(May 2014) The movement for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against the "State of Israel" has recently made major strides in the U.S. .png) |
| Tiny Gaza Strip, walled open air prison |
With divestment and boycott votes (against Israeli institutions) moving forward on campuses across the country, discussions of the movement and its objectives have entered the mainstream.
This means others have intensified efforts to suppress discussion of the truth about Israel's escalating war crimes against civilian Palestinians, promoting legislation to defund institutions that participate in boycotts, and pressuring university administrations to punish students and faculty who support BDS.
Max Blumental and Ali Abunimah, two leading voices in the movement in solidarity with Palestine, discuss their acclaimed new books -- Goliath and The Battle for Justice in Palestine -- recent developments in the Middle East, the U.S., and the future of Palestine.
In
Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel,
New York Times bestselling author Max Blumenthal shows readers the badlands and main streets of Israel-Palestine.
Blumenthal paints a startling portrait of Israeli society under the tyranny of worsening authoritarian politics as its illegal occupation of the Palestinians continues and deepens.
Beginning with the national elections carried out during Israel's earlier war on Gaza in 2008-09, which brought into power the country's
most right-wing government to date [where even official Israeli Peace Negotiator
Tzipi Livni seems to be calling for racist revenge, mass murder, and ethnic cleansing, asking of Israeli solders that they behave illegally against Palestinian civilians], Blumenthal reveals the story of Israel in the wake of the collapse of its earlier Oslo peace process.
As Blumenthal demonstrates, Israel has become a country where right-wing leaders like Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu (who was groomed in the U.S. to have almost no accent and no deviation from CIA and military-industrial complex policies) and Avigdor Lieberman are sacrificing their nominal democracy on the altar of their power politics.
The loyal "opposition" passively stands aside and watches the organized assault on even Israeli civil liberties (the Palestinians haven't had any since the founding of SOI, the new "State of Israel," the old one being the Russian oblast no one acknowledges).
Goliath vs. Pal'lid |
| Armed Goliath sets out to destroy Dave (B2C) |
The state-funded Orthodox rabbis publish books that provide instructions on how and when to kill Gentiles.
Half of Jewish youth -- indoctrinated by constant propaganda and the prospects of compulsory military service, where they will learn militant brutality, xenophobic racism, and deadly religious fervor -- already declare their refusal to sit in a classroom with any Arab, particularly any Palestinian-Arab.
Mob violence targets Palestinians and Jewish-African asylum seekers, who are scapegoated by leading government officials as "demographic threats."
Immersing himself like few other investigative journalists, Blumenthal goes deep inside the world of hardline political leaders and movements to interview these demagogues and divas in their homes, in the Knesset (Israeli "Parliament"), and in the watering holes (bars) where their young acolytes hang out. He speaks with the actual political leaders behind the organized assault on civil liberties.
As his journey deepens, Blumental painstakingly reports on the occupied Palestinians challenging schemes of demographic separation through unarmed protests only to be shot or arrested -- even as children. He talks at length to youths and those who attempt to be leaders in Palestinian society inside Israel, who are now targeted by "security" (read "fully armed military") service dragnets and legislation suppressing their speech.
He provides in-depth reporting on the
small band of Jewish Israeli dissidents who have shaken off a conformist mindset that permeates the media, schools, and the military.
Through his far-ranging travels, the author illuminates the present by uncovering the ghosts of the terrible past -- the histories of Palestinian neighborhoods and villages depopulated and/or destroyed and now gone and forgotten.
(ABC RN) While most people have heard of the murderous Mossad (Israel's CIA), few have heard of Israel's internal secret service, Shin Bet (roughly their FBI). For the first time, all six living former leaders of the this secretive spy agency have agreed to talk publicly. The result is the feature documentary "The Gatekeepers" (distributed by Madman Entertainment in Australia), which screened at the Israeli Film Festival in Sydney before general release. around the country. Radio National "Breakfast"
And he shows how that history has set the stage for the current crisis of Israeli society. Tragically, the
Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis up until three years before the invasion and occupation of Palestine to convert it into the "State of Israel" (with the old lie every Israeli learns in school:
- [Hey, you can't compare Israelis to Nazis!! We're not. Israeli militants, members of its secret service called Shin Bet, are in the shocking documentary "The Gatekeepers," made by Jews interested in the truth, a movie in which Shin Bet officials admit to many war crimes and successive efforts to exterminate all Palestinians in Palestine to be able to change the country's name to "State of Israel." Oh, well, I guess that's okay then.]
"We were a people with a land searching for a land without a people," which we found in overcrowded Palestine long occupied by those "no people" the Palestinians, of which Jesus was one.
That when it began, this never ending "crisis in the Middle East" fomented by the CIA and Western governments. The imperial land grab has been turned into a solid justification for the occupation and extermination of the indigenous Palestinians, who were forced off their land like Native Americans (who also did not exist before we, the British colonial settlers and pilgrims, conquistadors and incrementally genocidal invaders) while the world argues about what the Bible does and does not say and what God wants. Somehow the cubicle workers at the CIA and countless PR firms here in the U.S. and in Israel have us believing lies, doubting texts, and cheering on war and genocide, crimes against humanity, and well crafted deceptions in defense of Israel, lies many Jews around the world can see through as a precious few stand up and speak out. Even soldiers and Shin Bet officials are tired of the Israeli government's lies and campaigns. How are we as Americans just sitting on the sidelines saying, "Oh well, whaddya gonna do?"
A brave and unflinching account of the real facts on the ground,
Goliath is an unprecedented and compelling work of journalism Israel does not want the world to know.
"Anti-Semitic"? (FRF, "Defamation") Intent on shaking up the ultimate sacred cow for Jews, Israeli director Yoav Shamir embarks on a provocative -- and at times irreverent -- quest to answer the question, What is anti-Semitism today? Does it remain a dangerous and immediate threat, or is it a scare tactic used by right-wing Zionists to discredit critics? Speaking with an array of people from across the political spectrum (including the head of the Anti-Defamation League and its fiercest critic, author Norman Finkelstein) and traveling to places like Auschwitz (alongside Israeli school kids) and Brooklyn (to explore reports of violence against Jews), Shamir discovers the realities of anti-Semitism today. His findings are shocking, enlightening, and surprisingly often wryly funny.VIDEO: Sponsored by Haymarket Books and Lannan Foundation, the event was endorsed by: Al-Awda - The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, Arab Cultural and Community Center (ACCC), Arab Resource Organizing Center (AROC), Art Forces, Arab Talk Radio, International Socialist Organization, Palestinian American Coalition (Beit Hanina Association, Bethlehem Association, Birzeit Society, Jifna Association, Palestine Youth Movement, Ramallah Club, Saris Association, Zaytooneh Club), and Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine. Suggested by Max Blumenthal.
