Israel Attacks: Discussion with Author Joel Kovel and Guild Attorney Audrey Bomse
Last week Israel launched what has been described as one of the bloodiest attacks on Palestinians in Gaza since 1948. Protesters demonstrated worldwide as Israeli air strikes continued. Nearly 400 Palestinians have been killed and thousands injured from the bombing campaign. Targets of the strike include a Hamas building and an Islamic university. Gaza is approximately 146 square miles with a population density of 1.5 million, 2/3 of whom are refugees. Israel Lets Palestinians Flee; UN Warns of Crisis.
Guest – Audrey Bomse, a Lawyers Guild attorney working with the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group. Audrey has used her 25 years of civil rights legal experience to help establish training programs for attorneys representing prisoners in Israeli military courts and to produce ground_breaking public documents, such as a report published in conjunction with the Mandela Institute for Human Rights on the status of Palestinian prisoners. Audrey was also recently detained at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport for 4 days.
People have been mystified because of the power of the propaganda system.
Zionism predates it Israel nearly 50 years, and is the driving force to remove non-Jewish from historic Palestine.
The logic of the force of Zionism, moves back to the early settlers who were not armed, and relied on devious means and foreign powers. = Terror Strategy
Balfour Declaration – To gather patrons for Israel. The US is the mega-patron.
There was consternation because the Zionists wanted the whole thing. Ben Gurion at the time, said don’t worry, once we get a state, we will continue the process of acquiring the whole thing.
Unless you see it as a long range project, you’re going to be lost, with the notions of let’s have a cease fire or let the sides get together, negotiate.
You can’t conceive that the Israelis will negotiate in good faith once you realize how embedded this drive to eliminate everything non-jewish from Palestine.
So eventually, you have a concentration of a million and a half people in this very small part of southwestern Israel.
Then you have a democratically elected Hamas, elected because it was militant, it wouldn’t go along.
These 1.5 million people are now led by a group of people that can’t be bought off.
The U.S. not only provide Israel with the F16s, helicopters and cluster bombs, but also impunity.
This impunity includes the media, Hollywood, and universities.
A great conservative political philosopher said, “in a society, power consists of the capacity to give names and enforce definitions.”
Encouraging, boycott, divestment and sanction. Human Rights organizations release dependence on Israeli based funding. Human Rights groups do not condemn the occupation.
The apparatus is woven through the society, not that it can’t be dealt with, but it must be dealt with in the manner of which it exists.
Since the Hamas election in August 2007, there’s been a closure that’s getting tighter, first when Hamas took over,with the support of the quartet, the UN, the US, the EU and Russia.
They started cutting travel in and out of Gaza, and cutting the basic necessities out of Gaza.
This type of abuse was permitted by the world community.
I see the cease fire as ending in November, not December. When Israel provoked a Hamas reaction.
Israel investigated tunnels out of Gaza during cease fire, killed 6 Hamas militants.
Hamas reacted with a flurry of rockets sent in to Israel. By the December 9 cease fire,
More rockets came from Gaza and Israel was able to portray itself as the victim.
I’m not supporting sending rockets into civilian areas, this is the inevitable situation Gaza is placed in.
They have to accept the circumstances or resist in anyway they can, which they do, and Israel uses that as an excuse to escalate, which they’re doing now.
I was involved with the Free Gaza Movement on the boat to Gaza, before the recent attacks. We brought in 5 tons of medical supplies and Palestinian doctors.
Very limited food, no milk available, there’s just enough food brought in to prevent massive starvation and widespread disease. I want to emphasize that this is a man-made catastrophe, its the consequence of a political policy.
Price of food: Palestinian families in Gaza spend 37 percent of their income on food in 2004, in 2007, households spent 62 percent on food.
Prices of wheat rose 34 percent in a period of 2 months in 2008.
Richard Falk called the Gaza occupation a crime against humanity before the bombings.
In my mind the assault on Gaza was going on all of 2007 and 2008. Hospitals don’t have electricity, students dropping out of school because there are no textbooks.
For Israel to commit these attacks on this population at this time, it’s like attacking New Orleans during Katrina’s aftermath.
Gaza is basically a prison. They eat and move based on factors outside of their control.
International law stipulates that these attacks be done so that civilian targets are severely avoided.
This is not possible in Gaza. To my mind, Israel broke the cease fire agreement, in early December, there were tons of supplies headed to Gaza from Libya that were blocked.
Number of Israelis killed by rocket fire in 2008 . . 11 , Nearly 400 Palestinians killed in seconds.
Israel has sort of carte blanche by the international community. Israel: If you test us, we’ll engage in collective punishment.
US supplies bunker buster bombs, approved by Congress in September 2008
The US policy on Israel is whatever Israel wants to do it can do.
Guest – Zahir Janmohamed, Advocacy Director with Amnesty International USA of the Middle East. Zahir is also the associate editor of altmuslim since 2004, works as the advocacy director for Middle East Programs at Amnesty International USA, and is the co-founder of the Qunoot Foundation, a Washington DC non-profit that seeks to promote socio-political education within the Muslim community.
Hosts talk with Mara about criminalizing dissent, surveillance, data mining, fusion centers and the ability to exercise first amendment rights. A recent example were the violations of free speech during the mass arrests of protesters at the 2008 Republican National Convention. The demonizing of protesters and their message in the media will usually allow for the use of military force by police. That combined with intelligence gathering and targeting of lead organizers squelched the voice of dissent in all age groups.
PCJ has a class action suit pending from the world bank IMF protest – 8 year drag out tactic.
“What they want to do is stage-manage democracy.”
Victory: After years of litigation the government has to lift regulations on number of people at the Great Lawn
Is it important to say that we don’t want to go back to Jan 19, 2001 just the day before Bush took office- or is there more that we have to do?
We think there has to be an audit of every agency’s databases to determine exactly what the databases are.
Identify what has been collected, where it has been put, who has access to that information,
Then to tell people in the United States individually, what has been collected on them and then to expunge it.
For people in their United States, their government collecting information, maintaining information, in these massive database files, that can be used by law enforcement, pulled up in a moment’s notice is really a very dangerous practice.
What they’ve done is misuse existing databases and data tools.
Subtitle of the book –“building solidarity while staying clear of the law”
We try to show in the book how the law represses and co-ops solidarity amongst rank and file workers.
It is the rank and file that transform both work and society.
A union is a group of workers standing together to take direct action.
We shouldn’t let the government or employer define whether we are a labor union or not.
Book chapter – No One Is Illegal – practicing solidarity unionism.
The risks are so high for immigrants to come to this country, often you’ll see a tremendous willingness to fight back.
In the current economic crisis, I think there’s a lot of opportunity for rank and file upsurges.
We will also see repression at this time to avoid a fundamental transformation of society
Organize for transformational demands – demands that spark more collective activity and also question the fundamental role of corporations in our lives.
In the union solidarity model, workers themselves operate and control there own campaigns.
A handful of shop workers on the floor who are challenging the boss, speaking out publically and a resource that other co-workers can go to. That’s a real power on the shop floor.
Guest – Daniel Gross, attorney, author and union activist. Daniel works with Brandworkers International, a New York-based not-for-profit organization powered by a global network of committed individuals, advocates, lawyers, and organizers who believe in holding corporations accountable to workers and communities.
Monday, October 27 was the day set for the execution of Troy Davis. A third stay has been issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. A 3 judge panel ordered attorneys to draft briefs that address whether Troy Davis can meet requirements for a next round of appeals. Attorneys have 15 days to file briefs.
Two weeks ago the Supreme Court refused to hear Troy Davis’ death penalty appeal, despite broad out pouring of support from former President Jimmy Carter, the European Parliament, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, to Jessie Jackson Jr. and this list goes on.
Former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge was arrested last week near Tampa Florida on charges of obstruction of justice and perjury. The sixty year old retiree was picked up in his Apollo Beach home for allegedly lying about whether he tortured suspects in Chicago decades ago. According to People’s Law Office Attorney Flint Taylor, torture techniques included electric shocks and dry submarino, (suffocating with bags)
Under Seventh Circuit law if there’s a conspiracy to cover up the evidence in a civil case to show fraud then you can bring the case again. The People’s Law Office brought the case in 2005 and the city of Chicago refused to settle the case while pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars in that case. Flint Taylor says the city has spent over the 10 million dollars in aiding the defense of Commander Jon Burge.
From the New York Daily News: “It took years, but he is finally going to be charged in the U.S. for his crimes – even if only symbolically. It will occur here, in New York, when a tribunal composed of scholars and human rights activists take up the case of international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, a man who is responsible for a long list of murderous attacks.
Posada, though, is a very lucky man. Despite his dark history, Posada remains free to roam Miami’s sunny streets and happily lives at home with his family. His rap sheet is long and deadly. A convicted terrorist in two countries – he escaped Venezuela and was pardoned in Panama – Posada is considered the mastermind behind the 1976 bombing of Cubana Airlines Fight 455, which killed the 73 passengers on board, including the Cuban national fencing team. He is believed responsible for a string of hotel bombings in Cuba, resulting in the death of Italian tourist Fabio diCelmo. But these are only two examples of his treachery. Posada later boasted about the diCelmo killing in a New York Times interview, which should give everybody a clear idea of what kind of person this man is.
Inexplicably, the Justice Department has refused to classify the former CIA operative as a terrorist. The reason may have to be found in Posada’s long and extensive ties with the CIA and several other nation’s intelligence agencies.â€
Law and Disorder RNC Street Coverage: Audio Document
Heidi Boghosian, Law and Disorder co-host and Executive Director of the National Lawyers Guild took to the streets of St. Paul Minnesota with producer Geoff Brady during the Republican National Convention. We bring you the voices and sounds of protesters, demonstrations, and interviews with legal observers, lead activists and lawyers. We begin this audio document with attorney Bruce Nestor, president of the Minnesota Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. Amid this heavily militarized area of St. Paul, Bruce Nestor describes how riot police use minivans as quick, efficient transport and the trapping of protesters on a bridge.
Just blocks from the Xcel Center, Heidi catches up with local activists and independent journalists who describe first hand accounts of police confrontations. A local journalist named Nick tells of the launching of paint and flash-bang grenades, the arrests and detainment of journalists and unwarranted use of pepper spray and tasers. On 4pm on Tuesday, marchers rally at Mears Park for the scheduled Poor Peoples March. There we spoke with a New York videographer named Dan, he described the pre-convention raids on I-Witness Video and more accounts of excessive police force. Below is a photo of the pre-convention raids from their website.
National Lawyers Guild attorney Bruce Nestor provides a chronology of events beginning with legal details involving the pre-convention raids on convergence centers. He also analyzes the overall impact of free speech when various factors come together. 1) Demonizing protesters and their message. 2) This allows use of military force by police. 3) Intelligence gathering and targeting lead organizers of alternative press. Combined, these tactics squelch the voice of dissent in all age groups and keep people from exercising their first amendment rights.
Below: Scenes gathered from the streets of St. Paul during the Republican National Convention 2008
Last year, twenty-eight senior scientists and engineers at Jet Propulsion Laboratory challenged the United States government and the California Institute of Technology in a lawsuit claiming that NASA’s new background investigations were unconstitutional. The scientists include members of the Mars Rover program are fighting Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 or (HSPD-12). This directive requires all federal employees and contractors to “voluntarily” sign a form allowing the government the right to investigate them “without limit” for two years- even if they leave government work during that time. NASA and Caltech employees were told, non-compliance will result in immediate termination.
In the interview Bob Nelson describes the drama in a Ninth Circuit Court decision: the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a temporary injunction at 4:40pm. The same day around 5pm, JPL managers were approaching the several hundred JPL employees who were non-compliant and reading them an order saying if you don’t comply by Monday, we will advertise your job. You have until 5pm today to decide.
A few minutes before 5pm Bob Nelson brought in a faxed copy of the order by the Ninth Circuit Court judge and told JPL managers that what they’ve done may be illegal, if you have a problem, consult your lawyer. The Ninth Circuit ruled that NASA and the DOJ were out of order and that Caltech was in the wrong for serving as an enforcer.
The lawsuit caused a lot of interest within Caltech alumni who then wrote to the board of trustees and later began to fund the lawsuit. Nelson says, “You can fight the system of a completely entrenched bureacracy that constantly rewrites the rule in their favor.”
Today we welcome cultural historian H Bruce Franklin, author of many books including The Most Important Fish In The Sea and one we will talk with him today titled War Stars: The Superweapon and The American Imagination. One review writes “this book reveals how and why the American quest for the ultimate defensive weapon, guaranteed to end all war and bring universal triumph to American ideals has led to the creation of forces increasingly capable of automated global annihilation.”
“How did we get to a place where we built weapons capable of destroying our own society, human civilization, possibly exterminating the human species, while always thinking that we’re making ourselves more secure, bringing global peace, bringing democracy to the world?”
Franklin explores the influences of the collective imagination in movies, novels and stories from obscure pre-World War I fiction to modern classics such as Slaughterhouse Five and Dr. Strangelove. War Stars interweaves culture, science, technology and history to demonstrate how the American consciousness shapes ingenious new superweapons while creating its antithesis in art.
Guest – Bruce Franklin, American cultural historian who has authored or edited nineteen books on a range of subjects. As of 2008, he is the John Cotton Dana Professor of English and American Studies at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. He first attained prominence as a Melville scholar and has served as president of the Melville Society. His award-winning books and teaching on science fiction played a major role in establishing academic study of the genre. His books on American prison literature have been said to open an entirely new field of study. His most recent work has focused on relations between the marine environment and American cultural history.
We hear excerpts from speeches at the Brecht Forum by our own Michael Smith and Citizen Soldier’s Tod Ensign. The anti-war soldier panel started with Michael Smith describing his work defending anti-war GI’s at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina and the formation of the GI Civil Liberties Defense Committee.
Anti-war GI’s were pivotal to the movement’s success. The growing protests from within the U.S. military today echo the Vietnam War soldiers experience. The panel discusses the role of anti-war GI organizing in the anti-war movements from 1917 to 1968 and to the present.
There are several significant events surrounding the US policy on torture taking place this week. Already last week, the US Senate Committee on Armed Services held hearings on the origins of aggressive interrogation techniques. Among the events this week is the fifth session of the United Nations Committee against Torture, Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in Geneva.
Amnesty International releases a report on torture and unfair trials in Tunisia’s war on terror, Amnesty International’s Guantanamo prison cell replica opens to the public in Washington, DC, through Sunday, June 29 and there is also the World Day in Support of Victims of Torture.
