian presence in Eretz (Greater) Israel may look feasible in a pretext, such as a regional war.

Question: what pretext could be created to rationalize the driving of Palestinians out of the West Bank and into Jordan? To transfer Palestinians to Jordan requires a battle involving Palestinians. Although Palestinians are militarily exhausted, it would not take too much to provoke Hamas and Hezbollah to return to military confrontation.
For Israel, Iran appears to be a convenient setting to start a new wave of military intervention in the region. For warmongers, Iran today looks like Iraq nine years ago. The Persian state also serves as a conduit to a battle with armed Palestinians and their Lebanese allies on Israel’s border. Iran’s inflammatory rhetoric on the Holocaust, its regional alliances and nuclear adventures, provide a “perfect” enemy for those seeking an international crisis to induce the intended Palestinian population transfer. A swift Israeli air attack on Iran may not necessarily generate the conditions of ethnic transfer.  However, if the attack were to turn into a protracted war, Hamas and Hezbollah would likely be involved. If Israel were to win this protracted war, it would most likely arrange to push Palestinians across the Jordan River. But Israel’s victory in this scenario is not certain. Neither in 2006, nor in 2009, did Israel succeed in wiping out Hezbollah in Lebanon or Hamas in Gaza. The outcome of such wars is often inconclusive: No side wins; hatred rise and opinions shift to the extreme.

President Obama is not a fool to risk the creation of a regional war with Iran as a starting point.  Unlike his opponents, President Obama, stays firm on his Iran policy of sanction-based diplomacy. Today, compared to Newt Gingrich – who lately referred to Palestinians as an “invention”- and other GOP presidential hopefuls, Obama is starting again to look moderate on the Palestine question. Furthermore, the leaders of the American Jewish community are not yet sold on the idea of a war with Iran, and on a Jordanian option for peace. Finally, most Israelis know well that they cannot risk losing a single war. Should Obama win a second term, he will hopefully find a solution in dealing with an economically exhausted Iran and deal with the Arab-Israeli conflict with a firm hand. An Iranian Spring is in the background. War delays it.

Over the last four decades, the strongest means of Palestinian resistance has been their territoriality, their adherence to their land. They have learned from 1948 and 1967 wars that once they leave their land, homeland becomes a mirage. To the extent that the Palestinians avoid military confrontation with Israel, it will be difficult for Israel to find a pretext to deport masses of people. Moral restraint, anticipation of rage of 1.5 million Muslims, and world opinion will not allow unprovoked ethnic cleansing. Force should not be used to draw borders, displace people and forge national identity.

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By PHOEBE GREENWOOD
The Guardian

If Joseph and Mary were making their way to Bethlehem today, the Christmas story would be a little different, says Father Ibrahim Shomali, a parish priest in the town. The couple would struggle to get into the city, let alone find a hotel room.
“If Jesus were to come this year, Bethlehem would be closed,” says the priest of Bethlehem’s Beit Jala parish. “He would either have to be born at a checkpoint or at the separation wall. Mary and Joseph would have needed Israeli permission – or to have been tourists.
“This really is the big problem for Palestinians in Bethlehem: what will happen when they close us off completely?”
Bethlehem is the heart of Christian Palestine and it swells with pride every Christmas. Manger Square is transformed into a grotto of lights and stalls crowned by a towering Christmas tree. Strings of illuminated angels, stars and bells festoon the streets. But just a few minutes’ drive to the north, the festive atmosphere stops abruptly.
A strip of Israeli settlements built on 18 sq km of what was once northern Bethlehem threatens to cut the city off from its historic twin, Jerusalem. To the Israeli authorities, these have been neighbourhoods of Jerusalem since 1967. One of the settlements, Har Homa, is built on land where angels are said to have announced the birth of Christ to local shepherds. A narrow corridor of land between Har Homa and another settlement, Gilo, still connects Bethlehem to Jerusalem but the construction of Givat Hamatos, a new settlement announced in October, will fill this in a matter of years.
The European Union and United Nations routinely denounce Israel’s unilateral settlement expansion but in October, EU high commissioner Baroness Catherine Ashton warned the construction of Givat Hamatos was “of particular concern as [it] would cut the geographic contiguity between Jerusalem and Bethlehem”.
European concern is not slowing Israel’s progress. Last week, 500 new units were approved for Har Homa and a further 348 in Betar Illit, on Bethlehem’s western boundary. Earlier this month, an additional 267 units were sanctioned for settlements running up to the edge of the city’s southern suburbs, where the Ministry of Defence also gave settlers permission to start a farm on Palestinian land. This is in addition to the 6,782 new apartments already slated for Har Homa, Gilo and Givat Hamatos.
In the short term, the closure won’t make a big difference to everyday life in Bethlehem: the separation wall already prevents Palestinians from entering Jerusalem from the town without an Israeli permit.
But this ring of settlements will permanently change the geography of the biblical landscape: if a peace agreement razes the separation wall, the two cities will remain divided.
Israeli activist Hargit Ofram, director of Peace Now, reads a clear political intention in Israel’s plans: “These efforts are being made to prevent a possible two-state solution because in order for that to work, you would need a viable Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem.
“If that capital is going to be surrounded by settlements, Israel would have to remove them. The more Israel is building, the higher the price of a Palestinian state is becoming.”
A coalition of 20 rights organisations including Oxfam and Amnesty International warned this month that the number of Palestinian homes demolished in the West Bank and East Jerusalem by Israeli authorities had doubled in the past year.

Under the terms of the Oslo Accords, 13% of Bethlehem now falls within Areas A and B controlled by the Palestinian Authority. This area houses 87.6% of the Palestinian population. The rest falls in Area C, where Israel controls who builds what.
The al-Makour valley is Bethlehem’s last green space and one of few areas left for urban expansion. It is in Area C and overlooked by Gilo checkpoint at one end and Har Homa settlement on the other. Israel’s separation wall is slated to run through the middle of the valley. No Palestinian has been given a permit to build here since 1967.
Despite Israel’s building restrictions, Miranda Nasry Qasasfeh spent every weekend of the past year renovating a stone storehouse owned by her husband’s family for 150 years. She built a new iron roof and had planted almond, plum and eskadinia trees, which were about to bear their first fruit. Hers was one of four Palestinian structures in al-Makour demolished on 12 December. Most of the trees were uprooted.
Qasasfeh’s 75-year-old father rushed to the site of the demolition, where he found his daughter in deep distress. Hours later, he suffered a stroke and is now paralysed down his left side. Given the events of the past week, Qasasfeh has postponed putting up Christmas decorations.
“The Israeli commander told me that I have nothing here, that it is not my land. But it is and we need to live and expand. What other choice do we have? Should I go an build on someone else’s land?” she asks.
But despite the destruction of her property, Miranda Qasasfeh still has hope that the political situation will change. She has threatened to disown her eldest son if he carries out his threat of leaving Bethlehem to find work elsewhere.
“I keep telling my children, planting it in their minds, there is nowhere else in the world like this. We cannot leave.” She adds: “And we have Christmas. For a few days at least we can forget, or try to forget, what is happening here.”
Father Shomali’s outlook is more glum: “When I look down my church register, many of the historic family names from the area have already gone. In 20 years, I think we will have no more Christians in Bethlehem.”
Dr Jad Isaac, an expert in Bethlehem’s demographics and a consultant to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, says aside from the physical restrictions on development, Bethlehem’s economy is being strangled by the loss of land and restrictions on Palestinian movement.
With work in Jerusalem now impossible to all but the 6,000 granted permits to work inside Israel, unemployment in Bethlehem sits at 23%, poverty levels simmer at 18%. Many have little option but to work illegally for £25 a day building the nearby settlements. Dr Isaac’s forecast is bleak.
“The little town of Bethlehem? It will soon be the little ghetto surrounded in all directions by Israeli settlements,” he predicts. “We’ve already passed the stage where Bethlehem can be saved. Frankly, that’s why I don’t celebrate Christmas any more.”

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One might regard the pledges made to Israel and its friends in the United States by aspiring presidential candidates as pro forma and vaguely amusing, but that would be a mistake. Policy commitments, even if they are lightly entered into, are a serious matter with real-world consequences. At the moment, the obligation to Israel goes far beyond the willingness to give Tel Aviv billions of dollars in aid and unlimited political cover each year. Every Republican candidate but one has affirmed that Jerusalem is the undivided capital of a “Jewish state,” the precise formula demanded by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and each has affirmed his or her eagerness to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which would end forever any chance of actual peace talks with the Palestinians and would also invite a violent reaction against Americans in many parts of the Muslim world. Michele Bachmann has even found a private “donor” willing to pay for the move. Newt Gingrich, who would shift the embassy to Jerusalem within his first two hours as president and who has also promised to name John Bolton as his secretary of state, has meanwhile discovered that the Palestinian people do not actually exist, which certainly solves the problem of the two-state solution or any solution at all. They were invented by hostile Arabs and are out to destroy Israel.

Mitt Romney and Gingrich might well take the prize for lack of any connection with reality with their demand that U.S. Ambassador Howard Gutman, who is Jewish, be fired for suggesting that some anti-Semitism might be the result of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians. Romney has also criticized President Barack Obama for “insulting” Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, surely one of the most interesting inversions of truth and fiction ever to occur. Not to be outdone, Rick Perry has promised to increase assistance to Israel, calling it “strategic defensive aid” that benefits the United States.

While this kind of ignorant crackpottery is unfortunately what one expects, there might be worse to come. As part of the pro-Israel package, the same presidential hopefuls have made clear their willingness to go to war with Iran on behalf of Israel even if Israel is the initiator of the conflict, while the media and the  Republican Party have together conspired to keep any contrary opinions on that issue marginalized and nearly invisible.

As Washington has demonstrated itself unwilling to negotiate with Iran over outstanding issues and has refused every attempt by the Iranians to compromise, there can be only one outcome to the game that is being played, and that is war. And the characteristically chickenhawk Republicans are ready to rock and roll based on the pseudo-information about the perfidious Persians. Gingrich again leads the charge, calling for a stepped-up program of sabotage and assassination inside Iran coupled with a covert operation to shut down the country’s main oil refinery, which will supposedly lead to “regime change.” Newt also suggested that the United States and Israel join together in “joint operations” to attack the Iranians. Perry and Rick Santorum also agree that it is time to order military strikes, while Mitt Romney is keen on indicting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for “the crime of incitement to genocide.”

The overly ambitious and ethically challenged wannabes who pass as statesmen in today’s United States fail to appreciate that the feckless promises made in their lust for high office could produce a catastrophic result. War is serious stuff, as the past 10 years have surely taught us, and Iran, which has had seven years to prepare for an attack, is a much larger and tougher nut than Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Numerous commentators have observed how fuel prices would soar because of threats to close the Straits of Hormuz. Many in the Pentagon, including current Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and former Secretary Robert Gates, oppose such a conflict in recognition of the fact that Tehran would have the ability to hit U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. As the subsequent involvement of Hezbollah from Lebanon is a near certainty, the strike against Iran would quickly escalate into a regional war and would spin out of control.

No matter how one feels about Iran’s government and its ambitions, everyone should be taking notice of what is happening to fuel the drive to war. The drumbeat is incessant, fed by weekly warnings from leading Israeli politicians and truculent editorials and poorly informed op-eds in leading American newspapers. On Dec. 9 and 11 alone, the Washington Post ran three op-eds and a lead editorial all calling for more pressure on Iran. The op-ed by Marc Thiessen of the American Enterprise Institute accused Tehran of building a nuclear weapon that could be ready by January 2013. Thiessen also charged Iran with complicity in al-Qaeda attacks, which most observers would find ridiculous.

The American people are being told over and over again that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon, that Tehran is threatening U.S. soldiers, and that Ahmadinejad has pledged to wipe Israel off the map.Though  all those assertions can be challenged and even debunked, the case is being made that Tehran’s perceived intransigence is irreversible, and this is making war inevitable. A majority of Americans already believe that Iran has a nuclear weapon and that it poses a threat to the United States that should be dealt with, using military force if necessary.

Pushing back against the tide of conformity on the Iranian menace is Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. Paul’s crimes against the status quo consist of saying that he would eliminate all foreign aid, of which Israel is the principal beneficiary, and that he would not go to war with Iran for Israel because Israel, with its large nuclear arsenal and sophisticated military, is quite capable of making its own decisions relating to its security. Paul is also willing to talk with the Iranians instead of constantly threatening them. Those positions, which appear to be reasonable enough, arouse an almost palpable anger among some pundits. Paul was the only leading Republican excluded from last week’s Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) presidential debate, where many of the positions in support of Israel made by leading Republicans and related above were actually spelled out. RJC Executive Director Matthew Brooks explained that Paul was “far outside of the mainstream of the Republican Party and this organization.”

Over at Red State, “mikeymike 143″ wrapped the message of hate in vitriol, declaring that Paul was an “anti-Semite loser” and that his “followers are the dirtbags of society. Conspiracy loons, antiwar leftists, and anti-Semites. That is why the Republican Jewish Coalition banned him and his Paulbots from the presidential debate they moderated.” Eric Golub of the Washington Times ramped it up a notch more, writing that “Ron Paul supporters are angry at his exclusion … despite Dr. Paul himself not publicly even caring. Supporters of the Klan do not get angry when they are excluded from NAACP banquets. Go on Ron Paul message boards, read the anti-Semitism, and then understand why nobody wants these miscreants anywhere near respectable events.”

Well, if that is the case, count me as a miscreant. Apparently objecting to the billions of dollars in foreign aid lavished on Israel and refusing to go to war on her behalf is enough to cast one out into the wilderness, but there is even more. Josh Block, a former spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), sent out a message on a neoconservative journalist listserv called “The Freedom Community” describing as anti-Semitic anyone who is anti-Israel or who does not agree that “Iran with a nuke is a problem.” Criticizing Israel or questioning the Iran nuclear narrative therefore makes one an anti-Semite, a conclusion that certainly simplifies thinking about the Middle East. It also makes the broader arguments being made by the friends of Israel come full circle. Any questioning of the United States’ relationship with Israel is anti-Semitism. Any change in how Washington hands out tax money that would in any way reduce aid to Israel is anti-Semitism. Any criticism of Israel’s policies with its neighbors is anti-Semitism. Any questioning of Israel’s “right” to start a regional war with Iran that will inevitably drag the United States in is also anti-Semitism. I’m sure that the picture is clear. Claims of anti-Semitism fit every situation where Israel is even peripherally involved. The slightest suggestion of anti-Semitism is the ultimate weapon, intended to end every debate and to ease the way into yet another Middle Eastern war that the United States does not need to fight, cannot afford, and from which it will likely reap the whirlwind.

Article courtesy Philip Giraldi and Antiwar.com

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By FRANK SCOTT
Columnist
Pt. Richmond, CA

What began in Tunisia and was dubbed an Arab Spring has spread to the rest of the world, seemingly for different reasons in different places but slowly becoming one vast movement toward democracy and the political economic transformation necessary for humanity’s survival. But while this hopeful sign of people on the move increases, the threats to it become more numerous and deadly. As electronic communication tools help the tendency toward unity and democracy among the 99%, they also increase the destructive power of the 1% . The imperial minority’s ability to kill more people, destroy more governments , enslave  more populations and increase damage to the environmental basis of all life while rushing to further exploit it in pursuit of profit has brought dangers of a newer and more deadly kind. The dawning consciousness among people across the globe needs to overtake and end the destructive process of private profit accumulation at the loss of all publics on the planet, wherever they may reside and whatever belief system they practice or preach.

The American phase of this movement began with the Wall Street occupation in New York and has spread to many American cities since, with success in highlighting a radical democratic governance technique and message of unity that surpasses its flaws and overcomes attacks by agents of the 1% . This is all happening at a time when American belief in supposedly democratic government has sunk to deservedly new lows. Established power is at an extremely bipolar phase in response as it simultaneously attempts to crush, subvert or incorporate the growing demands of a public frustrated into becoming what minority power fears most: a majority democratic movement for substantial and not merely cosmetic change in the system.

Minority dominators practice obsessive concern for their economic private parts and this masturbatory focus brings the system closer to moral and financial bankruptcy. As the perverse lust for private profit reduces well paid employment in the center by increasing low paid labor in peripheral parts of the shrinking empire, it attacks meager social safety nets in that center which were created to save capitalism during its last global crisis in the 1930s. Public sector work forces are savagely slashed and pensions are cut as less and less people are employed in a political economy that has further reduced humanity from commodities in a market to electronic symbols on a computer screen.

Positive changes in communications offer an opportunity for a massive democratic leap forward but private profiteers still control staggering wealth and their blind lust to amass even more billions has eclipsed – until now – the need to trans-form and not simply re-form material reality.

The American movement has corporate media parroting the political line in the same bi-polar fashion that often lauds the democratic aspect of what’s going on while questioning its purpose. Meanwhile, military slaughters continue unabated, sometimes with long distance murderers who kill innocents with electronic devises that enable them do their dirty work in rooms thousands of miles away from their victims with no more human contact than someone playing a video game while seated on a commode. The isolated assassins are an ironic contrast in a world that sees millions in contact they have never before been able to achieve. While some agents of the 1% operate in solitude totally removed from the bloody murders they commit, Bradley Manning sits in prison for acting on his conscience and informing his fellow citizens of the crimes of modern warfare. His action, representative of the high moral ground most people at least wish to occupy, contrasts with the murderous idiocy of what passes for “normal” material reality, and what the new global movement stands against .

Electronic media have finally become truly social but they are not simply the domain of those organizing demonstrations that represent the 99%. Agents of the 1% operate networks of murder and spying that can’t succeed in the long term but add to producing confusion and more violence in the short term. Attacks on the 99% in order to maintain criminal profit margins for the 1% and their agents are taking on increasingly insane character, with even some ruling class members worrying that this could destroy everything and not just their personal wealth.

As an example, continued and ever more feverish claims that Iran is threatening to annihilate Jews with nuclear weapons which do not exist, while the hundreds of nuclear weapons which do exist in Israel are unmentioned by the fanatics there and alleged American government representatives who work for them here. More deadly war is threatened, with death and destruction that would make the present crisis  even greater, and it is already slipping beyond the control of the ruling 1% and its agents. Truly, it has never been more essential that the great majority of the 99% move towards the radical economic restructuring and totally transformed political process that is the only thing that will save humanity. And political democracy means the end of private profit accumulation in control of the social and natural environment of planet earth, and the beginning of a system that acknowledges the rights of all people to share the benefits of their world.

We should thank the demonstrators in Tunisia, Egypt and of the Occupy Wall Street Movement for calling our attention to the fact that another world is not only possible but necessary. And then we should join them in bringing it about. Quickly.

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BY GHASSAN RUBEIZ, Ph.D.
Columnist, Palm Beach Gardens, FL

What would most effectively unite Palestinians is not holding elections, reconciliation of leaders or the appointment of a new prime minister.  Unity is best achieved when the people collectively build a common vision on how to tackle the occupation.

It is breaking news that the two major Palestinian leaders, Mahmoud Abbas and Khaled Mash’al, will soon meet in Cairo to achieve “reconciliation”. As President of Palestinian Authority ( PA) and chief of Fatah Party,  Abbas rules over a designated area in the (occupied) West Bank.  Mash’ al, is the chief of the political bureau of Hamas – the Islamic resistance  movement.

After five years of indulgence in divisive politics, the leaderships of Hamas and Fatah are going to a troubled Egypt to reconcile personal differences, negotiate steps for unity and plan elections. The two rival groups will meet on November 24, set a date for legislative and presidential elections this spring and negotiate on the membership of  a transitional cabinet representing all groups.

Is the meeting going to be  primarily about form or substance?  True, elections are overdue and a unity government is necessary.  But there is no sign yet that the leaders attending this meeting will be tackling the root cause that has kept the two sides from cooperating over the past two decades:  Fatah seeks to achieve peace through negotiations and Hamas continues to mobilize to liberate Palestine through force. This formula of discord in mindset continues to delay liberation and embolden the occupation.

While Fatah has been too dependent on promises from the West, Hamas has been too close to troubled regimes.

The incentives that brought the two leaders to negotiate differences seem to be purely pragmatic. Hamas fears losing the support of Syria and Iran as these two regimes face growing domestic, regional and international pressure. Similarly, The Palestinian Authority feels abandoned by the Obama Administration and humiliated by the Netanyahu government. Tel Aviv has already stopped reimbursing the PA for collected taxes contributed by Palestinians. And Washington is about to cut funding to Ramallah – the West Bank government.

The Cairo meeting has been portrayed as an effort in “reconciliation”; in reality the encounter is about insecure leaders taking shelter in a common action which has the appearance of a Palestinian Arab Spring
What is happening this week is not going to be earth shaking. In May, a reconciliation agreement was signed by Abbas and Mash’al . But soon after, something went wrong which thwarted the finalization of the agreement. The two sides could not agree on the identity of the future prime minister. Now this obstacle has been overcome.  It has been finally agreed that the prime minister of the new government will no longer be Salam Fayyad; Hamas considers the former PM unsuitable.

While Fayyad may quit his policies may not disappear. The departure of a leader who has over the past five years reinforced the culture of peaceful resistance and modern state building will leave a positive legacy.
In challenging the occupation, Palestinians are gradually moving in the direction of non-violence.  A September 2011 poll indicates that 83 % of Palestinians believe that Palestine, as a state, should apply for membership in the UN.  Moreover, 67% believe that civil disobedience or negotiation, rather armed struggle,  is bound to force Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories ( Hebrew University in Jerusalem and Palestinian Policy and Survey Research Center in Ramallah)

At times, brilliant ideas come from the least likely places. Five years ago, from an Israeli prison, the idea of non-violent resistance was dramatically flagged by a charismatic Palestinian leader. If there is one single leader who could unite Palestinians today, it would be Marwan Barghouti.  From his Israeli cell, Barghouti issued a letter in July 2006 appealing for peace. His peace plan is based on a two state solution, 1967 borders and acceptance of a state with a Jewish character. The letter, which was intended to be circulated for approval by all Palestinians through a referendum, was signed by inmates representing Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The referendum idea, which President Abbas favored at the time, was soon overshadowed by negative events. A promising initiative was nipped in the bud.

Still, narrowing the difference between Hamas and Fatah on the logistics of the elections and governance does not resolve the question of how to liberate the land from the occupier and conserve Palestinian energy in state building.

Perhaps Abbas and Mash’al may reconsider the idea of reviving Barghouti’s referendum as part of the election process, in order to unite Palestine at the grassroots.

The Arab Spring has not come to Palestine yet. When it does, reform will emerge from the street.

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Martha Hennessy, the seventh grandchild of Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day and now a Catholic radical in her own right, visited Iowa and spoke in several venues in late September and early October.

In an exclusive interview following her presentation at the Des Moines Catholic Worker (DMCW) community’s 35^th anniversary celebration on September 30 at Trinity United Methodist Church, Hennessy told this reporter that she had found God in the Muslim world.

“You know, I’m a Christian, born in a so-called Christian nation, born Christian, baptized Catholic. I had to go to the Middle East to find God. I could not feel God here. The moment I stepped into Egypt, Morocco, all of those countries, the call to prayer was just rising up to the heavens and I was immersed in God,” said Hennessy.

Hennessy is soft spoken, but her words often surprise, electrify, and inspire.

“People there, Muslims, carry reverence for God in their everyday actions in a way that we here in this intensely materialistic society don’t. So, yes, I had to go to the Middle East to find God,” said Hennessy.

In response to a question during the Q&A following her presentation about growing up as Dorothy Day’s granddaughter, Hennessy talked about how her travels and experience in the Middle East and Southwest Asia inform her activism.

“I’ve tried to get into Gaza twice, but I have yet to get there. I went to Afghanistan in March with the Voices for Creative Nonviolence peace delegation with Kathy Kelly and others. We saw the refugee camps, we saw the destitution, we saw the malnutrition, we saw the utter breakdown of the social fabric,” said Hennessy.

“If we are going to be dropping bombs, if we are going to be making perpetual war, which we seem to be – our economy is a war economy – if we are going to maintain our standard of living, all of us, with war, then going to Afghanistan [to see the results of war] is appropriate.

“Afghanistan is an astounding place, a place of incredible beauty … also a place of incredible tragedy. We met with the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, young people ages 12 to 21. We listened to them articulate what has happened to their country,” said Hennessy.

“One thing I clearly understood was the ignorance and arrogance on my part, on my country’s part, in terms of going into these places and then dictating to them what we think should happen. These boys, these teenagers, are more attuned than Obama or Gates or any of those people who are conducting these wars. … They would like to live without war. Their country has known nothing but war for 30 years.

“So we go there just to be with them and to look in their eyes and to listen. We don’t give them advice,” said Hennessy.

“Once you see what war is, you can’t remain silent about your role in it,” said Hennessy.

The Rev. Diane McClanahan, pastor of Trinity Methodist, welcomed about 75 people to the DMCW celebration and spoke of the long history of cooperation, “the troubles, the triumphs, the pain, and the joy,” that the church and DMCW had experienced together over the years. DMCW founder Frank Cordaro introduced Hennessy. Music was provided by Steve Jacobs of the Columbia, Missouri Catholic Worker community. A reception followed Hennessy’s presentation.

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AMY GOODMAN: Today the United States, Britain and Canada plan to announce a coordinated set of sanctions against Iran. ABC News and theWall Street Journal report the sanctions will target Iran’s oil and petrochemical industry. Last weekend, President Obama warned no options were being taken off the table.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: The sanctions have enormous bite and enormous scope, and we’re building off the platform that has already been established. The question is, are there additional measures that we can take? And we’re going to explore every avenue to see if we can solve this issue diplomatically. I have said repeatedly, and I will say today, we are not taking any options off the table.

AMY GOODMAN: International pressure has been mounting on Iran since the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency revealed in a report the, quote, “possible military dimensions” to its nuclear activities. The IAEA said “credible” evidence, quote, “indicates [that] Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device.” The IAEA passed a resolution Friday expressing, quote, “increasing concern” about Iran’s nuclear program following the report’s findings.

The speaker of Iran’s parliament said yesterday Iran would review its relations with the IAEA following the report. Ali Larijani indicated it may be difficult for Iran to continue to cooperate with the nuclear watchdog.

ALI LARIJANI: [translated] If the agency acts within the framework of the Charter, we accept that we are a member of it and will carry out our responsibilities. But if the agency wants to deviate from its responsibilities, then it should not expect the other’s cooperation.

AMY GOODMAN: Iranian parliamentary speaker. Meanwhile, some Iranians have expressed the desire for increased cooperation with the IAEA.

SAID BAHRAMI: [translated] Considering the fact that the government has made plenty of clarifications, it would be better for it to expand its cooperation with the IAEA and let them see for themselves, close up, so there would be no pretext for the superpowers.

AMY GOODMAN: Last week, the Pentagon confirmed it has received massive new bunker-busting bombs capable of destroying underground sites, including Iran’s nuclear facilities. The 30,000-pound bombs are six times the size of the Air Force’s current arsenal of bunker busters.

The new sanctions against Iran also follow last month’s allegations by the United States that Iranian officials were involved in a thwarted plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington. The U.S. is expected to announce today that Iran’s financial sector is of “primary money-laundering concern.” This phrase activates a section of the USA PATRIOT Act that warns European, Asian and Latin American companies they could be prevented from doing business with the United States if they continue to work with Iran.

Well, to talk more about the sanctions and the implications of the IAEAreport, we go to Washington, D.C., to speak with Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. He’s been reporting on Iran and the bomb for the past decade. His latest piece is titled “Iran and the IAEA.” It’s inThe New Yorker.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Sy. Talk about what you feel should be understood about what’s happening in Iran right now in regards to its nuclear power sector.

SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, you mention, going in—by the way, the piece was in the blog. It wasn’t in the magazine; it was on the web page.

But you mentioned Iraq. It’s just this—almost the same sort of—I don’t know if you want to call it a “psychosis,” but it’s some sort of a fantasy land being built up here, as it was with Iraq, the same sort of—no lessons learned, obviously. Look, I have been reporting about Iran, and I could tell you that since ‘04, under George Bush, and particularly the Vice President, Mr. Cheney, we were—Cheney was particularly concerned there were secret facilities for building a weapon, which are much different than the enrichment. We have enrichment in Iran. They’ve acknowledged it. They have inspectors there. There are cameras there, etc. This is all—Iran’s a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Nobody is accusing them of any cheating. In fact, the latest report that everybody’s so agog about also says that, once again, we find no evidence that Iran has diverted any uranium that it’s enriching. And it’s also enriching essentially at very low levels for peaceful purposes, so they say, 3.8 percent. And so, there is a small percentage being enriched to 20 percent for medical use, but that’s quite small, also under cameras, under inspection.

What you have is, in those days, in ‘04, ’05, ’06, ’07, even until the end of their term in office, Cheney kept on having the Joint Special Operations Force Command, JSOC—they would send teams inside Iran. They would work with various dissident groups—the Azeris, the Kurds, even Jundallah, which is a very fanatic Sunni opposition group—and they would do everything they could to try and find evidence of an undeclared underground facility. We monitored everything. We have incredible surveillance. In those days, what we did then, we can even do better now. And some of the stuff is very technical, very classified, but I can tell you, there’s not much you can do in Iran right now without us finding out something about it. They found nothing. Nothing. No evidence of any weaponization. In other words, no evidence of a facility to build the bomb. They have facilities to enrich, but not separate facilities for building a bomb. This is simply a fact. We haven’t found it, if it does exist. It’s still a fantasy. We still want to think—many people do think—it does.

The big change was, in the last few weeks, the IAEA came out with a new report. And it’s not a scientific report, it’s a political document. It takes a lot of the old allegations that had been made over the years, that were looked at by the IAEA, under the regime or the directorship of Mohamed ElBaradei, who ran the IAEA for 12 years, the Egyptian—he won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work—somebody who was very skeptical of Iran in the beginning and became less so as Iran went—was more and more open. But the new director of theIAEA, a Japanese official named Amano, an old sort of—from the center-right party in Japan—I’m sure he’s an honorable guy, he believes what he believes. But we happen to have a series of WikiLeak documents from the American embassy in Vienna, one of the embassies in Vienna, reporting on how great it was to get Amano there. This is last year. These documents were released by Julian Assange’s group and are quite important, because what the documents say is that Amano has pledged his fealty to America. I understand he was elected as a—he was a marginal candidate. We supported him very much. Six ballots. He was considered weak by everybody, but we pushed to get him in. We did get him in. He responded by thanking us and saying he shares our views. He shares our views on Iran. He’s going to be—he’s basically—it was just an expression of love. He’s going to do what we wanted.

This new report has nothing new in it. This isn’t me talking. This is—in the piece I did for the New Yorker blog, it’s different for the blog because it has more reporting in it. I talked to former inspectors. They’re different voices than you read in the New York Times and the Washington Post. There are other people that don’t get reported who are much more skeptical of this report, and you just don’t see it in the coverage. So what we’re getting is a very small slice in the newspaper mainstream press here of analysis of this report. There’s a completely different analysis, which is, very little new.

And the way it works, Amy, is, over the years, a report will show up in a London newspaper, that will turn out to be spurious, turn out to be propaganda, whether started by us or a European intelligence agency—it’s not clear. This all happened, if you remember the Ahmed Chalabi stuff, during the buildup to the war in [Iraq], all about, you know, the great arsenals that existed inside [Iraq]. The same sort of propaganda is being used now—pardon me, I have a slight cold—that shows up over the years, over the last decade, in various newspapers. The IAEA would look at it, rule it not to be—be a fabrication, or certainly not to be supportable by anything they know. All of these old reports, with the exception of, I think, in a new study that was put out by the IAEA—there were maybe 30 or 40 old items, with only three things past 2008, all of which are—they—many people inside the IAEA believe to be spurious, not very reliable fabrications. So there you are.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Sy Hersh, you’re saying that it’s not new information. It’s a new head of the IAEA that’s making the difference here. Can you talk more about U.S. infiltration of Iran, JSOC in Iran, surveillance, as well, in Iran?

SEYMOUR HERSH: Sure. I mean, the kind of stuff they did. I could tell you stuff that was secret eight, nine years ago. We would—for example, we developed—if there was an underground facility we thought was—where we saw some digging, let’s say, in a mountain area, we would line the road, when there were trucks going up and down the road, we would line the road with what seemed to be pebbles. In fact, they were sensors that could measure the weight of trucks going in and out. If a truck would go in light and come out with heavy, we could assume it was coming out with dirt, they were doing digging. We did that kind of monitoring.

We also put all sorts of passive counters, measures, of radioactivity. Uranium, even plutonium—most of the stuff that’s being done there is enriched uranium. They’re not making plutonium. But you can track. At a certain point, you have to move it. Once you take it out and start moving it around, you can track it. You can find Geiger counters, if you will, to use that old-fashioned term. You can measure radioactivity and see increases. We would go into a building, our troops, sometimes even with Americans, go into a building in Tehran, where we thought there was something fishy going on, start a disturbance down the street, take out a few bricks, slam in another section of brick with a Geiger counter, if you will, or a measuring device to see if, in that building, they were doing some enrichment we didn’t know about.

And we also have incredible competence at looking for air holes from the air, from satellites. If you’re building an underground facility, you have to vent it. You have to get air into it. You have to find a way to remove bad air and put in fresh air. And so, we have guys that are experts, tremendous people in the community. Some of them retired and set up a private company to do this. They would monitor all of the aerial surveillance to look for air holes, so we could find a pattern, try to find a pattern, of an underground facility. Nada.We came up with nothing.

And the most important thing is, we also—and the IA—even this new report also says—let me emphasize this: if you’re not diverting uranium, if you’re not taking uranium out of the count and smuggling it someplace so that you can build a bomb—and that, the IAEA is absolutely categorical on—everything that they are enriching, whatever percentage they enrich to, is under camera inspection, and under inspection of inspections. It’s all open, under the treaty, the safeguard treaty. Nobody is accusing Iran of violating the treaty. They’re just accusing them of cheating on the side, or some evidence they are. And there’s been no evidence of a diversion. So if you’re going to make a bomb, you’re going to have to bring it in from someplace else. And given the kind of surveillance we have, that’s going to be hard to do, to import it from a third country, bring in uranium and enrich it, or enriched uranium. It’s just a long shot.

And what you have is—as I said, it’s some sort of a hysteria that we had over Iraq that’s coming up again in Iran. And this isn’t a plea for Iran. There’s a lot of things that the Iranians do that is objectionable, the way they treat dissent, etc., etc. So I’m just speaking within the context of the hullabaloo that’s up now. And as far as sanctions are concerned, you know, excuse me, we’ve been sanctioning Cuba for 60 years, and Castro is—you know, he may be ill, but he’s still there. Sanctions are not going to work. This is a country that produces oil and gas—less and less, but still plenty of it. And they have customers in the Far East, the Iranians. They have customers for their energy. We’re the losers in this.

AMY GOODMAN: How would you compare the Obama administration to the Bush administration when it comes to Iran?

SEYMOUR HERSH: I can’t find a comparison. Same—a little less bellicose, but the same thing. I do think—I have every reason to believe that, unlike Mr. Bush, President Obama really is worried about an attack. He doesn’t want to see the Israelis bomb Iran. That’s the kind of talk we’ve been getting in the press lately.

And there’s new—as you mentioned, the 30,000-pound bombs built by Boeing, I think. The problem is that most of Iran’s facilities, the ones that we know about, the declared facilities under camera inspection, a place called Natanz, is about 80, 75 to 80 feet underground. And you’d have to do a hell of a lot of bombing to do much damage to it. You could certainly do damage to it, but the cost internationally would be stupendous. The argument for going and bombing is so vague and so nil. There’s been studies done showing—technical studies, MIT and other places, and the Israeli government also has had its scientists participate in these studies, showing it would be really hard to do a significant amount of damage, given how deep the underground facilities are. But you hear this talk about it.

And there’s—you know, look, this president has said nothing about what’s going on in Tahrir Square again. We’re mute. He’s been mute on this kind of bellicosity. But my understanding is that, purely from inside information, is that he does understand the issues more. I think it’s right now a political game being played by him to look tough. You know, everybody’s chasing, you know, the independent vote. I don’t know why—what’s so important to go after people that can’t decide whether they’re Democrats or Republicans, but that seems to be the name of the game.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s turn to the response in Israel to the IAEA report. Yesterday, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in an interview with CNNthe time has come to deal with Iran. When asked specifically whether Israel would attack Iran, this is how he responded.

DEFENSE MINISTER EHUD BARAK: I don’t think that that’s a subject for public discussion. But I can tell you that the IAEAreport has a sobering impact on many in the world, leaders as well the publics. And people understand that the time had come. Amano told straightly what he found, unlike Baradei. And it became a major issue, that I think, duly so, becomes a major issue for sanctions, for intensive diplomacy, with urgency. People understand now that Iran is determined to reach nuclear weapons. No other possible or conceivable explanation for what they had been actually doing. And that should be stopped.

AMY GOODMAN: That was the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak. Sy, your response?

SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, what makes me nervous is Barak and Bibi, Bibi Netanyahu, are together on this. They’re not always together on many things. They both agree, and that’s worrisome because, again, it’s a political issue there. Everybody—the country is moving quickly to the right, Israel is, obviously. And I can just tell you that I’ve also talked—unfortunately, the ground rules are so lousy in Israel, I can’t write it, but I’ve talked to very senior intelligence people in Iran—in Israel, rather. If you notice, you don’t hear that much about it, but the former head of Mossad, Meir Dagan, who left—who was the guy that orchestrated the attempted assassinations in Dubai, etc.—no dove—has been vehement about the foolishness of attempting to go after Iran, on the grounds that it’s not clear what they have. They’re certainly far away from a bomb. Israel has been saying for 20 years they’re, you know, six months away from making a bomb.

But I can tell you that I’ve talked to senior Israeli officers in Israel who have told me, A, they know that Iran, as the American intelligence community reported—I think it was in ‘07—there was a National Intelligence Estimate that became public that said, essentially, Iran did look at a bomb. They had an eight-year war with Iraq, a terrible war, 1980 to 1988. And we, by the way, the United States, sided with Iraq, Saddam Hussein at that time. Iran then, in the years after that, they began to worry about Iraq’s talk about building a nuclear weapon, so they did look, in that period, let’s say ‘87 to—’97 to 2003, no question. The American NIE said in ‘07—it was augmented in 2011. I wrote about it a year ago in The New Yorker. It said, yes, they did look at a bomb, but not—they knew that they couldn’t—there was no way they could make a bomb to deter America or Israel. They’re not fools. This Persian society has been around for a couple thousand years. They can’t deter us. We have too many bombs. They thought maybe they could deter Iraq. After we went in and took down Iraq in ‘03, they stopped. So they had done some studies. We’re talking about computer modeling, etc., no building. They—no question, they looked at the idea of getting a bomb or getting to the point where maybe they could make one. They did do that, but they stopped in ’03.

That’s still the American consensus. The Israelis will tell you privately, “Yes, we agree.” They stopped most of their planning, even their studies, in ‘03. The Israeli position is they stopped not because they saw what we did to Iraq, but they thought that we could—we destroyed Iraq—I had a general tell me this—we destroyed Iraq in—it took them—we did in three weeks what they couldn’t do in eight years. They thought they would be next. But the consensus was, yes, they stopped. And also, if you asked serious, smart, wise Israelis in the intelligence business — and there are many — “Do you really think, if they got a bomb—and they don’t have one now—they would hit Tel Aviv?” and the answer was, “Do you think they’re crazy? We would incinerate them. Of course not. They’ve been around 2,000 years. That’s not going to happen.” Their fear was they would give a bomb to somebody else, etc.

But there’s an element rationality in the Israeli intelligence community that’s not being expressed by the political leadership. It’s the same madness we have here. There’s an element of rationality in our intelligence community which says, in ‘07, and it has said it again last year, they don’t have the bomb. They’re not making it. It’s at NIE, 16 agencies agreed, 16 to nothing, in an internal vote, before that—they did an update in 2011 on the ‘07 study and came to the same place. It’s just not there. That doesn’t mean they don’t have dreams. It doesn’t mean scientists don’t do computer studies. It doesn’t mean that physicists at the University of Tehran don’t do what physicists like to do, write papers and do studies. But there’s just no evidence of any systematic effort to go from enriching uranium to making a bomb. It’s a huge, difficult process. You have to take a very hot gas and convert it into a metal and then convert it into a core. And you have to do that by remote control, because you can’t get near that stuff. It’ll kill you. So radioactive.

I mean, so, look, I’m a lone voice. And you know how careful The New Yorkeris, even on a blog item. This piece was checked and rechecked. And I quote people—Joe Cirincione, an American who’s been involved in disarmament many years. These are different voices than you’re seeing in the papers. I sometimes get offended by the same voices we see in the New York Timesand Washington Post. We don’t see people with different points of view. There are, inside the—not only the American intelligence community, but also inside the IAEA in Vienna. There are many people who cannot stand what Amano is doing, and many people who basically—I get emails—and this piece came out, was put up, I think, over the weekend. And I get emails, like crazy, from people on the inside saying, “Way to go.” I’m talking about inside the IAEA. It’s an organization that doesn’t deal with the press, but internally, they’re very bothered by the direction Amano is taking them.

It’s not a scientific study, Amy. It’s a political document. And it’s a political document in which he’s playing our game. And it’s the same game the Israelis are picking up on, and those who don’t like Iran. And I wish we could separate our feelings about Iran and the mullahs and what happened with the students from 1979, into the reality, which is that I think there’s a very serious chance the Iranians would certainly give us the kind of inspections we want, in return for a little love—an end to sanctions and a respect that they insist that they want to get from us. And it’s not happening from this administration.

AMY GOODMAN: Seymour Hersh, I want to thank you very much for being with us. His latest piece is on the blog at The New Yorker. It’s called “Iran and the IAEA.” Seymour Hersh won the Pulitzer Prize. His piece, you can see at The New Yorker’s website.

Interview courtesy of DemocracyNow! and Seymour Hersh

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By DR. MAZIN QUMSIYEH
Beit Sahour, Occupied Palestine

It is good news that over 1000 Palestinian political prisoners will be released in a prison swap deal.  But there are still thousands of Palestinian political prisoners.  This Saturday we will be discussing in our cultural group the new book by Marwan Barghouthi about his life behind bars.  He will apparently not be part of this prisoner exchange deal neither will Ahmed Saadat of PFLP nor other key leaders.  For English readers on this list, I translated my review of Barghouthi’s book (originally in Arabic) and included it here.  Below that I include some text on prisoners from my book “Popular Resistance in Palestine: A history of Hope and Empowerment.” Hopefully those two sections will give you some idea about the struggles of political prisoners now in the news. Hopefully, Hamas (which did not get all it wanted but did score a political victory here) and Fatah (which scored a political victory by abandoning the futile US-led bilateral negotiations) could now implement their signed agreements especially on representation in the PNC.
I read Nelson Mandel’s inspiring autobiography many years ago. His book was titled “Long Walk to Freedom” because it was done after the end of apartheid.   Marwan Barghouthi’s book is not an autobiography in that sense because our people’s walk to freedom is still ongoing. It is thus titled “One thousand days in prison isolation cell” and refers to a part of the struggle. We indeed look for the day that our political prisoners can write books at the end of the road to freedom.
Barghouthi’s book is dedicated to his wife, his children, to the Palestinian people, to the Arab and Islamic world, to all those who struggle and resist occupation and colonization, and to fellow prisoners. Mandela’s book similarly recalls family, people, and fellow political prisoners.
Barghouthi recalls his village life in Kuber with much passion and love in his newest book but you will find the national cause dominate the book. While Kuber is mentioned two or three times, Palestine is mentioned on just about every paragraph. Mandela had a rural beginning in a small village called Mvezo and still retains that love of land.  He was a shepherd and ploughed lands.  He dreamed of becoming a lawyer and was like Barghouthi interested in learning. He enrolled at Birzeit University in 1983 but due to exile and other factors only finished his bachelor in 1994 (in history and political science).  In 1998, he got masters in international relations. Both Mandela and Barghouthi led youth movements in their teens and became strong leaders even as they were pursued and jailed.
Mandela like Barghouthi reports on mistreatment, lengthy incarcerations, resisting, and all that you expect from someone who went through such experiences.  Mandela like Barghouthi says that it is not what he actually did that he was being punished for but for what he stood for. Both were charged by the respective apartheid regimes of leading armed guerrilla groups.
Through these writings, you see a common characteristic: great humility.  They do not elevate themselves above the thousands who struggle for freedom.  Even though some of us consider them key leaders, they themselves see their role as foot soldiers. Barghouthi describes being beaten on his private parts and losing consciousness waking later to find a gash on his head from falling and hitting the cement wall.  The gash left a permanent mark.  But immediately after describing this, Barghouthi merely says (p. 21) that is it is merely a small example of what tens of thousands of activists were subjected to.
In the mid 1950s Mandela devised a plan and convinced fellow ANC leaders to adopt it that created a decentralized structure. Cells are formed at the grassroots level and select among them leadership at intermediate levels which insured secrecy and yet some level of democracy and operational meaning.  Barghouthi recalls how he was not happy about Arafat’s autocratic structure and especially those around Arafat many of them were corrupt and not dedicated to the Palestinian struggle.
Barghouthi and Mandela speak of psychological warfare including the games of good investigator and bad investigator played to break prisoners’ will.  A lot of what he says about mistreatment in prison will not be new to Palestinians alive today.  Most Palestinians above age 30 have tasted at least some of these pains.  Of course Barghouthi suffered more than most Palestinian males his age.
Barghouthi talks about how critical the visit by his lawyer was to break his isolation and makes him feel connected to life outside the prison.  Mandela also refers to the psychological boost received by knowing that people outside continue the struggle and care about the freedom of political prisoners.
Barghouthi states on page 130 how in prison you have lots of time to think.  He recalls these thoughts in detail and they range from his feelings of solidarity with all persecuted and oppressed people around the world to poor programming on Palestinian television (when the channel was allowed in prisons).  Barghouthi speaks about his passions like reading books. He speaks of his love for his family. He speaks of women liberation. He speaks of learning languages in jail. The thoughts of Mandela in jail also dealt with similar issues. Barghouthi describes solitary confinement as “slow death” (p. 81). Mandela calls them the “dark years”.
Barghouthi speaks about how the US and western positions put significant pressures on Arafat and that finally, Mr. Mahmoud Abbas was appointed prime minister.  Abbas, according to Barghouthi, was known for his positions against resistance (p. 156).  In one section he talks about how leadership did not rise to the challenge or match the enormous struggle, aspirations and needs of the people.
Barghouthi says on page 148 that Israel can defeat a particular leader or faction or group of people but cannot defeat the will of the Palestinian people. On the next page he articulates beautifully why resistance in all its types is so critical to success in achieving our collective goals.  The cost of occupation and colonization must be made unbearable or at least more than the benefit from it for Israel to back off.
Barghouthi speaks about how his political actions did not stop in jail.  He gives several examples including the Palestinian factions observing a cease fire that started 19 December 2001 on the eve of the visit by American envoy General Anthony Zinni. That cease fire lasted for nearly a month but was broken by Israel’s assassination of Ra’ed Karmi.
Barghouthi recalls that one of the more painful episodes was the abduction of his son Qassam. His letter to his son takes 30 pages of the book! It is an amazing letter that recalls the history of Palestine, the history of struggle, the history of the prisoner movement and much more.  But the letter also reflects on feelings and attitude of Barghouthi himself in key periods of his life.  How he felt when his son was born while he is in jail.  How he built a relationship with his wife despite being a man spending most of his life either on the run or in jail.  It is very detailed mentioning dates and events and surroundings that put the reader (his son and us) in those circumstances.  He recalls the death of his father 5 August 1985.  He talked about his biggest pains (which were not the interrogations, torture or solitary confinement) but when he was exiled to Jordan in the late 1980s.  Yet he also says that after his family joined him in exile from the homeland, the family life alleviated the pain of exile from his homeland. The letter ends with recommendations he gives to his son like any father gives to his son.  But here the recommendations are about exercising, reading books, learning languages, and keeping friendly relations with fellow prisoners.
The book finishes with a section about his wife and a final section about collaborators in Israeli jails.  It is significant that he decided to conclude with detailed exposure of the despicable methods of collaborations. Similarly, Mandela’s autobiography includes a section on treason.
Oliver Tambo described Mandela as passionate, fearless, impatient and sensitive.  I never met either Mandela or Barghouthi personally but after reading these books, I can say that I agree not only with these adjectives applied to Mandela and Barghouthi but I can think of many others: humble, honest, intelligent, articulate, and I can go on but I will leave that to historians to give people their due.  But knowing such people at least through their writings and writings of others about them adds to our conviction that freedom is inevitable to nations that have such individuals.
—————————
Prison struggles in the book “Popular Resistance in Palestine: A history of Hope and empowerment”

In this book I discuss the efforts for release of political prisoners that started in the 1920s when the women movement in Palestine succeeded in gaining release of three prisoners (Chapter 6). In chapter 7, we find that “On 17 May 1936, prisoners in Nur Shams prison declared a strike and confronted the prison guards who ordered soldiers to open fire. One inmate was killed and several wounded as prisoners shouted in defiance: ‘Martyrdom is better than jail’.(ref) On 23 May 1936, Awni Abdel Hadi, secretary general of the Arab Higher Committee, was arrested.(ref)…. On 9 September 1939, fighters took over Beersheba government facilities and released political prisoners from the central jail.”

When the British government felt more confident in 1942-43 about the prospects of winning the war, it released some Palestinian political prisoners and allowed others to return from exile. Attempts to revive political activity during this period were nugatory. Awni Abdel Hadi returned from exile in 1943 and revived Hizb Al-Istiqlal, with help from Rashid Alhaj Ibrahim and Ahmed Hilmi Abdel Baqi, and even started a national fund.”

In other section sof the book, I discussed the struggle of Palestinains inside the Green Line, many of them ended in jail as political prisoners.  Like Palestinains in the West Bank and Gaza, they supported their political prisonesr and struggled for their release. The struggle in the occupied territories continued. When Israel introduced extensions of so-called ‘administrative detention’ (detention without trial) for up to six months, a strike among Palestinian political prisoners started 11 July 1975.

Political prisoners in Israeli jails also organised themselves into effective committees [during the uprising of 1987] which carried out collective strikes which were especially effective in the 1980s and early 1990s.36 King interviewed Qaddourah Faris (from Fatah) who was a key leader of the prisoner movement. He talked about a successful hunger strike for humane treatment that involved 15,000 prisoners throughout Israeli jails.(ref) In 1990, Israel held over 14,000 Palestinian prisoners in more than 100 jails and detention centres at one time according to Middle Rights Watch.(ref) Even Israeli supporters like Anthony Lewis became outraged enough to write:

“The Israeli Government has taken thousands of Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and Gaza into what it calls ‘administrative detention.’ That means they are held as prisoners, for up to six months at a stretch, without trial. At least 2,500 of the detainees are imprisoned in Ketziot, a tent camp in the burning heat of the Negev desert. On Aug. 16 Israeli soldiers shot and killed two of-the detainees there … The story had further grim details that I shall omit because they cannot be confirmed … The prisoners at Ketziot, it must be emphasised, have not been convicted of doing anything. They have had not a semblance of due process. They are there because someone in the Israeli Army suspects them – or wants to punish them. Mr. Posner went to Ketziot to see two Palestinian lawyers being held there and four field investigators for a West Bank human rights group, Al Haq. He concluded that they had been detained because of ‘their work on human rights and as lawyers.”(ref)

On 6 December 1998, during President Clinton’s visit, over 2,000 political prisoners went on hunger strike demanding to be released. Their message to both the Israeli and Palestinian leadership was not to negotiate issues that do not place their release on the agenda.

In September 1988, the Israeli army stated that the number of detainees it held was 23,600 and Peter Kandela reported cases of the use of torture on detainees.94 After the Oslo Accords many thousands of Palestinians were released. But many thousands more were imprisoned in the uprising that started in 2000. In total, over 700,000 Palestinians spent time in Israeli jails. On occasion, nearly 20 per cent of the political prisoners were minors.95

Political prisoners in Israeli jails also participated in non-violent resistance. Israel radio reported on a hunger strike by prisoners in the camps of Jenin, Ramallah and Nablus, who demanded improvement in their deplorable conditions in 1987.96 Al-Ansar prison in southern Lebanon, where thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese political prisoners were held by Israeli occupation forces, showed incredible acts of resistance and resilience, ranging from hunger strikes to refusal to obey orders to writing.97

Thousands of Palestinian prisoners went on a hunger strike from 15 August to 2 September 2004. During this time, the Israeli authorities tried various methods from persuasion to threats to beatings to break the strike; 13 UN agencies operating in the occupied areas expressed their concern.98

Outside the prisons, Palestinians and internationals protested and worked diligently to spread the word about the prisoners’ demands and their plight. It started with the prisoners’ families, many of whom joined the hunger strike. Crowds assembled on 16 August 2004 outside local offices of the Red Cross and marched to the Gaza headquarters of the United Nations where they delivered a letter addressed to Secretary General Kofi Annan, calling for him to apply pressure on Israel and improve the prisoners’ conditions. They demonstrated again in the thousands two days later.99 The PA, Palestinians inside the Green Line and the ISM called for hunger strikes outside the prisons to support the prisoners’ demands.100 The strike slowly gained momentum despite repressive measures.101 Israel’s Public Security Minister Tzahi Hanegbi stated: ‘Israel will not give in to their demands. They can starve for a day, a month, even starve to death, as far as I am concerned’102 Eventually, the prison authorities conceded that the prisoners were entitled to some basic humanitarian rights.

Palestinian female political prisoners in Telmud Prison were mistreated and on 28 November 2004 their spokeswomen who complained about this was beaten and punished. When others complained, they too were punished, so they too went on hunger strike.103

Prisoners continued to use hunger strikes to protest against ill treatment and draw attention to their plight. For example, on 16 February 2006, Jamal Al-Sarahin died in prison. He was a 37-year-old ‘administrative detainee’ (held without charge or trial) who had been detained for eight months and badly mistreated. Prisoners called a one-day hunger strike.104

On 11 March 2006, a sit-down strike in front of the ICRC in Hebron was held to demand better treatment of prisoners. On 27 June 2006, 1,200 Palestinian political prisoners in the Negev Desert started a hunger strike to protest against the arbitrary and oppressive practices of the prison administration. In total, over 700,000 Palestinians have spent time in Israeli jails and the latest statistics show that 11,000 are still being held according to the Palestinian Prisoners Society.105

By 2009, Palestinians in Israeli prisons had achieved a number of successes by non-violent struggle and civil disobedience, including wearing civilian clothes (no orange uniforms), access to news, reasonable visiting rights and better access to healthcare. But the Prison Administration continues to chip away at those rights.106 Unfortunately, the PA is forced to subsidise the cost to Israel of maintaining Palestinian prisoners.

Because so many people are jailed for their resistance activities, Palestinian society has a profound respect and appreciation for the sacrifices of the prisoners. Time spent in prison is considered a badge of honour. Prisons also shape character. One former prisoner stated:

Like any human community, there are contradictions, but there is a common thread in the experience in prison that gives us strength, a common goal, a common purpose. We are joined together in struggle, so our shared experiences only make us stronger.107

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A Palestine-Israel conference at Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart (OLIH) Catholic Church in Ankeny, IA attracted a large and diverse audience on the weekend of October 14-15.

“US Policy in Palestine-Israel: Engaging Faith Communities in Pursuit of a Just Peace,” organized by Joe Aossey of Cedar Rapids and Kathleen McQuillen of American Friends Service Committee’s Iowa Middle East Peace Education Project, featured 16 speakers and workshop leaders from across the nation and around the world.

About 150 conference attendees gathered in the OLIH sanctuary on October 14 to hear Phyllis Bennis, of the Institute for Policy Studies and the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, deliver one of two keynote addresses.

“The Arab Spring has challenged the existing order in ways that nothing else in recent history has,” said Bennis, “and in our own country in the last five or six years we’ve gone from the automatic assumptions that the US should be supporting Israel’s role in the Middle East, that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, that Israel is ‘our friend,’ sort of came with the territory … but all of that is beginning to change.  We have seen enormous change in how people think about these issues, in how people talk about these issues, and that is the starting point for change in policy and in how our children get educated on these issues,” said Bennis.

Two books, Jimmy Carter’s Palestine Peace Not Apartheid and Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer’s The Israel Lobby, broke the longstanding taboo against serious criticism of Israeli policy, said Bennis.

“They were able to do that because the discourse was already beginning to change, and they were able to push that change much further,” said Bennis.

During the 2008-2009 Israeli attack on Gaza, for the first time polls showed that American opinion was evenly split on the question of whether Israel or the Palestinians were responsible for the violence, said Bennis.

“If you take a step back and look at the disparities in the violence, that’s an outrage.  Fourteen hundred Palestinian [dead], overwhelmingly civilians, many of them children, many of them women, versus 13 Israelis, of whom all but three were soldiers,” said Bennis.

But compared to earlier polls, the shift in public opinion was “huge, 15 or 20 percent,” said Bennis.

Bennis also pointed to polls reflecting similar shifts in American public opinion regarding illegal Israeli settlement activity in the occupied West Bank.

“The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign … has seen enormous victories.  Agrexco, the big Israeli agricultural export agency, is bankrupt, and they can’t even find a buyer in the private sector … because it can’t sell stuff anymore,” said Bennis.

A 2010 decision of the European Court of Justice ruled that products from Israeli settlements are not eligible for preferential trade tariffs under the EU Israel Agreement.

Israel has refused to differentiate between produce grown in Occupied Territories and produce grown in Israel, so EU countries are no longer allowing the import of produce from Israel, said Bennis.

“The lost their market,” said Bennis.

Bennis also noted that the city of Stockholm had cancelled a contract for the construction of a light rail system after BDS activists called attention to the French contractor, Veolia, which built an Israeli light rail system in the Occupied Territories.

Veolia has come under pressure across the EU and in the USA for its involvement in Israeli projects in the Occupied Territories.

Bennis compared the nascent OWS movement to the Palestinian Intifada, intifada meaning to shake up or shake off.

“Whatever happens with the Occupy Everywhere movement, it may get legs, it may become something more powerful than what it is now.  I hope so.  But whether it does or not, I think it will continue to shake up ordinary day-to-day life in this country, ordinary politics,” said Bennis.

“It’s shaking up our assumptions about what ordinary people can do,” said Bennis.

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement is largely composed of “new people,” said Bennis, “people who for the first time are taking the power into their own hands to send a message that Wall Street has too much power, that the banks and their money is corrupting our government,” said Bennis,

“It’s an amazing moment!  We don’t know what’s going to happen in the future.  Is the military in Egypt going to turn over power to an elected government?  Will that election be both free and fair?  What will happen to human rights under an Egyptian government?  What’s going to happen in Bahrain?  What’s going to happen in Libya, where a new government is fast coming to power backed by the US and NATO? What’s going to happen in Yemen, in Syria?  We don’t know the answers, but we know that the region has been shaken up by an intifada of a whole new kind, and that is what is so exciting about all of this,” said Bennis.

“Israel is more isolated than ever, not because people don’t think Israel has a right to exist. …  Countries don’t have rights; people have rights.  Peoples have rights to exist; Israelis like everyone else have a right to exist in safety and security. … Rights are for people, and in that context, Israel is losing the war for legitimacy because of its policies, because of its policies of apartheid, forced separation, ethnic cleansing, because of its policy of occupation, because of its policy of denying the right of return to refugees,” said Bennis.

It’s those policies that are losing Israel credibility around the world, that are making it so hard for Israel to find any supporters, except for our government.  That’s our big challenge.  The US and Israel are losing the moral high ground,” said Bennis.

Noting recent and wildly implausible claims by the Obama administration that Iran was involved in a plot to hire Mexican drug cartel assassins to bomb the Saudi ambassador to the US in a Washington restaurant, Bennis asked, “Who benefits from that?  … I don’t think we’re being told the whole story,” said Bennis.

The bottom line is that Israel is losing its moral high ground and has also lost its important strategic allies, Egypt and Turkey, “which it could count on, however grudgingly, to defend Israel against the opposition of their own people.  They’re not doing that anymore, Turkey largely because of the [Gaza humanitarian relief] flotilla incident, Israel’s failure to apologize and offer reparations, Egypt because there has been a revolution and you no longer have a government that is dependent solely on US military and economic aid,” said Bennis.

“How do we turn all of that into a shift of US policy?” asked Bennis.

Obama’s Cairo speech “was one for the ages, but his policies do not reflect it,” said Bennis, and “we have the obligation to make him” live up to it.

“It is no longer political suicide to criticize Israeli policy,” said Bennis, “but the politicians don’t know that.  That’s our job.”

“Our job is to make clear to members of Congress, the President, and the Senate, and the city councilors, and the governors, and the mayors, and the county boards of supervisors, and the university administrations that it is now political suicide to support Israeli policies, and if they continue to do so, that’s when they will lose their positions, their power,” said Bennis to sustained applause.

“It won’t be easy,” said Bennis, who explained that Americans now need to focus on their own government’s role in Israeli policy, rather than Israel’s policies.

The US must stop being “a co-conspirator, an enabler” of Israeli policies.  US aid to Israel is immoral, and America needs to stand on the side of international law and human rights, said Bennis.

“One of the first things people say to me is, ‘How do I do this work and make sure than I don’t get called an anti-Semite?’” said Bennis.

“And I say to them, ‘There’s no guarantee.  Don’t be an anti-Semite.  Call it out when you see it. … And don’t let the threat that somebody might call you an anti-Semite be an excuse to not do your work. … People used to get called anti-Semites all the time.  People like me used to get called self-hating Jews all the time. Now, it happens, but not nearly as much.  The Jewish Defense League shot into my house in LA 20 or 30 years ago because they didn’t like what I was doing.  They don’t do that anymore, not because they’re not violent creeps, but because they no longer think that they have the moral high ground and the majority is on their side, and they’re right,” said Bennis.

“Political discourse has changed and it is no longer on their side.  They are the ones who are out of step with the public, not us.  That is what has changed, and our job is to figure out how to galvanize the new public opinion and make it operative.  It means reclaiming our democracy,” said Bennis.

Laila El-Haddad, a Palestinian freelance journalist, author, political analyst, and parent-of-two from Gaza, presented the second keynote address on October 15.  Plenary and workshop presenters included Yaser Abu Dagga, Jennifer Bing, Dr. Jeremy Brigham, Mohammed Fahmy, Mahmoud Hamad, Remi Kanazi, Liz Knott, Pat Minor, Rachel Orville, Lynn Pollack, Josh Ruebner, Ron Stone, Rev. Don Wagner, and Rev. David Wildman.

Co-sponsors and conferences supporters included Afifi, Adel, and Larry; AFSC Middle East Peace Education Project; Albert Aossey; Joe and Laila Aossey; Board of Church and Society, Board of Global Ministries, Iowa Annual Conference, United Methodist Church; Mary Caponi; Catholic Peace Ministry; Clinton Franciscan Center for Active Nonviolence and Peacemaking; Concerned Iowans for Middle East Peace; Darul Arqum Islamic Center; Des Moines Area Ecumenical Committee for Peace; Des Moines Catholic Worker House; Des Moines International Eucharistic Community; Des Moines Valley Friends Meeting; Eye On Palestine; First Presbyterian Church (in memory of Ruth Keraus and Jeff Koch); Holy Trinity Catholic Church Peace and Justice Committee; Iowa City Friends Meeting; Iowans for a Free Palestine; Islamic Center of Des Moines; Islamic Services of America; Israeli Coalition Against House Demolitions-USA; Jesus Christ, Prince of Peace Parish, Pax Christi; Margaret Kiekhaefer; Lois Olsen Memorial Fund, Iowa City Friends Meeting; Kathleen McQuillen; Methodist Federation for Social Action-Iowa; Evalee Mickey; Midamar Corporation; Jack Mithelman; OLIH Peace and Justice Committee; Palestine Human Rights Action Network; Paulina Friends Meeting; Peace Iowa; People for Justice in Palestine; Plymouth Congregational Church Peace Committee; Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice; Sabeel-North America; SE Iowa Synod Evangelical Lutheran Church; Sisters Council Leadership Team, DM Catholic Diocese; Sisters of Humility of Mary, Des Moines Region; Hugh Stone; Social Ministries Task Force of the Presbytery of Des Moines; Lee Tesdell; Western Iowa Synod, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; Westminister Presbyterian Church; and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Des Moines.

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By Sarah Price

The winner of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced tomorrow in Oslo, Norway.  There are many well-known nominees, including Wikileaks’s Julian Assange, jailed whistleblower Bradley Manning, and Wael Ghonim, one of the main organizers of the Egyptian protests in Tahrir Square, who was also imprisoned for some time for his role in the revolt.  But there is no clear frontrunner, which surprises the chairman of the prize committee, Thorbjoern Jagland, who says that to him the choice seems obvious, although he is not revealing any hints.  However, it’s very possible that the winner will come from the Arab Spring uprising.

But there is one name that has not even been suggested by the committee, much less formally announced as a nominee.  His singular act of self-sacrifice, in a moment of overwhelming frustration with a lifetime of dealing with an oppressive government, sparked the movement that has spread across the world.

26-year-old Mohamed Bouazizi had been a street vendor in Tunisia since his childhood.  It was the only way he had to make a living, but he still managed to give away some of his produce to poor families, as well as supporting his parents and siblings on what little he made.  But local law enforcement continually harassed him, sometimes taking his produce, or fining him for not having a permit he wasn’t even required to have.  But without money to bribe the police, he was fair game to them.

On December 17, 2010, he was accosted and publicly humiliated by a female municipal officer and beaten by her aides, and had his weighing scale taken away by her.  He ran to the governor’s office trying to get it back, but the governor refused to see him. Trying desperately to get in, he threatened to set himself on fire if he wouldn’t see him, which he still didn’t.  Bouazizi then acquired a can of gasoline, returned to the governor’s office, stood in the middle of traffic and yelled, “How do you expect me to make a living?” Then doused himself, lit a match and set himself on fire.

Witnesses tried to put the fire out, but he was burned over 90% of his body.  He stayed alive, but in a coma, for 18 days, during which time the frustrated Tunisian youth started to rise up in his town of Sidi Bouzid.  Then-President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali vowed to have him transported to a hospital in Paris, but never did, and even used a supposed visit to him in his hospital room as a photo opportunity.

After Bouazizi’s death in January 2011, the protests became more widespread as Tunisians took to the streets and demanded the removal of Ben Ali.  The protests and violence became so overwhelming, Ben Ali finally fled to Saudi Arabia on January 14, ten days after Bouazizi’s death.

With the victory of the Tunisian people over a dictator who had been in power for 23 years, the Egyptian youth were galvanized, and took to the streets on January 25 to demand the removal of President Hosni Mubarak, who had been in power for 30 years, in an oppressive dictatorship.  The images from Tahrir Square inspired and energized people not only across the Arab states, but also across the world, and protests began to rise up internationally, as citizens of Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Iraq, Syria, and Kuwait called for the resignations of their tyrannical regimes.  Ten months after the spontaneous beginning of the movement, thousands have given their lives for a unified purpose, and several leaders have fled the countries they once ruled.  In the United States, protesters have switched from marching the streets in solidarity with the Arab Spring, to marching for their own rights.  The Occupy Wall Street movement, less than one month old, has now moved to several major cities across the country, and while there has been no definitive change as of yet, there is already a shift in President Obama’s tone toward Congress and his opponents.

The uprisings are occurring in different countries, with different people under different conditions, with different demands.  But the message is the same: No more oppression.  No more tyrannical leaders with voiceless populations.  We decide our fate.

The movement has also had collateral benefits.  The new direction of people standing up for their rights and demanding governmental transparency has arguably made the climate more comfortable and receptive for people like Julian Assange and Bradley Manning, and organizations like Wikileaks.  Even as they are under fire from governmental agencies for their actions, people are not only supportive of them, but outspoken in defense of their rights.  The Palestinian bid for member statehood with the United Nations, while still under review, also may not have been as successfully received as it has been without the progress made thus far, this year.

The progress that has been made in the last ten months has been a long time coming, and yet still astonishing in its power and velocity, and whomever is named to receive the 2011 Nobel Prize for Peace no doubt will deserve it.  But it is very likely that no matter who it is, or what their actions were related to were either connected to, or benefited by, the Arab Spring, and the actions of a young man so desperate for a voice that he would set himself on fire to finally be heard, and thereby opened the eyes and ears of an entire planet and united it.  If not honored for this stunning and ultimate self-sacrifice, may he at least be remembered.

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