The Largest Minority

December 7th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

[The following speech was given on November 30, 2009 at the United Nations as part of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.]

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Secretary-General, Mr. President, Excellencies:

Let me begin by expressing my appreciation to the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People for inviting me to participate in today’s meeting and offering a presentation in connection with the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

My name is Bill Fletcher, Jr. I am the Executive Editor of the on-line magazine BlackCommentator.com and a member of the leadership committee of the coalition known as the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. I am the immediate past president of the advocacy group TransAfrica Forum which was the leading voice within the United States of America against South African apartheid and white minority rule in Africa. I am also a long-time trade union activist.

I sit before you today to discuss a contemporary apartheid: that practiced by the state of Israel against the Palestinian people.

As an African American in and from the United States, I am keenly aware of the similarities between the systems of Israeli apartheid, South African apartheid, and the home-grown apartheid in the United States of America once known as “Jim Crow segregation.” Despite every effort of the Israeli state to wrap its actions in religious garments, to claim a God-given Judaic exclusive right for its actions, the description of the racial differential or national-ethnic differential that exists between the officially sanctioned Jewish citizens of Israel and the Palestinians within Israel, those in exile and those in the Occupied Territories sounds all too familiar. It is also far from Holy. Notwithstanding the efforts of heroic individuals such as William Patterson, Paul Robeson and Malcolm X to bring the case of African Americans before the United Nations, the international ramifications of the oppression suffered here were often and conveniently ignored by the great powers of the global North. The South African apartheid system was, to a great extent, modeled on the Jim Crow system in the United States, a fact noted by many people in South Africa and in the global South. The United Nations failed to take up the challenge to racism in my own country a generation ago; it must not fail to take up the struggle against Israeli apartheid today.

The realities of the Israeli apartheid system, in contrast to South Africa, were often hidden from view, at least outside of Israel and, later, the Occupied Territories. It was, however, the close collaboration-including military and nuclear collaboration-between the Israeli regime and the South African apartheid regime at a point when the South African apartheid regime had become an international pariah state that raised more than a few eyebrows and encouraged many people to more closely examine the theory and workings of the two states.

The parallel between the Israeli apartheid system and the Jim Crow system under which African Americans suffered and died here in the United States of America also helps to explain a phenomenon that seems to puzzle many mainstream commentators. How is it that there exists such a relatively large reservoir of sympathy among African Americans in the United States of America for the cause of the Palestinians? It is a vicious slander to assert that such sympathy is based on anti-Jewish sentiment, though I would be na? to ignore that such sentiment does exist in some isolated quarters. Rather, for African Americans, we can at one and the same time stand with the Jewish victims of the Nazi’s Holocaust, while at the same time reject the Israeli apartheid system and its victimization of the Palestinian people. The horrors of the Holocaust, as the great Martiniquan writer Aime Cesaire pointed out, were not unprecedented, but found their basis in the brutal holocausts committed against the peoples of the global South by the colonial powers and the settler states. It was based on that shared history that African Americans viscerally understood and, therefore, placed ourselves in opposition to the racist motivations that lay behind the actions of the German Nazis and later the Italian Fascists in their persecution and then attempts at annihilation of the Jewish people.

Yet none of this, that is, none of the reality of the Holocaust suffered by European Jews, excuses what has happened to the Palestinian people in the period since World War II, and especially since May 1948. And it is this that many people, in what is colloquially known as “Black America,” understand so well. The Israeli apartheid system that expropriates land from the Palestinians; restricts mixed marriages; condemns Palestinians to separate AND inferior education; and repudiates their internationally recognized right to return to their land and their homes, simply carries with it the same stench of the decadent and oppressive system that we came to know here in the USA as Jim Crow segregation.

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October 24th, 2009 by Guest

Imagine, if you will, a small, predominantly white city with growing poverty and crime in a small, highly segregated black section of its South East side.

Imagine that a black university professor in the city warns the local newspaper that “a black man will be killed this summer by a local police officer, probably under unclear circumstances.” The professor also predicts that the town’s “citizens will be insufficiently enraged” by the shooting.

Later in the same year, on a warm evening near the end of July, an older white university custodian has too much to drink at a tavern near the city’s central business district. As he and his wife leave the bar, the custodian spies a drunken 26-year-old black man fumbling with some bottles in a parking lot across the street. The black man is one of the city’s many homeless people who collect cans and bottles for recycling at five cents per container.

The 63-year-old facilities worker crosses the street to verbally harass and physically assault the young black man for spilling some bottles. As a different university professor (this one white) will note later, the white janitor appears to think that he has been specially “deputized to monitor inebriated young black guys and make sure - using physical force if necessary - they clean up their littler.”

The custodian insists on forcing a confrontation with the black man despite his wife yelling at him to leave. A bloody commotion ensues. After the white man begins his attack, the black man pulls out a short pocketknife and stabs the white man in self-defense.

A deputy with the local county sheriff’s department happens upon the scene. The deputy is a white male, 45 years old. He specializes in evictions, not violent altercations. Still, he carries a deadly .40 Glock pistol as he rushes from his car.

The officer displays his badge, identifies himself as a deputy, and points his gun at the black man. He orders the two men to separate. The janitor violates the order, knocking the black man to the ground with a single shot to the head. Keeping his Glock pointed at the black man, the officer tells the white man to “run away.” The janitor screams at the officer, telling him to shoot the black man.

The officer tells the black man to stay down on the ground. When the drunken black man staggers to his feat and allegedly “lurches” toward the officer, the deputy blows him away with a single fatal shot. The black man dies in a matter of minutes.

The white janitor is taken to the hospital to be treated for his pocket- knife wound. He is never charged with assault or anything else. His blood alcohol is not tested. His role in provoking the terrible incident goes uninvestigated.

The local city police department tells the local newspaper that the shooting was justifiable. The killing resulted, the paper dutifully reports, from a terrible assault on a local “citizen” by a menacing “transient.” The official police statement, repeated by the local press, reads as follows: “The deputy confronted the knife-wielding transient. The transient ignored the deputy’s repeated commands to drop the knife… Instead, the armed transient advanced threateningly toward the already injured city resident and was shot by the deputy.” There is no mention of how the white custodian disobeyed the officer’s orders and continued to assault the black man.

But a very dissimilar take on the killing appears within days on the front page of a different newspaper, based in a larger municipality thirty miles north. Here are ten paragraphs from a story based on the testimony of two telecommunications workers (who I shall call “Telcom A” and “Telcom B”) who witnessed the shooting from inside a car parked in direct proximity to the incident:

“‘There was no knife, there was no lunging,’ Telcom A said. ‘I saw a cop shoot a guy in cold blood.’ Telcom Worker B, 22, and Telcom Worker A, 40, who both work for a [local] telecommunications company, got off work at 7 p.m. Friday and drove with another co-worker to [a local bar] to have a drink. As their vehicle was coming out of the alley next to City Electric, which was blocked by bags of cans and bottles and some broken glass, they saw the episode unfolding to their left and turned off the radio so they could hear what was going on.”

“A skinny black man was lying on the pavement with his head against the tire of a car about 40 feet away. He was missing teeth, his clothes were dirty and he had blood on his torso.”
“The deputy, wearing civilian clothes, had a gun pointed at the man, and a third man — whose side was covered in blood [that would be the custodian] — was standing next to the deputy telling him to shoot, Telcom A and B said.”

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September 25th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

SPREAD THIS VIDEO! This is what happens to dissenters in the USA.

Didn’t President Obama denounce the same types of kidnappings and general repression when they were taking place in Iran? It’s interesting to note that the unauthorized street protests which he defended in Tehran are actually considered illegal in the “Home of the Free”. And thank God for that. Cracking Commie skulls is an American tradition!

If the men kidnapping the youth are indeed military, as their uniforms suggest, they’re clearly violating the Posse Comitatus Act, which states that the federal government can not use the military for law enforcement (except in Iraq and Afghanistan of course).

Not to worry though, Obama is different. I have faith that the kid in this video won’t be getting roughed up and held on trumped-up political charges. Most likely he’s just been selected to attend a Beer Summit with the G-20 leaders to work out their differences.

video description below the fold

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September 11th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

Remember when Obama denounced Iran’s suppression of free speech? We’re doing the same for the G20.

Attorneys Call Denial of Permits to Activist Groups Bogus

PITTSBURGH, PA - September 11 - Today, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania (ACLU-PA) filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania on behalf of groups seeking to hold peaceful demonstrations in downtown Pittsburgh where the Group of 20 summit (G-20) will take place later this month. The complaint charges the U.S. Secret Service, the Department of Homeland Security, the City of Pittsburgh and the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources with violating the groups’ constitutional rights to free speech.

The plaintiffs include: CODEPINK; Pittsburgh Women For Peace; 3 Rivers Climate Convergence; Thomas Merton Center; Pittsburgh Outdoor Artists; Bail Out The People and G-6 Billion. The complaint was filed after repeated efforts to negotiate with the city regarding the permits.

“The City is unjustified in denying permits to these peaceful protestors,” said CCR Vice President Jules Lobel. “We hope the court will uphold and protect the core American values of free speech and the right to dissent.”

“Despite working in good faith for weeks to resolve G-20 demonstration permits with the City of Pittsburgh and federal officials, demonstration organizers can wait no longer and will now pursue permit remedies in Federal Court,” said ACLU-PA Legal Director Witold “Vic” Walczak.

“This is a struggle for our First Amendment rights,” said Francine Porter, CODEPINK Pittsburgh Coordinator. “Refusing these permits takes away our right to educate the public about the G-20 agenda and how it relates to war, war funding and war’s impact across the globe on mostly women and children.”

“The G-20 is gathering in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis,” said Molly Rush, co-founder of the Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh. “Unrestrained profit-making by financial institutions and the deregulation and privatization of public resources have led to disaster for the vast majority of the world’s people. Yet the people lack a voice in the proceedings.”

The complaint alleges violations of the Constitution based on the following actions by the defendants: 1) refusal to issue permits to demonstrators for the use of Point State Park during the week of the G-20; 2) failure to issue permits for First-Amendment-protected activities in Pittsburgh’s downtown; 3) refusal to issue a permit for a march by the Thomas Merton Center within a reasonable distance from the Convention Center on one day during the summit; and 4) refusal to allow demonstrators permission to stay overnight in several Pittsburgh parks.

To read the full complaint, click here.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, membership organization dedicated to defending and expanding individual rights and personal freedoms throughout the entire state of Pennsylvania. Visit www.aclupa.org.

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The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Founded in 1966 by attorneys who represented civil rights movements in the South, CCR is a non-profit legal and educational organization committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change.

source

August 20th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

An Israeli comes to the painful conclusion that it’s the only way to save his country.

Israeli newspapers this summer are filled with angry articles about the push for an international boycott of Israel. Films have been withdrawn from Israeli film festivals, Leonard Cohen is under fire around the world for his decision to perform in Tel Aviv, and Oxfam has severed ties with a celebrity spokesperson, a British actress who also endorses cosmetics produced in the occupied territories. Clearly, the campaign to use the kind of tactics that helped put an end to the practice of apartheid in South Africa is gaining many followers around the world.

Not surprisingly, many Israelis — even peaceniks — aren’t signing on. A global boycott can’t help but contain echoes of anti-Semitism. It also brings up questions of a double standard (why not boycott China for its egregious violations of human rights?) and the seemingly contradictory position of approving a boycott of one’s own nation.

It is indeed not a simple matter for me as an Israeli citizen to call on foreign governments, regional authorities, international social movements, faith-based organizations, unions and citizens to suspend cooperation with Israel. But today, as I watch my two boys playing in the yard, I am convinced that it is the only way that Israel can be saved from itself.

I say this because Israel has reached a historic crossroads, and times of crisis call for dramatic measures. I say this as a Jew who has chosen to raise his children in Israel, who has been a member of the Israeli peace camp for almost 30 years and who is deeply anxious about the country’s future.

The most accurate way to describe Israel today is as an apartheid state. For more than 42 years, Israel has controlled the land between the Jordan Valley and the Mediterranean Sea. Within this region about 6 million Jews and close to 5 million Palestinians reside. Out of this population, 3.5 million Palestinians and almost half a million Jews live in the areas Israel occupied in 1967, and yet while these two groups live in the same area, they are subjected to totally different legal systems. The Palestinians are stateless and lack many of the most basic human rights. By sharp contrast, all Jews — whether they live in the occupied territories or in Israel — are citizens of the state of Israel.

The question that keeps me up at night, both as a parent and as a citizen, is how to ensure that my two children as well as the children of my Palestinian neighbors do not grow up in an apartheid regime.

There are only two moral ways of achieving this goal.

The first is the one-state solution: offering citizenship to all Palestinians and thus establishing a bi-national democracy within the entire area controlled by Israel. Given the demographics, this would amount to the demise of Israel as a Jewish state; for most Israeli Jews, it is anathema.

The second means of ending our apartheid is through the two-state solution, which entails Israel’s withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders (with possible one-for-one land swaps), the division of Jerusalem, and a recognition of the Palestinian right of return with the stipulation that only a limited number of the 4.5 million Palestinian refugees would be allowed to return to Israel, while the rest can return to the new Palestinian state.

Geographically, the one-state solution appears much more feasible because Jews and Palestinians are already totally enmeshed; indeed, “on the ground,” the one-state solution (in an apartheid manifestation) is a reality.

Ideologically, the two-state solution is more realistic because fewer than 1% of Jews and only a minority of Palestinians support binationalism.

For now, despite the concrete difficulties, it makes more sense to alter the geographic realities than the ideological ones. If at some future date the two peoples decide to share a state, they can do so, but currently this is not something they want.

So if the two-state solution is the way to stop the apartheid state, then how does one achieve this goal?

I am convinced that outside pressure is the only answer. Over the last three decades, Jewish settlers in the occupied territories have dramatically increased their numbers. The myth of the united Jerusalem has led to the creation of an apartheid city where Palestinians aren’t citizens and lack basic services. The Israeli peace camp has gradually dwindled so that today it is almost nonexistent, and Israeli politics are moving more and more to the extreme right.

It is therefore clear to me that the only way to counter the apartheid trend in Israel is through massive international pressure. The words and condemnations from the Obama administration and the European Union have yielded no results, not even a settlement freeze, let alone a decision to withdraw from the occupied territories.

I consequently have decided to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that was launched by Palestinian activists in July 2005 and has since garnered widespread support around the globe. The objective is to ensure that Israel respects its obligations under international law and that Palestinians are granted the right to self-determination.

In Bilbao, Spain, in 2008, a coalition of organizations from all over the world formulated the 10-point Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign meant to pressure Israel in a “gradual, sustainable manner that is sensitive to context and capacity.” For example, the effort begins with sanctions on and divestment from Israeli firms operating in the occupied territories, followed by actions against those that help sustain and reinforce the occupation in a visible manner. Along similar lines, artists who come to Israel in order to draw attention to the occupation are welcome, while those who just want to perform are not.

Nothing else has worked. Putting massive international pressure on Israel is the only way to guarantee that the next generation of Israelis and Palestinians — my two boys included — does not grow up in an apartheid regime.

July 29th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

Whether we’re analyzing the US military or a domestic police force within our own city, dehumanization is a central part of the training process. The job of law enforcement is to routinely harass and violate the rights of their fellow citizens - to give their own mother a ticket and beat the kid down the street if he steps out of line.

If an officer does not view you as a lesser human being, they have no internal justification to do their job. The police justify their dominance with your dehumanization. Hence, bigotry is just part of the job. The racial slurs and proud tales of abuse casually tossed around any police station would make a Fox News studio look like a hippy lovefest.

The officer is 36-year-old Justin Barrett. He was stripped of his gun and badge on Tuesday afternoon when Boston Police Commissioner Edward David learned that Barrett was the author of an e-mail which included racist remarks towards Henry Gates.

“Commissioner Edward Davis has placed Officer Justin Barrett on administrative leave pending outcome of a termination hearing,” said Elaine Driscoll, who is a spokeswoman for the Boston Police Department. “Commissioner Davis was made aware that this officer admitted to being the author of correspondence which included racist remarks,” she added. Driscoll did not know how many people received the e-mail or at what date it was sent.

According to BNO News sources with direct knowledge to the contents of the e-mail, Barrett called Gates, among other racists remarks, a “jungle monkey.” The e-mail was described as a “mass e-mail.”

read more…

Giving credit where it’s due, President Obama was right on when he candidly stated that Cambridge police “acted stupidly”. There should have been no need to apologize. If anything, it was a redundant statement.

h/t The Political Carnival

July 21st, 2009 by Manila Ryce

Got international solidarity? Capitalists are vampires - parasites who view us as nothing more than livestock to feed off of and have dominion over.

Corporations have used the government and media as instruments to destroy the US labor movement. We must rebuild it. Organizing is not easy in a capitalist society. Since a capitalist system pits workers against each other, we’ll need to learn how to cooperate rather than compete. Forming an organization, union, or cooperative is a first step.

During the height of our concern over the Iranian elections, Peruvians were being massacred in the name of US free trade interests. In what’s been called “The Amazon’s Tiananmen,” Hundreds of indigenous people blocking Shell Oil from raping the Amazon were murdered by police. However, we were instead focused on Iran because they’re the declared enemy of our capitalist overlords.

Still, I will give credit where it’s due. If the traditional media was correct about one thing during their frenzy over “Iran’s Twitter Revolution”, it was their own insufficience. Unlike the dying corporate media, twitter and the internet in general have proved to be useful, democratizing tools. Never in the history of the world have the proletariat been so connected to each other, AND YET we still lack a strong global movement. The internet can either help us escape reality or transform it.

We must recognize our unique role as individuals within the international movement. As Marx said, “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” When individual workers thrive in the belly of the beast, they can enable that prosperity to translate to the entire global collective. As Americans, we hold a higher level of responsibility since our actions have the potential to dramatically transform the rest of the world.

We live in the Americas where the greatest disparity between rich and the poor exists, yet we are not class conscious. Americans feel more solidarity with Obama than with a so-called insurgent in Iraq.

However, when people push reform to the limit and government won’t concede any further, they realize revolution is needed to dismantle that roadblock. Workers in America must come to that realization soon if international movements of the Left are to succeed. The head vampire must be killed once and FOR ALL.

July 13th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

Max Blumenthal and Jesse Rosenfeld interview young Tel Aviv residents about Iran, Obama and right-wing laws limiting the speech rights of their Palestinian-Israeli neighbors. The shocking responses reflect the deepening of racist and authoritarian trends in Israeli society. This is the sequel to “Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem,” the video banned by YouTube, Vimeo and the Huffington Post after topping 400,000 hits.

Max Blumenthal’s video “Feeling the Hate In Jerusalem on Eve of Obama’s Cairo Address” was deleted by YouTube after topping 400,000 views. Apparently, documenting the frightening Nazi-esque racism of entitled Zionists is a terms of use violation. Yes, these people currently have nuclear warheads pointed at Iran.

As you might expect, Blumenthal was berated by your typical Israeli apologists for being a “self-hating Jew” who was spreading Antisemitism with the most horrid of left-wing tools - journalism. So as a response to his reality-denying detractors, Blumenthal interviewed Israelis during the day in a more “metropolitan” part of the country your tax dollars built. Enjoy it while you can.