Law and Disorder January 26, 2009

Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Military Tribunal, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power

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Stop The Israeli Massacre in Gaza – Speech by Chris Hedges

On Tuesday, Jan 13th, 550 people attended a Revolution Books Emergency Town Hall Meeting held at the Center for Ethical Culture in Manhattan. The meeting demanded a stop to the Israeli massacre in Gaza, and condemned the U.S. role in this war crime. The emergency meeting was an important challenge to people to understand the horrific situation in Gaza, the causes and implications, and to act.

Chris Hedges:

  • Those who orchestrate these sieges, do not grasp the terrible rage born of long humiliation, indiscriminate violence and abuse.
  • 71 percent of children interviewed at a school in Gaza last year, said they wanted to be a martyr.
  • The refusal of our political leaders from Barack Obama to all but five members of Congress and the major media to speak out in defense of the rule of law and fundamental human rights exposes our cowardice and hypocrisy.
  • We have become monsters, militarized bullies, heartless and savage. We are a party to human slaughter.
  • We forget that the innocent who suffer and die in Gaza are a reflection of ourselves. Of how we might have been if fate, time and geography had made the circumstances of our birth different.
  • The lesson of the holocaust is not that Jews are eternal victims.  The lesson of the holocaust is when you have the capacity to halt genocide and you do not, no matter who carries out that genocide or who it carried out against, you are culpable.
  • We are very culpable, the F-16 fighter jets, the Apache attack helicopters, the 250lb GBU39 Smart Bombs are all part of the 3 Billion dollar a year aid we give to Israel.
  • But our indifference to senseless killing is expected, we kill women and children on a vaster scale in Iraq and Afghanistan.
  • Governments distort and manipulate facts, knowing that propaganda is a vital instrument in war.
  • Lies permeate absurd reports like the front page NY Times story titled A Gaza War Full of Traps and Trickery.
  • In this story unnamed Israeli officials justify bombing school because Hamas was firing mortars near the building. They offered a photo as proof. The photo was taken a year ago.
  • Reporters are asked to abandoned their trade and become stenographers.
  • Using unnamed Israeli officials to report the news is the poison of American journalism.
  • Gaza will be ruled in the future by warlords, clans and antagonistic mafias. Out of that power vacuum will rise a new generation of angry Jihadists.

Speaker – Chris Hedges, author of many books specializing in American and Middle Eastern politics and society. He spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans and right now, he’s a senior fellow at The Nation Institute in New York City and a lecturer in the Council of the Humanities.

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The World Turns Away From Gaza: Abdeen Jabara

In the last few weeks, the focus has been on the humanitarian crisis and military devastation Gaza.  We’re joined by Abdeen Jabara, board member of the Center for Constitutional Rights, an attorney and the former head of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee.  Abdeen Jabara gives us his perspective and reaction to the killings of thousands and damage in Gaza.

Abdeen Jabara:

  • 4100 Houses Destroyed, 17 Thousand Houses Damaged, 25 Mosques Destroyed
  • 31 Security Headquarters, 16 Ministry Buildings, 1500 Commercial Facilities
  • “The Palestinians must made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.” – Israeli militant
  • Attack Lebanon in 1982, the destruction rained down on that country drove the PLO out of Lebanon in to Tunisia.
  • What led to the Oslo Accord, then they split the Palestinian people, classic colonial strategy.
  • Its shocking to me how the world looked away as Israel slaughtered Palestinians.
  • . . that there has not been more of an outcry from the Europeans.
  • The Czech president of the European Union was very supportive of the Israeli bombardment on Gaza.
  • Now the Europeans that say they want to build in Gaza,  are adhering to Israel’s demand that none of this aid will go to Gaza that may aid Hamas.
  • The Israelis moved to attack because they knew that Bush was a known quantity.
  • Europeans are keeping a low profile on this, as economic pressure continues.
  • Very few people understand that Gaza is a very large open air concentration camp.
  • This was essentially a jail break on the part of Gaza, because they were being suffocated.
  • More than 50 percent unemployment in Gaza, the conditions of life there are untenable.
  • Aside from Chavez and Boliva, the world looked away.
  • I believe it’s difficult for secular people to grasp, they believe in individual rights, while the fundamentalism (in Gaza) is building.
  • Hamas’ popularity is going to grow. I see a much more pronounced religiously motivated movement.
  • There is a strategy to pit one group against the other to create chaos, as in what’s happening in Iraq.
  • Perhaps if the chief architect of the Oslo Accords had not been assassinated, there could’ve been real progress.
  • They want to divide the Palestinians and have Hamas stand in Gaza, impoverished.
  • The attack on Gaza, the ferocity and to grind the Palestinians into the ground, will lead to a lot of repercussions in places all over.
  • A lot of people do not want to talk about Zionism in the United States.  It is alive and well.
  • A lot of people talk about Israel as being post-Zionist, it’s not. It’s still in the process of inculcating the idea of the in-gathering of the exiles.
  • Brett Stevens from Wall St Journal, will speak at 92nd Street Y titled, Why Zionism Has Become A Dirty Word.
  • We have to talk about what Zionism is for people to understand the roots of this problem.
  • Israel is no longer giving out the names of the Brigade Commanders in Gaza for fear they will be tried in an International Court

Guest – Abdeen Jabara. Jabara has campaigned for more than two decades against harassment and the infringement of Arab-American’s First Amendment rights. Amid this, he scored a signal victory in his own suit against the FBI for its years of surveillance and harassment of him. He has led and helped organize fact-finding missions to Lebanon and the Israeli Occupied Territories, most recently leading a delegation of American mothers and grandmothers to Qana last May after the Israeli massacre of civilians there.

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