Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Gaza, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power
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Middle East Update: Egypt, Israel and the United States
Labor strikes continue in Egypt as tourism declines and the crime rate increases. There have been many strikes including Egyptian police unions who are demanding higher wages. We’re joined by writer and Middle East activist Phyllis Bennis. She is the director at the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. Phyllis has recently returned from Egypt and she joins us today for an update and analysis. Update on Egypt Gaza Border
Phyllis Bennis:
- The trip to Egypt merged my work with the Israel-Palestine issue and my broader work in the region of US policy towards the Arab Spring.
- There are no guarantees that the incredible accomplishments of the Arab Spring will lead to the new democratic opening in Egyptian society let alone the Egyptian economy, that people are working for.
- Everybody agrees that the wall of fear that made possible the kind of Mubarak dictatorship, that led to the collaboration of Egypt and Israel, under US auspices in repressing Palestinians and imposing the siege on Gaza, that that’s no longer going to be possible.
- The widespread use of arrests and torture, torture was far more prevalent and routine in Egypt. I’ve studied the region for years, and I didn’t know how ordinary it was.
- Every sector in society in Egypt, were engaged in meetings. Women’s organizations, privacy rights groups, trade unions, the labor movement.
- There’s a lot of fear, but also a sense of excitement in the ability for people to fight back and new levels of unity across sectarian lines, across generational lines, across class.
- The question of the role of the US remains very key. Egypt’s new foreign minister Nabil al-Arabi, says the siege of Gaza must end. Permanently opening the border to Gaza.
- Egypt’s military will play a role in the border to Gaza. Now the foreign minister position is up for grabs again.
- The media in Egypt is overwhelmingly in Arabic. Al-Aron, the flagship daily newspaper in Egypt, longest state run newspaper, now reflects the interest and approach of the new government.
- Regarding elections, I don’t think there was a unified left position and a right.
- If the elections were held soon, there is a sense that Mubarak’s NDP, National Democratic Party and the Muslim Brotherhood, those existing parties would trounce everyone else.
- Many support quick elections which are due to be held next month.
- Anytime you have a progressive revolutionary process underway that’s being guaranteed by the old military, you’re kind of in trouble.
- I heard one Egyptian commentator exalted about one of Mubarak’s son being in the same jail cell that he spent many months in. This has not been a economic revolution, we have not seen an overturning of the neo-liberal economic policies.
- Israel and Palestine: The code for land swaps is that Israel gets to keep the 3 main settlement blocks as a starting point.
- We’re talking 40 percent of the land in the West Bank. Obama’s soaring rhetoric, “we stand with the impoverished fruit seller in the streets of Tunisia, rather than with the dictator”
- Obama’s main challenge was how do we position ourselves to be a friend of democracy while maintaining our strategic alliances with the existing dictators.
Guest – Phyllis Bennis, directs the New Internationalism Project at IPS. She is also a fellow of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. She has been a writer, analyst, and activist on Middle East and UN issues for many years. In 2001 she helped found and remains on the steering committee of the U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation.
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Resistance Maintains In Wisconsin
Protests continue in Wisconsin against the union busting bill signed by Governor Scott Walker in March. The demonstrations are also aimed at the anti-people measures contained in the budget proposal that would cut more than 3.5 billion dollars from services that help the poor and working class. There is still a chance that this bill will not become law. An injunction is in place because of the people’s massive resistance. The movement demands are full legalization for immigrants, oppose budget cuts, keep in state tuition for immigrant students and oppose any legislation that targets immigrants in Wisconsin.
Professor Paul Buhle:
- The new governor announced drastic changes under the “budget repair” bill. Virtually a bargaining rights of public union employees would be rescinded.
- Basic environmental laws would be repealed, and communities that came up with a minus budget would fall under the control of political appointees who could replace them.
- As this was attempted to being passed in the Senate, 14 Democrats fled the state and remained sequestered for a couple of weeks.
- While in Madison, crowds ranging from 1000, to 100 thousand, circled the Capitol on an almost daily basis, and sat in, slept in on the Capitol rotunda for 2-3 weeks.
- As in other states and in Congress, the Republicans insist that pay and benefits of public workers were greater than those in private sector, factories have fled and private sector workers are doing so much worse,
- The idea of public unions was illogical and needed to be cut back because they were a powerful voting block.
- The response from the unions was if belt tightening is necessary we expect everyone to do it, but don’t take away our bargaining rights and our basis for dignified labor.
- Not when huge tax benefits are being delivered to corporations. Its not a mystery that the Koch Brothers from Kansas were the major backers of Scott Walker’s campaign. They set up an office only a block from the Capitol. They are very likely the architects of the ideas and the plans.
- Public resources are being sold off with no bid contracts.
- Both sides are geared up around current and ongoing legal processes that are beyond the ken of the ordinary Wisconsinites.
- Some members of the Democratic party were not happy with the mass demonstrations.
- Wisconsin protests effected most emphatically Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Maine.
- There has been an occupation at the Capitol of Washington State It was incumbent to us to show up once a day, some of us twice a day, to march around the Capitol. There’s a deep ambiguity here, on the one hand the Republicans have to be smashed.
- The Obama signs all went down from the yards a long time ago. There’s an ambivalence here, and its reflected nationally.
Guest – Paul Buhle, senior lecturer at Brown University, a historian of American radicals, a former member of Students for a Democratic Society and author of many books including images of American Radicalism, Che, A Graphic Biography, and Isordore Duncan, a graphic biography by Sabrina Jones.
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Civil Liberties, Gaza, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Egypt’s Aftermath and Continued Arab Protests
Civil rights lawyer and former president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Abdeen Jabara joins co-host Michael Smith in the studio. Jabara gives an update and analysis on the current political and economic shifts in Egypt. Meanwhile Israel recently celebrated the day it declared independence on May 14, 1948, the Nakba. More than 60 years later, Palestinian descendants remain the central issue within the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Last week a wave of coordinated Arab protests hit Israel on 4 of its borders. Protesters were shot and killed when they clashed with Israeli forces at the Lebanon, Syrian, West Bank and Gaza borders.
Abdeen Jabara:
- There’s been a break down of law and order in Egypt, there’s been a rise in the crime rate.
- There’s been a huge drop in income from lack of tourism. There have been various strikes, and even the police went on strike demanding higher wages. People have broken out of various prisons. The situation is very much in flux.
- Two sections of an Egyptian elite maintain control over popular forces.
- There were those that were the nouveau riche, that were being promoted by Gamal Mubarak.
- Many of them have been arrested and are in jail for ill-gotten gains.
- One of the most serious problems in Egypt have been, this neo-liberal development where they were trying to sell off state owned business.
- Open Door Policy, wanting Egypt to become part of the Western camp.
- Will there only be change in a cosmetic fashion where there is no change in the basic relationship with the people. That is the real issue.
- I think a lot depends upon the Army. Egypt is a very poor country and its main sources of income other tourism is the Suez Canal, finished clothes and canned goods.
- Under the Mubarak leadership in order to go on strike you had to get permission from the executive council of the trade union movement. Since the fall of Mubarak, you’ve seen much more labor activism.
- We will be seeing Europe and the United States pouring money into the various formations in the country.
- Israel and Palestine: I think we’re going to see something new now, with all this turmoil.
- We have to understand that the Europeans have been developing some distance on the Middle East issue. The United States and Israel are becoming more isolated in the world. The United States has never been an honest broker in this situation.
- Flotilla will leave in latter part of June, will have ten boats from different European and North American countries. Wednesday May 25, Flotilla Fund Raiser – UStoGaza.org
Guest – Abdeen Jabara, civil rights lawyer and former president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
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The American Dream As We Know It Is Obsolete
Will the Wisconsin and other state union protests be a catalyst for a general strike? Right now, the Wisconsin demonstrations are aimed at restoring collective bargaining rights for public servants, the goal to a middle class. Reject the opiate of the middle class idealism says our next guest. The revolution must be carefully thought out and be modeled on the ground breaking uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. How could unions prepare their strategy to include a broader support base? Unions could build alliances with single mothers, the poor, immigrants, the elderly and a wide range of groups.
Arun Gupta:
- It bugged me as all these progressives defended the middle class. I’ve been studying the Tea Party lately. Is the middle class really under attack? The core of the Tea Party is middle class, very entrepreneurial, than more management supervisory.
- There’s a duel movement going on with the Republican attack. Social welfare and public sector jobs.
- In Wisconsin, a population of 5 million, there are 200 thousand public sector jobs
- We should expand our notion of who are defending and what are we fighting for?
- I think Krugman is the most egregious, he says the 1950s was era without great extremes of wealth and poverty.
- Really? There were no Rockefellers and sharecroppers in Mississippi?
- How do we understand the 1950s? We have to go back to the term corporatism. Corporatism doesn’t mean corporation, its derived from corpus meaning body. The government is a mediator between significant sectors of society.
- American capitalism had needed the domestic market. Corporations don’t need internal consumption anymore.
- Capitalism has unmoored itself from geography. For high speed rail in the US, who will build it? The companies that are the most advanced are in China, Germany and South Korea.
- If Obama wanted to spend billions on high speed rail, the US doesn’t have the base, the human intellectual base to compete with Germany and South Korea. We’d have to put tariffs on their goods then you raise the scenario of a trade war.
- Then we’re back in the 1930s which brought on the war. People are not really thinking about the hidden ideologies of green jobs and defending the middle class.
- I’ve seen hopeful potential, these movements pop up and recede so quickly. The immigrants rights movements.
- During revolutions, it is something wonderful, people want to become better people.
- What we don’t hear much about are the little Mubaraks in Egypt, in factories, the workplace, dictators all over the place, and they’re being ousted.
- The Right likes mass movements like the tea party, the Democrats hate mass movements.
Guest – Arun Gupta, Founding editor of the The Indypendent. He recently wrote The American Dream As We Know It Is Obsolete: Why progressives need to think beyond the mantra of creating a “middle class America.”
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Gaza, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power, War Resister
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The Irvine 11 Case
In what appears to be a growing government trend of prosecuting outspoken supporters of Palestine, 11 Muslim students were arrested for disrupting a speech–in this case that of the ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren. The incident took place last year on the campus of the University of California at Irvine. The local District Attorney claims that the students had no right to disrupt the event, charging them with conspiracy to shut down the ambassador’s speech, even though he was able to complete the speech. Supporters claim that the Muslim students’ actions are protected by the first Amendment, and that are being charged for being vocal critics of Israel.
Defense attorneys claim that the District Attorney has acted irregularly, first by using an investigative grand jury to look into felony charges, even though the students were charged with two misdemeanors. Second, in the course of the investigation prosecutors obtained vast personal electronic records from Google and Hotmail; they then released some of these documents to the media in what appears to be an attempt to influence public opinion against the 11 students.
Attorney Daniel Mayfield:
- As far as disruptions go it was about the most peaceful you could imagine. Michael Oren is invited to speak on campus, it is a hybrid event. Partially sponsored by off campus organizations and off campus organizations.
- When Mr Oren begins to speak say for a minute or two, the first of the 11 defendants stands up to interrupt him to make a statement about Gaza.
- That person then walks to the edge of the auditorium and submits to an arrest and is removed from the auditorium.
- There are roughly five law enforcement groups present. Campus police, Irvine police, county sherrifs, secret service agents, Israeli agents.
- There’s a lot jeering and clapping on both sides. This happens 11 times.
- After the 11th student stands up, all of the students that are opposed to Mr Oren stand up, start a chant and they leave. Mr Oren then finishes his speech.
- The students are disciplined, the Muslim Student Association at Irvine is ordered off campus for 6 months. By June 2010, everyone thinks the case is over.
- In December of 2010, the District Attorney of Orange County, they convene a Grand Jury.
- Under California law you can only convene a Grand Jury when investigating a felony. They claim they’re investigating a felony. In the affidavits to the judge they swear under penalty of perjury that they’re investigating a felony.
- They call witnesses to this Grand Jury, when they’re challenged, they tell the judge they’re investigating a felony. Then the Grand Jury doesn’t issue an indictment.
- An investigative Grand Jury, not that different from what’s happened in Chicago.
- So the DA has amassed, all of this material, they’ve gotten phone records and email messages.
- They asked Google, Hotmail, Gmail, all of those to turn over the emails and they do. Thousands and thousands of emails, 10 CDs.
- I don’t believe the District Attorney is going to drop these charges. They’ve dumped roughly half a million dollars into this case.
- At this point they’ve assigned 3 deputy attorneys, including 2 of their primary homicide DAs. Pulled off of homicide to work on 2 misdemeanors.
- Our goal is to win this case on motions. Because that meeting was political because poltiical meetings are excluding from the penal code section that we’re interested in here.
- We believe that we can win this case, by arguing on the law before the judge, that they don’t have the right to proceed. The speech by Michael Oren was thought of as a response to the organizing around the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions work.
Guest – Attorney Daniel Mayfield, one of the attorneys on the legal defense team and co-author of the motion and a National Lawyers Guild member.
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Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions – The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights by Omar Barghouti
The boycott, divest, sanction movement was launched in 2005. It calls upon conscientious citizens of the world to shoulder the load of responsibility of holding Israel accountable to international law and principles of human rights. The BDS movement urges those citizens to support 3 basic rights. UN sanctioned rights of the Palestinian people, ending the 1967 occupation, and ending the system of racial discrimination in Israel, the right of return of refugees in accordance with UN resolution 194.
In boycotting, corporations and countries around the world are urges to stop buying products that support Israeli infrastructure such as Loreal, Motorola, Caterpillar, and many more. Sanctions, would target those companies exporting to Israel and applying tariffs or trade barriers. Divest or disinvestment, a call to divest from companies, institutions and universities that support Israel’s occupation and lobby power. Co-host Michael Ratner interviewed independent Palestinian commentator and human rights activist Omar Barghouti in the middle of his book tour.
Omar Barghouti:
- The BDS movement was launched in 2005 which calls upon conscientious citizens of the world to shoulder the load of responsibility of holding Israel accountable to international law and principles of human rights.
- The BDS call urges to support 3 basic rights. UN sanctioned rights of the Palestinian people, ending the 1967 occupation, ending the system of racial discrimination in Israel, the right of return of refugees in accordance with UN resolution 194.
- 80 percent of Gazans are refugees. According to International law, they have the right to go back home.
- We look around and look at how International law is being applied in other situations.
- Jewish communities are reclaiming properties stolen by the Nazis or by their collaborators all over Europe.
- Only when it comes to Palestinian refugee rights does it become a demographic threat to Israel.
- There’s some divine right given to Israel to maintain an ethno-centric state, at the expense of applying International law.
- Palestinians of Israel are not considered nationals of Israel. Israel is the only country on Earth that has this two tiered system of nationality. You’re only a national if you’re Jewish.
- Any Jewish person from New York can go tomorrow and can become a national immediately.
- Palestinians in Israel, citizens of Israel, can’t buy, rent or live on about 93 percent of the land.
- Israel’s discrimination acts like a set of sieves, that have finer and finer holes as you move up towards college, filtering out more Palestinians so you have a very small percentage on top.
- Because Palestinians can vote becomes a form of tokenism, when you discrimination in land, jobs, everything.
- Israel is losing the veneer of sophistication and nuance. It’s becoming a brute form of apartheid.
- Loyalty Oath.
- Israel has lost the battle for hearts and minds and its resorting to bigger sticks.
- BDS, in less than six years we’ve achieved more than our comrades in South Africa that lasted 20 years.
- In a study of Israeli academics who had stood up against the occupation: hundreds of academics in a community of 9 thousand have done anything public against the occupation. BDS is not a political party, its not an ideology.
- Those who think they can decide for the Palestinians what our basic rights are, ignoring International law and basic principles of human rights, are racist. BDS is a living movement that is growing tremendously.
Guest – Omar Barghouti, the founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and the Palestinian Civil Society Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Gaza, Human Rights, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims
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Middle East Protests – Israel / Palestine
Uprisings have continued to sweep through the middle east from Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, Iran, Iraq and China. Economic hardships and desperate living conditions are partly the cause for some of the mass protests. In one article describing the Wisconsin protests, the journalist wrote, there were many voices this last month that raised the cry, “We are all Egyptians!”
Governments are said to be scrambling to squelch popular dissent. How will these protests begin to reshape countries in the middle east and and what government structures are standing by to replace decadent tyrannies and corrupt monarchies? How are Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank responding to the massive dissent in nearby Arab countries?
Ali Abunimah:
- The events over the past weeks have been historic and we still don’t know how they’re all going to play out.
- The aspirations of Tunisians, Egyptians, Libyans, Jordanians, Palestinians are very clear.
- What remains to be seen is if they succeed in completing the revolutions. There is a strong counter-revolutionary push, not just from old regime elements but also from the United States.
- The mass uprising was sudden, but its important to know that there were Egyptian activists risking their lives for many many years to lay the ground for the uprising.
- The upper echelons of the Army are fully implicated in the old regime.
- You have a parade of Americans going to Egypt trying to minimize any shift in the region away from the Israeli-American axis and more into an independent orbit.
- The only guarantee is the continued mobilization of Egyptian people, of Egyptian workers.
- One of the myths in the American media is that this uprising is entirely about internal domestic issues.
- The Rafah crossing into Palestine needs to be open permanently, the situation at the border normalized.
- Egypt’s revolution and Israel: “Bad for the Jews” Ilan Pappe, The Electronic Intifada, 14 February 2011
- The view from Israel is that if they indeed succeed, the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions are very bad. They make the Israeli occupation and apartheid policies in Palestine look like the acts of a typical “Arab” regime.
- The war in Gaza probably could not have been carried out without Egyptian complicity.
- In Palestine, the complete death of the peace process. The Palestine Papers – revealed by Al Jazeera.
- You can’t have functioning democracy and normal politics under Israel’s occupation.
- Your rights are not given to you from above, you have to fight for them.
Guest – Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian American journalist and author of One Country, A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse and a co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, a not-for-profit, independent online publication about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Born in Washington D.C., he spent his early years in the United Kingdom and Belgium before returning to the United States to attend college.
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Cracks In The Neo-Liberal Empire
Political unrest in North Africa continue to ripple through the Middle East with some of the biggest anti-government demonstration yet in Bahrain. Meanwhile, the protests in Libya have turned deadly as the regime’s military has killed hundreds of demonstrators. New York Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and History Zachary Lockman joins us with an analysis on the mass protests. In Egypt, Lockman says the old political parties in Egypt have no credibility.
Professor Zachary Lockman:
- Egypt: There were huge labor strikes going back to 2008. One of the groups that launched on January 25, called itself the April 6 youth movement – called itself that because there was supposed to be a big general strike of textile workers in 2008.
- The tremendous demand from Egyptians which help fuel the uprising, for some kind of change to the neo-liberal economic policies that Mubarak regime implemented 20 years ago.
- Egypt back in the 50s and 60s under the Nassir government carried through a series of social reforms.
- The largest estates held by the largest land owners were broken up, and millions of landless peasants even if they didn’t get land, they could farm some land and have reasonable security.
- Those kinds of things were rolled back in the 1990s under pressure from the IMF and the World Bank and with the approval of US government.
- Which means these farmers were kicked off the land in large number and ended up having to move to the cities in search of work for meager wages.
- Much of the public sector was privatized at fire sale prices to cronies of Mubarak.
- This is an opportunity when millions of Egyptian workers see an opportunity to create their own independent trade union movement. One doesn’t want to downplay the heroism of the young people who took to the streets on January 25.
- Mubarak was told to go by the generals who were told to preserve as much of the regime as possible in the face of this popular uprising. The generals now running Egypt are products of the Mubarak regime. The danger is that we’ll have the Mubarak regime without Mubarak.
- There is a new independent federation trade union being established in different industries. (Egypt)
- If there is something that approaches a more representative, democratic government, that government will be less likely to take orders from Washington in the way that Mubarak was very happy to.
- We’ve been waiting for something like this for decades, and in Egypt’s case for 30 years.
- It opens up dramatic new possibilities on a world scale. That boogieman of Islamic threat used to justify autocratic regimes which has been used across the region, is still there but as we’ve seen in Egypt and elsewhere, it’s time to put it aside.
- Since the 1970s, Saudi Arabia which has been on the defensive of more nationalist Pan Arab forces asserted it’s influence to buy friends and intimidate enemies and has been the bulwark of this conservative autocratic origin in the region.
Guest – Professor Zachary Lockman, New York Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and History. He is the author of many books including Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism and “Explorations in the Field: Lost Voices and Emerging Practices in Egypt, 1882-1914.”Background: My main research and teaching field is the socioeconomic, cultural and political history of the modern Middle East, particularly the Mashriq. Under the influence of the “new social history” and “history from below” movements of the 1960s and 1970s, I did my doctoral dissertation on the emergence and evolution of a working class and labor movement in Egypt from the late nineteenth century until the Second World War; it was published in 1987 in a book co-authored with Joel Beinin. Harvard University, Ph. D., 1983.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Gaza, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict.
It’s been more than 2 years since Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, a massive surprise air strike against the Gaza Strip. In its aftermath, researchers began to unearth and document evidence of war crimes, human rights violations. Among those investigations was the Goldstone Report officially titled the Report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza. The report is based on a course of investigations that include 188 interviews, the review of 10 thousand pages of documents and the inspection of 1200 photographs. While most war crimes reports fade into the night, The Goldstone Report is kept alive in a recent book titled The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict.
The authors Lizzy Ratner, Adam Horowitz and Philip Weiss have reprinted the central findings of the report and include 11 essays chronicling the report’s ongoing impact. The introduction is written by author Naomi Klein with a forward by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
The Goldstone Report:
- LR: Operation Cast Lead: I remember thinking, can this just happen? Is there some kind of law that says this can’t happen? Judge Goldstone is South African, he was a member of the Constitutional Court in South Africa. He is seen as someone who really advanced international law.
- He’s a big Zionist. He’s a committed Zionist. In Israel, they loved him before this report.
- He was fast friends with the head of the Supreme Court in Israel.
- He goes to Gaza in 2009. It’s interesting he remark that thought that he would be kidnapped by Hamas. I think what happened, he went and he saw what life was like in Gaza, and had a bit of a conversion.
- This is not somebody you would expect to come out and issue a report like this.
- Our mission was there’s this report out there, it’s controversial, thunderous, it’s convulsive. Not many people have read it. Once we read it, it became clear, it’s contents were extraordinary.
- It lays out the events of Gaza in minute and devastating detail. We wanted to abridge the report and that really forms the core of the book.
- We have a series of 11 different essays. Each take for the Goldstone Report with a different perspective.
- PW: The first and last essays are from Gazans.
- It’s explained in very vivid terms what it’s like to be under assault, to see white phosphorous raining down on this strip, which is tiny, it’s the size of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket put together. 1.5 million people.
- Rogi’s thesis just itemizing this assault on Palestinian dignity, saying this is a basic human right, to live in dignity.
- Goldstone: Lack of discrimination between civilians and combatants. A deliberate attack on the civilian infrastructure on the means of life. Israel had several recourses before it launched an all out assault on civilian infrastructure.
- The Goldstone Report contradicts what Israel tends to say. One of things the report makes clear is there had been a cease fire for 6 months before the attack.
- United States – We’re not going to stop you Israel when you inflict collective punishment on 1.5 million people.
- This book really helps give a window into the current perception of the Israel, Palestinian conflict as a whole and how that perception is changing.
- AH: The anti-Goldstone report speeches were very uninformed. They treated him like a witch and ex-communicated him from the Jewish community. Goldstonereportbook.com
- The criminality, the complete selfishness, the utter indifference to other peoples lives.
- I realize how much I was made to hate Arab people and Palestinian people and to think that they were lesser.
- Everything you’ve heard was wrong about them.
- At the heart of it, the Goldstone Report tells the story of people who had to live through a horribly traumatic event. You won’t be able to dismiss 1300 people being killed as people that should have died.
- LR: Stop it Jewish people, you’re doing the wrong thing, you’re behaving in an immoral, unethical way and its wrong. Any human should be offended from what happens in Gaza and what still happens there.
Guests – Lizzy Ratner, Adam Horowitz and Philip Weiss
Lizzy Ratner a journalist here in New York City, her articles appear in many publications including The Nation and Alternet.
Adam Horowitz is an editor and journalist covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, he co-edits the blog Mondoweiss and is a founding member of Jews Against the Occupation.
Phil Weiss, founder of the blog Mondoweiss, is a longtime journalist and regular contributor to the Nation and a fellow at the Nation Institute He’s the author of two books a political novel, Cock-A-Doodle-Doo, and American Taboo, an investigative account of a 1976 murder in the Peace Corps in the Kingdom of Tonga.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Gaza, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Ohio Supermax: Hunger Strike In Long Term Solitary Confinement
In an Ohio Super Max prison, 4 prisoners facing execution are confined to permanent restrictive solitary confinement. They’re on a hunger strike, bringing attention to their requests to simply be placed on death row. What’s the difference? Death row isn’t as restrictive as permanent solitary confinement. Jules Lobel, Vice President of the Center for Constitutional Rights and Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh explains in detail the differences of regular prison, death row and solitary confinement conditions.
Jules is working to defend the prisoners, he says that long term, essentially permanent and very harsh solitary confinement is both cruel and unusual punishment that violates due process requirement of annual review. The state of Ohio has decided to keep these four in solitary confinement permanently. It’s not only in Ohio, permanent solitary confinement is becoming a problem nationally, particularly with people convicted of terrorism related offenses, including material aid to terrorism.
Jules Lobel:
Guest – Jules Lobel, through the U.S. Center for Constitutional Rights, Jules has litigated important issues regarding the application of international law in the U.S. courts. In the late 1980’s, he advised the Nicaraguan government on the development of its first democratic constitution, and has also advised the Burundi government on constitutional law issues. Professor Lobel is editor of a text on civil rights litigation and of a collection of essays on the U.S. Constitution, A Less Than Perfect Union (Monthly Review Press, 1988). He is author of numerous articles on international law, foreign affairs, and the U.S. Constitution in publications including Yale Law Journal, Harvard International Law Journal, Cornell Law Review, and Virginia Law Review. He is a member of the American Society of International Law
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Defending Grand Jury Protesters
As many listeners know, last September in a nationally coordinated raid, the FBI targeted anti-war and Palestinian solidarity activists, raided their homes and subpoenaed them to appear before a grand jury. The 13 people all of whom were critical of US foreign policy, later withdrew and asserted their right to remain silent. But in early December of 2010 subpoenas were reissued against 4 of those targeted in the raids. Three women in Minneapolis, Tracy Molm, Anh Pham, and Sara Martin were sent reactivated subpoenas by Fitzgerald’s office and new Grand Jury dates.
We’re joined by Chicago based journalist and activist Maureen Murphy who also received a new subpoena. Maureen is managing editor at the website Electronic Intifada, though the site is not being targeted in the FBI probe. In a statement, the Electronic Intifada said, quote, “Although The Electronic Intifada itself has not been a target, we consider the grand jury investigation and all of the subpoenas to be part of a broad attack on the anti-war and Palestine solidarity movements and a threat to all of our rights.”
We are also joined by regular guest, attorney Michael Deutsch from the People’s Law Office and is working with the defense committee.
Maureen Murphy:
- I don’t know why its happening, we do know that no crime has been identified. There’s nothing written on my subpoena that I need to bring any documents.
- We believe that the government is subpoenaing us so that we come before a grand jury and name names, and tell them how we organize so they can further disrupt their movement. I’m one of 23 activists now who have gotten the knock at the door. My subpoena says nothing but show up, so I think this is really a fishing expedition.
- In one home they took everything with the word Palestine on it.
- The government has expended a lot of resources on an investigation of a group that has always worked pubicly to advocate for a more just US policy. I was visited by the FBI on December 21, 2010.
- A national committee that has formed around the raids and subpoenas is calling for a day of action January 25, in front of federal buildings and FBI headquarters.
- I’ve already stated that I’m not going to testify.
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Michael Deutsch:
- In December the FBI went out with a stack of subpoenas, and wound up subpoenaing 9 additional people in the Chicago area which then makes 23.
- These people who are subpoenaed are all active in Palestinian support work. Arab American Action Network, Palestinian Support Group. This next wave of subpoenas are people who are they’re trying to gather information from.
- I’ve never in all my experience seen so many people subpoenaed to a grand jury.
- A lot of the Palestine support work has gone on in Chicago.
- Originally 14 people were subpoenaed and each one through their lawyer said they weren’t not going to voluntarily come in. Now they haven’t decided to enforce the subpoena, they said well get back to you when we decide what we’re going to do.
- There are 23 people lined up trying to figure out what the next step of the government is.
- These prosecutors don’t seem to know who they’re dealing with. They see the grand jury as a tool of oppression.
- I believe that the Israeli security apparatus is involved in supplying information to the US government.
- There’s no evidence here of any type of violence or weapons. We’re dealing with advocacy and associations.
- Despite Holder v the Humanitarian Law Project, we believe that it’s a total violation of the First Amendment.
- The underlying tenor is going after people because of their political ideology.
Guest – Maureen Murphy is a journalist and Palestine solidarity activist from Chicago. She spent a few years living and traveling throughout the Middle East, interning for the Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq in the occupied West Bank in 2004-06 before she was denied entry and deported by the Israeli government. She also lived in Lebanon in 2007, learning about the human rights situation for Palestine refugees and the impact of U.S. foreign policy there.
Guest – Michael Deutsch, attorney with the People’s Law Office in Chicago.
