Ahead of the 2022 Qatar World Cup, calls to de-politicize sports seem ridiculous and senseless upon examining the inseparable historical connection between sports and politics.
Debunking the myth of ‘de-politicizing’ sports
A few days before the 2022 Qatar World Cup, French President Emmanuel said that sport should not be politicized.
“I think we must not politicize sport,” said Macron, whose national team is defending the title it won in Russia in 2018.
Macron, who will go to Qatar if the French team reaches the semifinals, said it was “a very bad idea to politicize sport,” noting that France will host the Olympic Games in 2024.
This comes amid a wave of criticism that Qatar is being subjected to over reports that many migrant workers — predominantly from South Asia and South-East Asia and Africa — have suffered from exploitation and widespread labor abuses while working on the Gulf country’s World Cup projects.
Doha is also accused of allegedly paying bribes to some football federations in exchange for winning the right to host the FIFA World Cup on its territory.
It seems that the French President is contradicting himself and has apparently “forgotten” his interference and role in ensuring that French player Kylian Mbappe remains in France with his current team Paris Saint-Germain (PSG), as well as forcing coach Didier Deschamps to call Real Madrid player Karim Benzema to the French national team and participate in the 2020 European Championship, as per investigative journalist Romain Molina.
It also seems that Macron has forgotten that his country’s football federation did politicize sport and was the first to call for the expulsion of the Russian national team from the 2022 World Cup following the start of the war in Ukraine, showing clear double standards and turning a blind eye on several other issues pertaining to human rights, such as Israeli occupation crimes against Palestinians for example.
Soon after the Ukraine war broke out, numerous sports governing bodies suspended Russia from international competitions. However, these bans coincided with unprecedented support for Ukraine despite these bodies banning any other form of political or religious expression on the field.
Solidarity with #Ukraine is being shown across stadiums worldwide, breaking the sports no-politics doctrine. On the other hand, athletes and football clubs were fined and even punished for showing support for #Palestine. Who's politicizing the matter? #Russiapic.twitter.com/GVZ6Sxjyfl
Aside from the French President’s shallow argument, let’s not forget that, historically, sports have always been intertwined with politics and used as a theater to promote political ideology, voice political messages and criticism, shift diplomatic feuds to sports arenas, and whitewash human rights violations by political regimes – also known as sportswashing.
Several sports clubs around the world were even established on the basis of politics, were influenced by their founders who are usually into politics, and their fans follow certain political ideologies.
Felix Jakens, head of Priority Campaigns and Individuals at Risk at Amnesty International UK, defines sportswashing as “a process or moment where a country with a bad human rights record attempts to use sport as a way to create positive PR to clean up its image and deflect attention away from its human rights record.”
For example, when Italy was awarded the right to host the second FIFA World Cup in 1934, Italian fascist Benito Mussolini saw it as an opportunity to whitewash his regime’s image in front of the international community, despite the heinous crimes committed at the time.
Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini awarding the 1934 World Cup to Italy’s players (AP)
Similarly, Adolph Hitler used the 1936 Olympics held in Germany in an attempt to promote Nazism and prove the superiority of the Aryan-race athletes.
Adolph Hitler during the Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany in August 1936 (AP)
The same can be said about Argentina organizing the 1978 World Cup under the dictatorship of General Jorge Videla, where matches would be played a few meters away from where thousands of dissidents were being tortured.
On the other hand, the sports arena was also used, by athletes and fans, to protest injustice and show support for rightful causes.
In fact, when late boxing champion Muhammed Ali was drafted into the US Army to take part in the Vietnam war in 1966, the African-American athlete expressed his rejection of the decision, saying, “I will say directly, no, I will not go 10,000 miles to help kill innocent people.”
As a result, Ali was stripped of his title and suspended from boxing before the Supreme Court ruled in his favor in June 1971.
Boxing Heavyweight champion Muhammed Ali 1965 (AP)
In a related context, after receiving the gold and bronze medals for the men’s 200-meter race at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, African-American runners John Carlos and Tommie Smith raised a fist in a Black Power salute in protest of mistreatment and systematic racism in one of the most iconic images of 20th-century sports.
Despite being demonized by the press and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) later expelling the two from the Games, Smith said this act of activism “was a cry for freedom and for human rights” and that “we had to be seen because we couldn’t be heard.”
Tommie Smith and John Carlos (Bettmann/Bettmann Archive)
Most recently, in continuation of Carlos and Smith’s activism in the sports arena, several athletes all over the world “take a knee” before the start of games in protest of police brutality and systematic racism and in support of their victims, and multiple sports federations and clubs have endorsed this cause, especially after the death of African American George Floyd, who was brutally killed by a white police officer in the US city of Minneapolis.
When it comes to fandom, in late 2018, fans of the Raja Athletic Club of Casablanca (RCA), known for their endless support for the Palestinian cause, impressed the world with a new chant called “Fbladi Dalmouni,” i.e. “In my country, I suffered from injustice.”
The lyrics of the chant recount the suffering of the Moroccan youths and blame the country’s government for corruption, the economic situation, and oppressing freedom of expression.
RCA fans are only one example of the political messages and numerous causes that sports fans express during events in order to grab attention and make their voices heard against injustice and oppression.
Another example is notably Celtic F.C. fans, who have always openly declared their support for the Palestinian cause by abundantly raising Palestinian flags in their stadium, all whilst chanting pro-Palestinian anthems. FIFA usually fines the Scottish Football Association over Celtic fans’ acts of solidarity with the Palestinian people, deeming it “not appropriate for a sports event.”
In stark contrast, FIFA, along with other major sports bodies, allow themselves to practice double standards and violate their rules by hailing acts of solidarity with Ukraine.
As such, it becomes clear that amid such political activism in sports, as well as other similar acts, a call such as Macron’s to de-politicize sports seems ridiculous and senseless upon examining the inseparable historical connection between sports and politics.
The French President’s call is also unjust and would deprive athletes and fans of a huge platform to voice their opinion and shed light on their causes in a world full of injustices.
World Cup 2022.. How to involve the international conflict in the football event?
Yair Lapid (L), Naftali Bennett (C) and Mansour Abbas. (Photo: via Wikimedia Commons)
– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is “Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak out”. Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website iswww.ramzybaroud.net
Regardless of the outcome of the latest Israeli elections, Arab parties will not reap meaningful political benefits, even if they collectively achieve their highest representation ever. The reason is not about the parties themselves, but in Israel’s skewed political system which is predicated on racism and marginalization of non-Jews.
Israel was established on a problematic premise of being a homeland of all Jews, everywhere – not of Palestine’s own native inhabitants – and on a bloody foundation, that of the Nakba and the destruction of historic Palestine and the expulsion of its people.
Such beginnings were hardly conducive to the establishment of a real democracy, perfect or blemished. Not only did Israel’s discriminatory attitude persist throughout the years, it actually worsened, especially as the Palestinian Arab population rose disproportionally compared to the Jewish population between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
The unfortunate reality is that some Arab parties have participated in Israeli elections since 1949, some independently and others under the ruling Mapei party umbrella. They did so despite Arab communities in Israel being ruled by a military government (1951-1966) and practically governed, until this day, by the unlawful ‘Defense (Emergency Regulations)’. This participation has constantly been touted by Israel and its supporters as proof of the state’s democratic nature.
This claim alone has served as the backbone of Israeli hasbara throughout the decades. Though often unwittingly, Arab political parties in Israel have provided the fodder for such propaganda, making it difficult for Palestinians to argue that the Israeli political system is fundamentally flawed and racist.
Palestinian citizens have always debated among themselves about the pros and cons of taking part in Israeli elections. Some understood that their participation validates the Zionist ideology and Israeli apartheid, while others argued that refraining from participating in the political process denies Palestinians the opportunity to change the system from within.
The latter argument has lost much of its merit, as Israel sank deeper into apartheid, while social, political and legal conditions for Palestinians worsened. The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (Adalah) reports on dozens of discriminatory laws in Israel that exclusively target Arab communities. Additionally, in a report published in February, Amnesty International describes thoroughly how the “representation of Palestinian citizens of Israel in the decision making process … has been restricted and undermined by an array of Israeli laws and policies.”
This reality has existed for decades, long before July 19, 2018, when the Israeli parliament approved the so-called Jewish Nation-State Basic Law. The Law was the most glaring example of political and legal racism, which made Israel a full-fledged apartheid regime.
The Law was also the most articulate proclamation of Jewish supremacy over Palestinians in all aspects of life, including the right to self-determination.
Those who have argued that Arab participation in Israeli politics served a purpose in the past should have done more than collectively denounce the Nation-State law, by resigning en masse, effective immediately. They should have taken advantage of the international uproar to convert their struggle from a parliamentary to a popular grassroots one.
Alas, they have not. They continued to participate in Israeli elections, arguing that if they achieved greater representation in the Israeli Knesset, they should be able to challenge the tsunami of Israeli discriminatory laws.
This did not happen, even after the Joint List, which unified four Arab parties in the March 2020 elections, achieved its greatest turnout ever, becoming the Knesset’s third largest political bloc.
The supposed historic victory culminated to nil because all mainstream Jewish parties, regardless of their ideological backgrounds, refused to include Arab parties in their potential coalitions.
The enthusiasm that mobilized Arab voters behind the Joint List began to dwindle, and the List itself fragmented, thanks to Mansour Abbas, the head of the Arab party, Ra’am.
In the March 2021 elections, Abbas wanted to change the dynamics of Arab politics in Israel altogether. “We focus on the issues and problems of the Arab citizens of Israel within the Green Line,” Abbas told TIME magazine in June 2021, adding “we want to heal our own problems”, as if declaring a historic delink from the rest of the Palestinian struggle.
Abbas was wrong, as Israel perceives him, his followers, the Joint List and all Palestinians to be obstacles in its efforts to maintain the exclusivist ‘Jewish identity’ of the state. The Abbas experiment, however, became even more interesting, when Ra’am won 4 seats and joined a government coalition led by far-right, anti-Palestinian politician Naftali Bennet.
By the time the coalition collapsed in June, Abbas achieved little, aside from splitting the Arab vote and proving, again, that changing Israeli politics from within has always been a fantasy.
Even after all of this, Arab parties in Israel still insisted on participating in a political system that, despite its numerous contradictions, agreed on one thing: Palestinians are, and will always be, the enemy.
Even the violent events of May 2021, where Palestinians found themselves fighting on multiple fronts – against the Israeli army, police, intelligence services, armed settlers and even ordinary citizens – did not seem to change the Arab politicians’ mindset. Arab population centers in Umm Al-Fahm, Lydda and Jaffa, were attacked with the same racist mentality as Gaza and Sheikh Jarrah, illustrating that nearly 75 years of supposed integration between Jews and Arabs under Israel’s political system hardly changed the racist view towards Palestinians.
Instead of converting the energy of what Palestinians dubbed the ‘Unity Intifada’ to invest in Palestinian unity, Arab Israeli politicians returned to the Israeli Knesset, as if they still had hope in salvaging Israel’s inherently corrupt political system.
The self-delusion continues. On September 29, Israel’s Central Election Committee disqualified an Arab party, Balad, from running in the November elections. The decision was eventually overturned by the country’s Supreme Court, urging an Arab legal organization in Israel to describe the decision as ‘historic’. In essence, they suggested that Israel’s apartheid system still carries the hope of true democracy.
The future of Arab politics in Israel will remain grim if Arab politicians continue to pursue this failed tactic. Though Palestinian citizens of Israel are socio-economically privileged if compared to Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, they enjoy nominal or no substantive political or legal rights. By remaining loyal participants in Israel’s democracy charade, these politicians continue to validate the Israeli establishment, thus harming, not only Palestinian communities in Israel but, in fact, Palestinians everywhere.
(The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People. Walter Russell Mead. Alfred A Knopf, New York, 2022.)
In today’s world, a clear understanding of the relationship between the US and Israel is important – this is not the work to clear it up. Walter Mead’s hypothesis is that Israel does not control US governance, but that many other forces have shaped the relationship. With that, he is correct and in an overly long convoluted manner he is able to make that sort of clear. “The Arc of the Covenant,” for the arguments presented could have been well worked in half of its almost six hundred pages.
Instead, the book is a mix of theology, sociology, geopolitics, domestic politics, history, and biographical analysis of – mostly – various presidents of the US It really succeeds with none of them. It contains far too much theorizing and conjecture, discusses at length beliefs and morals, and has far too many unanswered rhetorical questions (okay, rhetorical questions really seek no answer, but there are far too many of them). The reader will not come away with a good understanding of Israel as the vast majority of the discussion is centered on US political maneuvering.
To his credit Mead is quite critical of many US failures around the world but mostly in the Middle East. Unfortunately that comes from a perspective, unstated but implied, that the US is the indispensable nation and acts with good intentions because of its moral strength and liberal beliefs. He does use “exceptionalism” frequently, implied or directly, giving support to the thought that Mead, without stating it directly, is a firm believer in the US being the world’s global policeman, “by the courageous use of necessary force.”
Omissions
There are far too many problems with the arguments presented in this work to counter them here, but it is what is missing that makes the arguments so weak.
While he discusses “national interests” and the ability of the US to use force to maintain peace (a lot of an oxymoron) he never discusses the US as an empire. Certainly the evil Russians and Chinese, and before World War I the Germans, Russian, and Ottomans were all the cause of that war as contending empires. British, French, Dutch, and other European empires are mentioned in passing, but he does not accept, or will not articulate, that the US is the largest empire the world has seen – militarily and economically, the two going hand in glove.
The massive 750 military bases around the world, mostly surrounding Russia and China, and that ability to use the global reserve currency, the petro-dollar (never mentioned in the book although oil is continually mentioned as a strategic value) and its associated institutions (WTO, BIS, World Bank, SWIFT et al) to impose destructive sanctions on countries that do not abide by its wishes is the modern form of imperialism.
He reiterates several times the US role in decolonization without recognition that it was the US that denied Vietnam its fair and democratic elections, denied Korea the right to vote for its post war government, created the CIA with its initial successes overthrowing governments in Iran and Guatemala in 1953. He admits US errors in Iraq, Libya, and – well not quite Syria, it was the “brutal” Russians that destroyed Syria, even while US forces remain in large parts of the country to this day. There is no mention of Operation Gladio, the occupation of Japan and Germany that continues today, nor the seemingly endless list of interventions to overthrow unfriendly regimes either through economic or military power.
Israel
When it comes to discussing Israel there are equally large omissions. A reasonable essay on Herzl’s machinations is given, but after that, he generally uses only passing mention of Israel’s settlements and the wall as the main components of Palestinian strife. He accepts that some people think of Israel as a “colonial-settler” enterprise but dismisses that thought as being on the radical left and of little importance.
He dismisses the idea that Israel is a racist (actually he never mentions that with Israel) and an apartheid state. The book is recent enough that the author is surely aware of the major institutional labels of Israel as apartheid, including Israel’s own B’etselem.
Nor does he get into the details of the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people as an ongoing process. The many discriminatory laws and policies, house destructions, the imprisonment, and the torture as an everyday occurrence of Palestinian life are never considered.
At the same time, Mead does not create a coherent history of Israel. In his concluding remarks Mead states, “….for both Israelis and Palestinians, two peoples whose fates have become intertwined in ways that neither side wanted or foresaw.” This is absolutely not true, as Jabotinsky, Herzl, Weismann, Ben Gurion and others – including most of the British political establishment – knew that depositing Jewish immigrants on land owned by Palestinians was a source of major problems as obviously the Palestinians recognized it as well.
He continues with “their private quarrel must be fought out in the glare of global publicity.” That at least is good news, as the balance of power, out of sight of global publicity, hugely puts Israel in a dominating position.
Finally he concludes “I have tried to shine a useful light on the relationship between the ways Americans think about the world and the approaches they develop to act in it.” Mission not accomplished as per the errors and omissions mentioned above among many others.
Current Events
“The Arc of a Covenant” was published shortly before the Russian invasion in Ukraine to prevent the ongoing shelling of the Donbas people by Ukrainian forces. Since then, it is clearly demonstrated that the “prime directive” (p. 13) of the US empire is the destruction of the Russian state and the containment of the power of China.
We are entering a new era where “the ways American think about the world and the approaches they develop to act in it” are clearly global dominance through financial and military means. All the purported values and morals are worthless when the true history of US imperial adventures are understood.
– Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews to Palestine Chronicles. His interest in this topic stems originally from an environmental perspective, which encompasses the militarization and economic subjugation of the global community and its commodification by corporate governance and by the American government.
It can certainly be said that the risk for nuclear war is far greater today than it was less a year ago. Ever since the conflict in Ukraine began, the collective West and its vassals, also known as the “international community” have been engaged in a hybrid war against Russia, stopping just short of direct confrontation. Although some EU leaders like Borrell seem to think that the West is an active combatant in the conflict. “We must explain to our citizens that this is not someone else’s war,” Borrell said in an interview published by newspaper El Pais on Thursday. “The public must be willing to pay the price of supporting Ukraine and for preserving the unity of the EU.”
“We are at war. These things are not free,” he added.
The same Borrell offered his thoughts on Western hypocrisy and double standards in international affairs, with regards to the Zionist slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza this past week. “We are often criticized for double standards. But international politics is to a large degree about applying double standards. We do not use the same criteria for all problems,” he told El Pais newspaper, as cited on Thursday. A rare piece of honesty for a man who makes his living by lying and deceiving others. Yet he failed to mention why those double standards exist. International politics is only about applying double standards when you’re an imperialist and colonizer. Of course he wouldn’t mention that they don’t “use the same criteria for all problems” when it is his masters in Tel Aviv that are the ones waging war on defenceless people.
So this proves that the West throwing tantrums to the left and right over Ukraine really has nothing to do with concern for civilian lives lost. Because when the Zionists massacre children with impunity, the “international community” is pretty silent.
Illegal sanctions, rabid Russophobia, and supplying Kiev with heavy weaponry despite the known dangers of doing so, all show the West’s deeply rooted hatred of Russia. If anyone was still delusional to think that this hatred had anything to do with President Putin only, then these past months should’ve proven that it is Russia and the Russians that the “international community” hates with a passion. Why else would they ban Russian athletes, journalists and even ordinary citizens? Of course, the case would’ve been much different had Russia given up on its sovereignty and offered its territory to Washington. Only a non-sovereign and non-independent Russia can be considered “democratic” in the eyes of this “international community.”
The same hatred can be seen towards any country that has chosen independence over subservience to the West. The self-worshipping and racist West has always hated those who resist Western attempts to colonize and ravage their countries. This is why they also hate China and Iran with a passion. Yes, yes, I am also aware that they even hate their own non-Western allies because of the racist nature of the West.
Over the years since the fall of the Eastern Bloc, China and Russia, adopted a policy of cooperation with the United States and tried to make the Americans understand that it is possible to interact instead of confronting each other. It can be said that the peak of this policy was when Putin even proposed Russia’s membership in NATO. Putin’s purpose in bringing up Russia’s membership in NATO was to determine whether NATO is still seeking to destroy Russia or not. Well, it quickly became completely clear to Russia that the Americans are looking for Russia’s destruction through the expansion of NATO right up to Russia’s borders.
The Americans are doing the same thing in East Asia, and despite the fact that China has tried to engage with them through interaction and not confrontation, they are officially and unofficially seeking to destroy China. Nancy Pelosi’s childish attempt to create tensions between China and Taiwan and setting the stage for war in this region is an example of the same type of animosity that Washington has engaged in with Russia. Maybe if there was no war in Europe, the Americans would have done something to start a war in East Asia, but it seems that they saw that currently, they cannot fight on two fronts and they preferred to delay the process of starting a war in East Asia.
This American policy is no different from the policies that caused the start of World War I and II, and the continuation of these policies can lead the world to a third world war, which due to the existence of weapons that can destroy the world many times over, it is possible to imagine that the start of such a war may be the end of humanity.
Today, it is no longer a secret or a “crazy delusion” that the West is in a state of decline. It has been for some time but the average person wouldn’t have noticed this years ago. There’s no hiding it today, and the only ones left to deny this reality are die-hard liberals – or rather die-hard Empire supporters. These people, often journalists in the West, have gone on full denial mode and make up stories and fantasy scenarios of “Russia’s imminent collapse”. Try watching German or British coverage of Ukraine and you’ll see what I’m talking about. In their desperation, they’ve reached such pathetic lows that they are now speculating over Putin’s health, presenting sad lies made up by “anonymous former MI6 agents” with “deep insight” into what’s going on the Kremlin, as absolute truth. The same desperation can be seen among Western politicians. They don’t live under any illusions and are fully aware of the imminent collapse that the West is facing. We observers shouldn’t be under any illusions either: the West won’t just accept defeat , especially not to those it considers to he inferior.
As the West declines, concurrently new powers are rising in the world. A multi-polar world is emerging with Russia, China and Iran leading it. But with the emergence of a multi-polar world, the dangers of nuclear war also grows.
Whenever the US is desperate to prove its “superiority”, it always resorts to Hollywood style showboating in an attempt to remind the world of its “awesome powers.” Take Nancy Pelosi’s provocative and dangerous stunt in Taiwan recently, or the concurrent “assassination” of Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the Al-Qaeda leader who according to the Taliban had been dead for months before the US, in true Hollywood fashion claimed to have killed him while he was on a balcony. Washington was quick to emphasize that no other person was killed and that the building wasn’t even destroyed, despite being allegedly hit by a missile. Biden took to the press and basically threatened the entire world: “No matter how long it takes, no matter where you hide, if you’re a threat to our people, the US will find you and take you out.”
The problem with these stunts is that sooner or later nobody is going to take them seriously anymore. Thus begins a dangerous and vicious spiral where the US constantly must take more risks to project its supposed power, leading it directly into confrontation with China, Russia or Iran as Washington keeps crossing more and more red lines. Washington’s bruised ego, together with rabid racism and self-worship is a dangerous combo for an empire that is desperate to preserve its hegemony. Remember that it is the same regime that did not hesitate to use nuclear weapons against Japan, and still takes pride in doing so.
As the West is declining and possibly collapsing, one has to wonder if their hatred for the rest of the world is greater than their sense of self-preservation. If their “world order” isn’t going to prevail, will they allow humanity to even exist?
The wise men of the establishment are again telling us that hopes for lasting peace are a delusion. They declare that human nature makes it impossible, that war is built into our genes. They point to research by evolutionary biologists that indicates our closest genetic relatives, the chimpanzees, make war. Therefore war must be part of our heredity.
“We’ve always had wars,” they claim. “Humans are a warring species. Without a military to defend us, someone will always try to conquer us.” These assumptions have become axioms of our culture. They generate despair but also a certain comfort because they relieve us of the responsibility to change.
It’s true that in certain situations chimpanzees do raid neighboring colonies and kill other chimps. Those studies on killer apes got enormous publicity because they implied that war is hardwired into human nature. Most scientists didn’t draw those conclusions from the evidence, but the establishment media kept reinforcing that message.
Further research, however, led to a key discovery: The chimps who invaded their neighbors were suffering from shrinking territory and food sources. They were struggling for survival. Groups with adequate resources didn’t raid other colonies. The aggression wasn’t a behavioral constant but was caused by the stress they were under. Their genes gave them the capacity for violence, but the stress factor had to be there to trigger it into combat. This new research showed that war is not inevitable but rather a function of the stress a society is under. Our biological nature doesn’t force us to war, it just gives us the potential for it. Without stress to provoke it, violence can remain one of the many unexpressed capacities our human evolution has given us. Studies by professors Douglas Fry, Frans de Waal, and Robert Sapolsky present the evidence for this.
Militarists point to history and say it’s just one war after another. But that’s the history only of our patriarchal civilization. The early matriarchal civilization of south-eastern Europe enjoyed centuries of peace. UCLA anthropologist Marija Gimbutas described the archaeological research in The Living Goddesses. No trace of warfare has been found in excavations of the Minoan, Harappa, and Caral cultures. Many of the Pacific islands were pacifistic. The ancient Vedic civilization of India had meditation techniques that preserved the peace, and those are being revived today to reduce stress in society.
Our society, though, has a deeply entrenched assumption that stress is essential to life. Many of our social and economic structures are based on conflict. Capitalism’s need for continually expanding profits generates stress in all of us. We’ve been indoctrinated to think this is normal and natural, but it’s really pathological. It damages life in ways we can barely perceive because they’re so built into us.
We don’t have to live this way. We can reduce the stress humanity suffers under. We can create a society that meets human needs and distributes the world’s resources more evenly. We can live at peace with one another. But that’s going to take basic changes.
These changes threaten the power holders of our society. Since capitalism is a predatory social and economic system, predatory personalities rise to power. They view the world through a lens of aggression. But it’s not merely a view. They really are surrounded by enemy competitors. So they believe this false axiom they are propagating that wars are inevitable.
In the past their predecessors defended their power by propagating other nonsense: kings had a divine right to rule us, Blacks were inferior to Whites, women should obey men. We’ve outgrown those humbugs, and we can outgrow this one.
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William T. Hathaway is an emeritus Fulbright professor of American studies at universities in Germany. His new novel, Lila, the Revolutionary, is a fable for adults about an eight-year-old girl who sparks a world revolution for social justice.
The pulpit of Bahrain’s oppressed and deprived people, for decades, used to firmly appeal for stolen rights, reforms, rapprochement, and reconciliation.
After a 6-year enforced ban, Bahrain’s Shiites congregate for Friday central prayers
With the resume of Bahrain’s central Friday congregational prayer for Shiite citizens in the Imam Al-Sadiq mosque in the village of Duraz, the popular and political concerns have again been brought to the pulpit of Ayatollah Sheikh Issa Qassim, the spiritual leader of Bahrain’s Shia community. That pulpit for long has been used to address the people’s dilemmas resulting from the wrong policies pursued by the regime that controls their wealth and fate.
The pulpit of Bahrain’s oppressed and deprived people, both Sunnis and Shiites, for decades, used to firmly appeal for stolen rights, reforms, rapprochement, and reconciliation, and call for a comprehensive, sound, and a realistic approach to the political and rights reality.
Henceforth, this perturbed the government and its security services, which assiduously tried to deviate its moderate sermons and those of the Bahraini clerics. Indeed, those religious leaders have positively contributed to controlling the masses, adjusting their discourse, and preventing attempts to divert them into violence.
The auspicious resume of the central prayer coincides with the anniversary of the 23rd of May, known as the anniversary of the five martyrs of redemption, who fell in defense of the religious and national leadership of Ayatollah Qassem in 2017, a year after the arbitrary revocation of his citizenship due to his keenness to renounce atonement and combat corruption, and his repeated calls for fairness to all citizens.
His Eminence is the most senior cleric of Bahrain’s Shiites, who constitute an estimated 65% of the country’s citizen population. In 1972, he was elected as a member of the historic Constitutional Assembly, which wrote Bahrain’s first constitution.
On June 20, 2016, Bahrain’s Ministry of Interior arbitrarily stripped the citizenship of Ayatollah Qassim, rendering him stateless. In a statement, it claimed that Ayatollah Qassim, through sermons and religious edicts, had “fomented sectarianism, collected funds unlawfully, and exploited the religious pulpit for political purposes to serve foreign interests.”
In response, hundreds of followers began a peaceful sit-in around his home on Duraz. For their part, the authorities subjected the village to an unprecedented lockdown, in what is a form of collective retribution. All major and minor entrances were sealed off with concrete slabs, sandbags, police cars, and barbed wire. Besides, all major Internet Service Providers enforced an internet blackout for long hours.
One year later, on May 21, 2017, and just a day after former US President Trump met Bahrain’s King in Riyadh and told him there would be “no strain” between their two countries, Ayatollah Qassim was sentenced to a one-year suspended sentence on fabricated charges of “money laundering”, solely linked to the religious practice of Khums – a religious donation to senior clerics, who, in turn, distribute it for religious and charitable purposes.
Two days later, on 23 May 2017, police stormed into Duraz and, using excessive force, arrested over 280 armless protesters and brutally murdered 5 (aka martyrs of redemption).
Due to the culture of impunity, no one has been held accountableو and Duraz remained under a police blockade with a permanent police presence outside Ayatollah Qassim’s house, which led to the deterioration of his health, for which he later left Bahrain to receive medical treatment abroad.
For those interested in understanding Bahrain’s politics, it is essential indeed to study and reflect on the sermons of Imam Al-Sadiq mosque to comprehend the ongoing crisis, as it approaches not only religious but also political and rights appalling issues.
Through this platform, various unifying national stances were expressed, reflecting the visions of the moderate opposition seeking to build a robust state that does justice to all its citizens and preserves their national identity, rejecting sectarianism, denouncing global arrogance and imperialism, supporting the Palestinian cause, and rejecting the temporary occupying entity.
Decades of systematic persecution arrests and displacements of political and religious figures, stifling inalienable freedoms, and silencing the opposition have all failed to curb this national, religious, ideological, political, and pro-rights platform, and to intimidate the people who are getting more and more insistent on their legitimate, non-negotiable rights.
On the other hand, there were pulpits in Bahrain that incite blasphemy and hatred, call for takfir, send aid to the terrorists in Syria, and encourage the futile aggressive war on Yemen.
Accordingly, the large crowds this week have reflected, as the International Quds Day rallies and despite the escalating political circumstance, the failure of the repressive security policy.
The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.
– Yves Engler is the author of Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid and a number of other books. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle. Visit his website: yvesengler.com.
The McGill administration and Israel lobby have waged a multiyear campaign against student democracy and Palestinian solidarity and recently threatened the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) financial arrangement after students voted overwhelmingly for the “Palestine Solidarity Policy”.
A month ago, 71% of students voted for a resolution that commits SSMU to take a stand against Israel’s system of racial discrimination. The resolution called for a host of measures including SSMU divesting from and boycotting “corporations and institutions complicit in settler-colonial apartheid against Palestinians.” In response, B’nai B’rith released a statement labeling “SSMU’s behavior…antisemitic”. It “called on McGill University to immediately cease funding SSMU until it rescinds this bogus referendum result.”
The administration responded by threatening to terminate its Memorandum of Agreement with SSMU, which regulates fees, use of name and other matters between the university and student union. The administration claimed the Palestine Solidarity Policy encourages “a culture of ostracization and disrespect due to students’ identity, religious or political beliefs.” But the resolution does not mention any ethnicity or nationality.
The administration’s bid to portray their student body as anti-Jewish is not new. As students have sought to express support for the long-oppressed Palestinians, they’ve repeatedly made similar claims.
Between 2014 and 2016 there were three votes inspired by the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement at biannual SSMU general assemblies. Fearing students at the prestigious institution would support BDS, the Israel lobby went into overdrive. Among a slew of pressure tactics, they got Liberal party leader Justin Trudeau to tweet that “the BDS movement, like Israeli Apartheid Week, has no place on Canadian campuses. As a McGill alum, I’m disappointed. Enough is Enough.”
In February 2016 a motion mandating the student union support some BDS demands passed the union’s largest ever general assembly. But after the McGill administration, Montreal’s English media and pro-Israel Jewish groups blitzed students the online confirmation vote failed. The resolution’s constitutionality was subsequently challenged by Zionists who sought to have SSMU’s Judicial Board outlaw any motion that expressed support for BDS.
Students challenged the effort to block their ability to collectively challenge Israeli apartheid. An October 2017 challenge of the SSMU Judicial Board’s decision to declare a BDS resolution unconstitutional prompted Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee activist Noah Lew to smear other students. After failing to be re-elected to the Board of Directors Lew claimed he was “blocked from participating in student government because of my Jewish identity and my affiliations with Jewish organizations.” Lew’s claim received international coverage and McGill Principal Suzanne Fortier sent out two emails to all students and faculty concerning the matter.
But an investigation by the administration found no basis for Lew’s claim.
The principal form of racism on display on this subject is the university power structure’s deep-seated anti-Palestinianism. As I previously detailed, McGill administrators openly associated with the Jewish National Fund, an explicitly racist organization that excludes Palestinian citizens of Israel from living on land stolen from Palestinians.
Fortunately, students have persevered in campaigning for Palestinian rights despite the smears, underhanded moves and outside attacks. The large margin that voted for the recent Palestine Solidarity Policy suggests that support for Palestinian rights is growing.
But Israel lobby and administration pressure led SSMU’s unelected judicial board to reject the constitutionality of the Palestine Solidarity Policy. They also impeached the elected president of the student union, Darshan Daryanan, in part due to his sympathy toward student democracy and Palestinian rights.
Happily, there’s some pushback. Students have organized rallies and outside groups have petitioned the administration. Rock legend Roger Waters, author Yann Martel, former MP Libby Davies, author Chris Hedges and 200 others signed a recent public letter criticizing the administration’s threats as anti-democratic and anti-Palestinian. Signed by 40 organizations, the letter also applauds McGill students for pushing their union to fulfill its stated commitment to leadership in “matters of human rights and social justice.”
It’s important for outside forces to publicly embarrass McGill’s administration, pressure wobbly student representatives and embolden the student organizers driving the struggle on campus. As the Israel lobby fully understands, the struggle for Palestinian rights runs through student activism.
CBS correspondent Charlie D’Agata has prompted backlash after comparing violence in Afghanistan to the invasion of “relatively civilized” Ukraine. (Photo: video grab)
When a gruesome six-minute video of Ukrainian soldiers shooting and torturing handcuffed and tied up Russian soldiers circulated online, outraged people on social media and elsewhere compared this barbaric behavior to that of Daesh.
In a rare admission of moral responsibility, Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to the Ukrainian President, quickly reminded Ukrainian fighters of their responsibility under international law. “I would like to remind all our military, civilian and defense forces, once again, that the abuse of prisoners is a war crime that has no amnesty under military law and has no statute of limitations,” he said, asserting that “We are a European army”, as if the latter is synonymous with civilized behavior.
Even that supposed claim of responsibility conveyed subtle racism, as if to suggest that non-westerners, non-Europeans, may carry out such grisly and cowardly violence, but certainly not the more rational, humane and intellectually superior Europeans.
The comment, though less obvious, reminds one of the racist remarks by CBS’ foreign correspondent, Charlie D’Agata, on February 26, when he shamelessly compared Middle Eastern cities with the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, stating that “Unlike Iraq or Afghanistan, (…) this is a relatively civilized, relatively European city”.
The Russia-Ukraine war has been a stage of racist comments and behavior, some explicit and obvious, others implicit and indirect. Far from being implicit, however, Bulgarian Prime Minister, Kiril Petkov, did not mince words when, last February, he addressed the issue of Ukrainian refugees. Europe can benefit from Ukrainian refugees, he said, because “these people are Europeans. (…) These people are intelligent, they are educated people. This is not the refugee wave we have been used to, people we were not sure about their identity, people with unclear pasts, who could have been even terrorists.”
One of many other telling episodes that highlight western racism, but also continued denial of its grim reality, was an interview conducted by the Italian newspaper, La Repubblica, with the Ukrainian Azov Battalion Commander, Dmytro Kuharchuck. The latter’s militia is known for its far-right politics, outright racism and horrific acts of violence. Yet, the newspaper described Kuharchuck as “the kind of fighter you don’t expect. He reads Kant and he doesn’t only use his bazooka.”If this is not the very definition of denial, what is?
That said, our proud European friends must be careful before supplanting the word ‘European’ with ‘civilization’ and respect for human rights. They ought not to forget their past or rewrite their history because, after all, racially-based slavery is a European and western brand. The slave trade, as a result of which millions of slaves were shipped from Africa during the course of four centuries, was very much European. According to Encyclopedia Virginia, 1.8 million people “died on the Middle Passage of the transatlantic slave trade”. Other estimations put the number much higher.
Colonialism is another European quality. Starting in the 15th century, and lasting for centuries afterward, colonialism ravaged the entire Global South. Unlike the slave trade, colonialism enslaved entirepeoples and divided whole continents, like Africa, among European spheres of influence.
The nation of Congo was literally owned by one person, Belgian King Leopold II. India was effectively controlled and colonized by the British East India Company and, later, by the British government. The fate of South America was largely determined by the US-imposed Monroe Doctrines of 1823. For nearly 200 years, this continent has paid – and continues to pay – an extremely heavy price of US colonialism and neocolonialism. No numbers or figures can possibly express the destruction and death toll inflicted by Western-European colonialism on the rest of the world, simply because the victims are still being counted. But for the sake of illustration, according to American historian, Adam Hochschild, ten million people have died in Congo alone from 1885 to 1908.
And how can we forget that World War I and II are also entirely European, leaving behind around 40 million and 75 million dead, respectively. (Other estimations are significantly higher). The gruesomeness of these European wars can only be compared to the atrocities committed, also by Europeans, throughout the South, for hundreds of years prior.
Mere months after The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed in 1949, the eager western partners were quick to flex their muscles in Korea in 1950, instigating a war that lasted for three years, resulting in the death of nearly 5 million people. The Korean war, like many other NATO-instigated conflicts, remains an unhealed wound to this day.
The list goes on and on, from the disgraceful Opium Wars on China, starting in 1839, to the nuclear bombings of Japan in 1945, to the destruction of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, in 1954, 1959 and 1970 respectively, to the political meddling, military interventions and regime change in numerous countries around the world. They are all the work of the West, of the US and its ever-willing ‘European partners’, all done in the name of spreading democracy, freedom and human rights.
If it were not for the Europeans, Palestine would have gained its independence decades ago, and its people, this writer included, would have not been made refugees, suffering under the yoke of Zionist Israel. If it were not for the US and the Europeans, Iraq would have remained a sovereign country and millions of lives would have been spared in one of the world’s oldest civilizations; and Afghanistan would have not endured this untold hardship. Even when the US and its European friends finally relented and left Afghanistan last year, they continue to hold the country hostage, by blocking the release of its funds, leading to actual starvation among the people of that war-torn country.
So before bragging about the virtues of Europe, and the demeaning of everyone else, the likes of Arestovych, D’Agata, and Petkov should take a look at themselves in the mirror and reconsider their unsubstantiated ethnocentric view of the world and of history. In fact, if anyone deserves bragging rights it is those colonized nations that resisted colonialism, the slaves that fought for their freedom, and the oppressed nations that resisted their European oppressors, despite the pain and suffering that such struggles entailed.
Sadly, for Europe, however, instead of using the Russia-Ukraine war as an opportunity to reflect on the future of the European project, whatever that is, it is being used as an opportunity to score cheap points against the very victims of Europe everywhere. Once more, valuable lessons remain unlearned.
– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is “Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak out”. Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website iswww.ramzybaroud.net
“Israel” tried to disguise itself as an honest mediator between Russia and Ukraine, but honesty is a trait that is hard to come by once the occupation’s history is full of atrocities and war crimes.
Chile and other Latin-American countries that subscribe to the UN Charter and its resolutions, as well as international law organizations, including the ICJ, must commit themselves to their own actions
The Russian-Ukrainian conflict comes to revalue the need for the rule of International Law and a renewal of the commitment of the entire international community to subscribe to it.
The defense of the sovereignty of Ukraine revives the neglected relevance of promoting the sovereignty of Palestine based mainly on:
– The withdrawal of the Israeli army from the Palestinian territories declared in resolution 181 of the UN General Assembly of November 29, 1947, that “recommended” the partition of Palestine into two States, but without “Israel” allowing the consolidation of the Palestinian State.
– Allow the return of Palestinian refugees expelled from their homes by “Israel”, according to resolutions 194 of December 11, 1948, and 3236 of November 22, 1974, recognizing the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people.
– Israeli withdrawal from Occupied Palestine, including the Eastern part of occupied al-Quds, is based on Resolution 2334 of December 23, 2016, of the UN Security Council, which emanates from this body and is binding.
– End of colonialism and Israeli apartheid considered a form of racial discrimination according to Resolution 3379 of the UN General Assembly in 1975.
– End of the colonial expansion based on settlements of settlers brought from other nations to Palestine, based on Resolutions 446 of March 22, 1979 and 2334 of December 23, 2016 of the UN Security Council (both binding resolutions).
– Demolition of the Separation Wall or “Shame” that penetrates into Palestinian territory expropriating more territories, declared illegal by the International Court of Justice on July 9, 2004
Since 1948, and even before, with the action of the Zionist terrorist organizations, which later became the Israeli army, “Israel” has systematically invaded Palestine, expelling its original population, periodically bombing and committing crimes against the civilian population, selectively assassinating the political leaders of the Palestinian people including their former president Yasser Arafat, demolished their homes and farm fields, seized water sources, turned the West Bank into a huge concentration camp, violently expelled the residents of al-Quds and other Palestinian cities, changed the names and in general the legal status of the territory, prohibited free expression and the operation of NGOs for the defense of Human Rights, converted Gaza into the largest extermination camp and, ultimately, undermined the possibilities of installing a Free and democratic Palestinian state as declared by the national charter of the Organization for the Liberation of Palestine.
It is ironic to see how “Israel” first offered itself as the venue for negotiations between Russia and Ukraine and currently offers itself as a mediator since it is the state most condemned by the UN and international human rights organizations and one of the key suppliers of weapons to Ukraine. Therefore, ending this international hypocrisy is imperative today, since we run the risk of widening the lock gates of more flagrant inconsistencies and violations of the norms that regulate coexistence among peoples.
Chile and other Latin-American countries that subscribe to the UN Charter and its resolutions, as well as international law organizations, including the ICJ, must commit themselves to their own actions, as well as promote in the regional economic and political organizations of Latin America and The Caribbean, initiatives that lead to oblige “Israel” to cease its violations, respect international laws and adopt UN resolutions without conditions.
It is appropriate that those who have an international tradition to respect and promote international human rights. Along these lines, they are compelled to adhere to the reports of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International and promote the existence of all the facilities for the investigation of the International Criminal Court on war crimes committed by “Israel”.
It is important that the Latin American countries deploy a diplomatic crusade at the international level so that the United States, Great Britain and the European Union, mainly, are consistent between their speech and their international action so that, just as they have deployed innumerable and forceful sanctions against Russia, similarly condemn and promote condemnation and similar sanctions against the Israeli regime so that it respects international law. It is pertinent that governments that set themselves up as defenders of democracy, do not jeopardize their declared values of respect for peace, justice, sovereignty, and self-determination, that they assume the moral obligation of consequence between their words and actions and honor the reputation of the states those they represent so as not to be condemned by history as only defenders of interests of power and hegemony.
Promoting the peaceful and respectful coexistence of the legality that the international community has imposed on itself is today transcendent for the world that we are bequeathing to future generations.
The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.
To begin with, not a single person deserves to go through the horrible atrocities of war, regardless of their nationality, race and religion. My heart goes out to all the people in Ukraine – as it does first and foremost to the persevering people in Yemen, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia – hoping they would find safety and security.
Beirut – The conflict in Ukraine has been the talk of the town, with masses and politicians in the west showing their undivided support to the people in Ukraine. Statements of solidarity from western leaders outpoured. But what catches one’s attention is the hypocritical way the conflict has been dealt with.
Since day one of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Western media hypocrisy has been the bone of contention. Three weeks have passed since the conflict began, and corporate western media has relentlessly continued its double-standard coverage of the events.
The hypocrisy of the media coverage of the Ukrainian conflict is so obvious that many news outlets have written on the matter over the past weeks, highlighting that to the West, having blue eyes and blond hair is the criteria by which victims of conflicts are worthy of the international community’s sympathy.
As the conflict prolongs, the dark and ugly side of western media unfolds and the aforementioned criteria solidifies the notion that our looks and economic factors play a role in determining whether the war is somehow normal and expected in areas of the world and not in others; that: it’s ok when non-blue-eyed people get killed!
A quick search on the definition of HYPOCRISY discloses that it is “the practice of engaging in the same behavior or activity for which one criticizes another or the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one’s own behavior does not conform.”
To put it in clearer and simpler words, hypocrisy is when western media wants the world to treat the situation in Ukraine “equally” to the way other conflicts are being treated, when “western democracies” themselves don’t.
Let’s take the refugee crisis as an example. The West wanted the world to welcome with open arms the refugees from Ukraine and denounce what it called a “Russian invasion”, while it launched a calumnious attack on the Indian government over the Citizenship Amendment Act [CAA] and the riots, deported African migrants from its shores in Italy and Spain, and turned away Syrian refugees from its borders in Poland and Denmark; regardless of the fact that it turned a blind eye on the wars backed or waged by the United States and its allies in every corner of the globe.
And the list goes on.
Recently, in a small multireligious Middle Eastern country on the Mediterranean Sea called Lebanon, a Lebanese woman has been targeted by US sanctions. Mrs. Abir Khalil, mother of martyr Mohammad Tamer who was gunned down during last October’s massacre in the Tayouneh neighborhood of Beirut, says she has been banned from social media, including Whatsapp, and her travel and tourism company has been sanctioned.
Mrs. Abir Khalil and her son martyr Mohammad Tamer
Mrs. Khalil explained that she was first blocked from using her and her martyred son’s Facebook pages, until they banned the pages and now both pages do not exist.
Regarding her business, she can no longer send or receive money to and from her customers via Western Union. Afterwards, she used her daughters name in her business’ monetary transactions, but after a couple of money transfers, they were banned again.
Mrs. Khalil says that on February 25, she was banned from using Whatsapp for violating the Terms of Service over allegations of violence and terrorism. “The funny thing is,” she says, “I just use the application to post pictures of martyr Mohammad. I’m not waging a war or anything and I don’t post pictures of weapons!”
As she details the incidents, she sheds light on the hypocrisy of western media coverage of the double-standard measures by “western democracies” headed by the US.
“This weakness and cowardness of the US government… they are intimidated by the simplest word we write, picture we post or voice we utter that they attempt to silence us by silencing these, but they will not be able to silence the word of God in us! We will be stronger than ever and nothing will stop us from striving,” she explains.
Regarding the US sanctions, Mrs. Khalil says, “Those who have sacrificed their most precious for the sake of this path, will not yield to trivial sanctions.”
What is worth mentioning is that martyr Mohammad Tamer was a civilian and is not a member of the Lebanese Resistance movement Hezbollah, and yet his mother has been targeted by US sanctions just because she “persists on proving the injustice against the fallen martyrs”.
Here the hypocrisy is two-folded; double-standard on the part of the US which claims to be a “western democracy” and the other by western media that claims to report news objectively.
First, the US did not practice what it preached. In the US constitution, people are protected by The First Amendment which guarantees the right to free expression and free association, which means that the government does not have the right to forbid anyone from saying what they like and writing what they like. Under the constitution, people can form clubs and organizations, and take part in demonstrations and rallies.
This is hypocrisy in action! So, it is OK for Americans to express themselves freely, but it’s not OK for other nationals to do so!
Where is the media coverage on this? Why aren’t more people talking about it?
Mrs. Khalil’s story has not been mentioned, neither was the actual incidents of the martyrdom of her son. And if the incident was spoken about, then it was manipulated to suit the interests of the west.
The western world seems to care the most when the country suffering is full of white people, because it only matters when those suffering are Europeans.
This war has highlighted the hypocrisy and the double-standards of the West where suffering does not warrant empathy but skin color and interests do.
Amnesty International described “discriminatory laws and policies that disrupt family life” as “primarily guided by demographic – rather than security – considerations and aim[ing] to minimize Palestinian presence inside the Green Line to maintain a Jewish majority.”
OCCUPIED EAST JERUSALEM — A controversial law banning family unification between Israelis and Palestinians in the occupied territories expired last summer, but right-wing politicians are seeking to resurrect it with a vengeance. This month, the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) approved, in the first of three votes, the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, preventing Palestinians married to Israeli citizens from receiving permits to enter into 1948-occupied Palestine (or modern-day Israel).
“It’s one of the most racist, apartheid laws that was ever passed in the world,” Adi Mansour, attorney with Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, told MintPress News. “There is no other law that’s even remotely close to this law in the effects … that it has on family lives.”
Known as the family unification ban, the bill passed in 2003 and has been renewed annually since its inception — until last year. In July, the law was defeated after former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party voted against it to disrupt the new coalition government.
Now, right-wing Knesset members are hoping to breathe new life into the legislation by adding more restrictive amendments to a law human rights organizations already deem deeply discriminatory.
Making a harsh law even harsher
Knesset member Simcha Rothman of the far-right Religious Zionism Party negotiated with Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked to add tougher amendments to the law and get it back on the agenda.
Rothman’s applied amendments include setting a maximum yearly quota for those eligible to receive Israeli citizenship from the occupied West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Iran, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, and requiring the Interior Ministry submit a monthly report on the number of permits granted. While this law is classified as a temporary order, the newest version also allows the government to extend its enforcement for longer than one year at a time, meaning it won’t need to be renewed annually.
“The amendment that was filed by the opposition brings to the surface the real intention of the law — to prevent a supposed attack on the Jewish majority of the state,” Mansour said. Rothman and the spokesperson for the Knesset did not respond to requests for comment.
Despite the law’s expiration, Shaked ordered the Population and Immigration Authority to apply the law to family unification requests. Israeli non-profit organizations HaMoked, Association for Civil Rights in Israel, and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, filed a joint petition to the Israeli Court of Administrative Affairs. The case made its way to the Supreme Court, which prompted the Interior Ministry to establish two temporary procedures. One of the procedures — HaMoked argues — simply “perpetuates the relevant provisions of the expired law, under a different name.”
More than just preventing the Palestinian right of return
HaMoked opposes the law, but Dani Shenhar, who heads HaMoked’s legal department, said that if it does pass, there are several amendments they are advocating to have attached to the bill in order to make it constitutional. These include: not applying the law to women over the age of 50, men over the age of 55, and minors; providing full government benefits to those given an entry permit; and giving permanent residency or citizenship to those applying on humanitarian grounds.
“When the law didn’t pass in July, many politicians said that it’s very important for keeping the demographics of Israel under control — not having Palestinians receive Israeli IDs,” Shenhar told MintPress. “This is the real concern of the state.”
Proponents of the law argue it’s necessary for security purposes, specifically claiming unified families are more likely to commit acts of terrorism. Shenhar explained, however, that Israel’s internal security service, the Shin Bet, said that from 2001 to 2016 only 104 individuals from families who obtained residency or citizenship through family reunification were involved in terrorist activity. From his perspective, these low numbers suggest there isn’t a security concern. “Security is an explanation used by the state because it’s easier for the court to give its green light to this law when there’s a security basis for it,” Shenhar said. “It’s more difficult to justify this kind of law on the basis of demographics or racial profiling.”
Even Minister of Interior Shaked suggested this law isn’t just for security purposes. In an interview with Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, Shaked admitted the law is meant to prevent the “creeping [Palestinian] right of return.” “The law wants to reduce the motivation for immigration to Israel. Primarily for security reasons, and then also for demographic reasons,” Shaked said.
Adalah’s Mansour argued that family reunification isn’t about the right of return. “We want the right of return, but still when we fall in love with a person, we do not think, ‘Let’s implement the right of return.’ This is not part of the rationality of love and relationships,” he said.
Instead, Mansour argues that the narrative that the law is about the right of return is merely strategic — to better persuade the Israeli media and public of the need for such a law. “The motive to prevent the right of return is not real,” he said, emphasizing the law’s agenda is Zionist and racist. “The real motive is preventing any demographic changes and preventing Palestinians from implementing their right to family life.”
“To basically build and sustain an apartheid regime,” Mansour added.
Denying the right to family life
Earlier this month Amensty International released a comprehensive report declaring Israel an apartheid state. The organization’s analysis highlighted the family reunification ban, calling it a “clear example of how Israel fragments and segregates Palestinians through a single system.”
Amnesty International described “discriminatory laws and policies that disrupt family life” as “primarily guided by demographic – rather than security – considerations and aim[ing] to minimize Palestinian presence inside the Green Line to maintain a Jewish majority.”
“By contrast, the 2003 law explicitly did not apply to residents of Jewish settlements in the West Bank wanting to marry and live with their spouse inside Israel, making it, and the ongoing policy underpinning it, blatantly discriminatory,” Amnesty wrote. The organization also noted that information from the Ministry of Interior indicated the rejection of about 43% of family unification applications from 2000-2013.
Families affected by the legislation were unable to speak on the record to MintPress, given that the bill is still being debated and voted on. However, Amnesty collected anonymous testimonies on how this law has disrupted families’ lives.
One spouse, who moved from the West Bank to 1948-occupied Palestine, applied for family reunification but while awaiting approval and without proper documentation, she lived in a perpetual state of anxiety. “There was a constant fear in my life. I was terrified of getting sick for example, because of this fear of having to go to the hospital without the necessary documents, getting caught [by Israeli authorities], and paying lots of money to cover for any kind of procedure or treatment,” she told Amnesty. She had married in 2003 when she was 18 but, according to the Citizenship Law, couldn’t apply for family reunification until she turned 25.
Another woman was rejected when trying to renew her permanent residency. She is now confined to Jerusalem in fear of arrest if she crosses Israeli checkpoints. She told Amnesty International how the law has impacted her life:
Since 2008, I have not been able to see my children as I please, because I cannot cross Israeli military checkpoints. I can only see my children and grandchildren through video calls. I have spent 12 years of my life trying to solve this, but the [Israeli] authorities keep stalling. I have spent half of my life either at the Ministry of Interior offices or gathering papers for them. This is exhausting.”
Adalah’s Mansour detailed the various cases he’s worked on regarding family reunification and called their experiences “devastating.” One example he offered:
During corona, a woman who was from Ramallah couldn’t leave Ramallah through the checkpoint because there was a lockdown. So she had to live for at least a month away from her kids and her family because they had citizenship and could go back to where her family lived, but she had to stay in Ramallah with her parents.”
In some situations, individuals could only get a driver’s license after 10 years. In other cases, individuals couldn’t find work in 1948-occupied Palestine because they didn’t have citizenship.
Often employers are unwilling to hire individuals with the family unification permit because, since it only lasts a year, their residency status is seen as unstable. Mansour summed it up:
People fall in love and they live together and they get married and they don’t think of the consequences. But eventually what happens is either you leave the country and live abroad, which is a decision that a lot of people don’t want to take because this is their homeland. On the other side, you have people who suffer every day from the consequences of not being able to unify their family.”
Adalah has been working with families on a potential upcoming petition against the legislation. In characterizing the bill, Mansour equated it to doctrines used by the German Nazi and Italian fascist regimes during World War II, in which governments would discriminate against people because of their nationalities. “It’s a law that attacks the very existence of Palestinians for being Palestinians,” he said.
The United States, though claiming to have advanced in terms of civil rights and racial discrimination, is still stuck in the same pattern of racism and hatred, only having changed on paper.
The United States: did it really advance in terms of black liberation and empowerment?
The United States has been home to black people since the late 16th century when they were brought in aboard slave ships, so it was not too kind of a home. They were shipped in as part of the transatlantic slave trade, which took them from their homes, from their families, and they were not treated with the slightest bit of humanity or compassion.
An oppressed people, they struggled for their liberation for centuries, working to abolish the slavery imposed by their white oppressors, who put them in the worst conditions one could think of, not liveable in the slightest.
Black people not only lost the only home they had known, as they were transferred into toys in the hands of their oppressors, who unethically used them in unpaid labor, ranging from domestic slavery to slavery within the plantation systems, mainly the notorious cotton fields.
Many brutal punishments were on the table for the most minor of inconveniences, sometimes without one at all – just as a display of authority and even for pleasure and entertainment. All of this was legal under the constitution of the self-proclaimed land of the free.
Black people fought tooth and nail for their emancipation until the civil rights movement succeeded in achieving its conquest and even thereafter. Racism is still widespread, and discrimination may be better than it was 500 years ago, but that is in no way a standard.
You can’t compare modern times to ones where black people were auctioned off, bid on as they fought to the death, whipped, raped, and had their families broken up for the sole purpose of revenue. Injustice was more rampant back then, but it still is now – through different means nonetheless, but not in an acceptable manner.
Life under slavery may not have lasted forever, but it must have felt like it did for all of its victims. Came the emancipation proclamation in 1863 after so many efforts from abolitionists who put everything on the line to ensure the freedom of their enslaved brethren, such as Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and Leonard Grimes.
One burden was off; slavery, but another was still there, and it was heavily harming the black community within the United States, segregation. Racism was still conspicuous, and it was a tool used to propagate the white supremacist narrative used by the ruling race to violate the rights of those who were seen as a “lesser race”, allowing for their treatment as second-class citizens within their own country.
Segregation was used to propagate many hate crimes and massacres, ones backed by politicians and officials against local black communities and individuals. From lynching to full-on massacres, the US government and people made life unbearable for the black population.
White massacres against black civilians
New York City Draft Massacre
On July 13, 1863, white rioters stormed Manhattan to protest against draft laws in light of the civil war, but they ended up setting fire to a colored orphanage, killing black civilians they found on the street by various, violent means, and the victims amounted to nearly 120.
Memphis Massacre
Between May 1-3, 1866, white civilians and police officers stormed Memphis, Tennessee, and burned down homes, churches, and schools in the city, eventually killing 46 black civilians and injuring many more.
Opelousas Massacre
On September 28, 1868, a KKK-inspired group, Knights of the White Camelia, massacred hundreds of black Americans in Opelousas, Louisiana, over the promotion of equality in voter registration and education. The exact victim count is unknown, but it crossed the 200 threshold.
Clinton Massacre
On September 4, 1875, a white mob killed nearly 50 black civilians in Clinton, Mississippi, who had gathered for a rally hosted for their election candidates. The violence was carried out indiscriminately and claimed the lives of many children.
Thibodaux Massacre
On November 23, 1887, the Louisiana Militia, with help from white citizens, shot and killed peaceful, unarmed black sugar workers who were striking to demand their labor rights. The victim toll was between 30-60 unarmed black workers.
Tulsa Race Massacre
Between May 31-June 1, 1921, one of the biggest domestic massacres in US history took place in the prospering Greenwood District, a historic black community that became the victim of blind white hatred. The district was undergoing its “golden age” and its citizens were living way better than they would have lived anywhere else in the US under the segregation laws that were in place at the time.
The district was stormed by white mobs some of whose members were armed by city officials, and they wreaked havoc in a place renowned for the opportunities it provided for black people. The death toll surpassed 200 black residents and 800 total injuries as attackers burned and destroyed more than 370 square meters of the neighborhood.
‘Separate but equal’
Following all the massacres and hate crimes committed against black people after their emancipation, segregation was still a heavy burden to bear, and overcoming it was a goal for the civil rights movement.
Black people were not allowed to share the same restaurants and cafes as white people. They were allowed education but could not attend the same schools and universities as their white counterparts, they could not go to the same workplaces, and if they did, they would have their own separate offices. They lived in separate neighborhoods, sat in separate places on public transport, and even had separate bathrooms.
All of this was under the auspices of the US constitution, as it sponsored these acts via the “separate but equal” doctrine that argued racial segregation was not in violation of the 14th Amendment, which guaranteed “legal protection” for all peoples and races, though that was absent from reality in more ways that one.
The constructs of separation and segregation were so striking in the United States the entire American society was built upon it until the civil rights movement was finally able to achieve its goals after a decades-long struggle.
Civil rights movement
Key civil rights movement leaders paid a heavy price, i.e. with their blood, to propagate their cause of social equality. Starting in the first half of the ’60s, the civil rights movement aimed to topple the status quo that allowed for the violation of their rights in various spheres.
Black Americans were able to vote under the law, but there were many obstacles put in place by racists who did not believe they should have had that right, which the south took to their hands through implementing disenfranchisement, prohibiting black people from registering to vote, and voting, meaning another one of their rights that were supposedly sponsored by the US constitution was being infringed.
The “Jim Crow laws” were the chief contributor to the infringement of the voting rights of black Americans. The laws were implemented in the late 19th century, and they sponsored the disenfranchisement and removal of political and economic gains made by black people during the Reconstruction period that succeeded the American Civil War. Many states outside the South adopted these laws though they were on the opposite side of the Civil War, but perhaps racism unites the United States.
The “Jim Crow laws” made inequality rampant on many levels; not only in terms of voting. As was said above, they sponsored the disenfranchisement of economic gains made by black people during the Reconstruction period, setting the black community far behind their white counterparts, making progress that much more difficult for them, and widening a pre-existing wealth gap.
Long story short, the civil rights movement, sparked by prominent figures and groups like Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., the Little Rock Nine, and the Black Panthers, ended up succeeding and achieving its goal of overcoming segregation, with then-President Lyndon Johnson passing the Rights Act and abolishing segregation after many protests, riots, and deaths.
The path to equality was paved by the blood of black activists who fought until the last breath to ensure the true freedom of their people who had to bear the brunt of racism for centuries. The Civil Rights Movement took the lives of many of its activists and initiators, many of whom were killed by the government.
Among those murdered over their activism included:
George Lee
One of the first black people registered to vote in Humphreys, Tennessee, and a prominent voice in urging others to join him. He was offered protection by white officials in exchange for ending his voter registration efforts, but he rejected their advances, eventually leading to his murder over his activism.
Malcolm X
Malcolm X was, arguably, the most prominent black American figure and activist within the United States and one of the most prominent during the civil rights movement. His cause included black empowerment and the overcoming of segregation, not to mention equality.
He was very vocal with his teaching of black empowerment, and he made his way into leadership by becoming the leader of the Nation of Islam, preaching the message of Islam within the black community, and advocating the rising of the black community among political ranks.
He called for charging the United States with human rights violations against black people in the United States at the United Nations, prompting anger from within Washington, and within a year, at 39 years of age, he was assassinated on a podium as he was preparing to give a speech, and many speculate that the FBI or the CIA were behind his assassination due to his external links and his domestic efforts.
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King is most probably the most famous black liberation leader within the United States, joining the Civil Rights Movement early on and becoming one of its leaders until his assassination.
He advocated and advanced civil rights for all people of color in the US, using peaceful means such as nonviolent protests and civil disobedience that carried the banner of voting rights, desegregation, labor rights, and socioeconomic equality. He also oversaw the Montogomery bus boycott sparked by his fellow activist Rosa Parks.
King was allegedly assassinated by an escaped fugitive, James Earl Ray, or so the FBI found, though MLK, throughout his years as a black rights advocate, was constantly harassed by the FBI and was even called “the most notorious liar in the country” by its director. He was killed a day after his final speech, “I’ve been to the mountaintops”, while on his motel room balcony.
Fred Hampton
Fred Hampton was a black rights activist and leader of the Black Panther Party, the most prominent black advocacy political party that contributed to the housing and aid of black people in various spheres, such as healthcare and education, all over the United States, voicing support for socialism, black nationalism, and armed self-defense against police brutality.
His and his party’s contributions to the black rights movement and the American black community were unprecedented, prompting concerns from within the United States government and its agencies.
Hampton, a Marxist-Leninist, worked for social change, staunchly opposed fascism and racism alike, spreading awareness within the black community to prompt activity against systemic racism and police brutality. His activism made him an enemy of the FBI, which saw him as a radical threat and used many tools to undermine his activities, such as disinformation campaigns and espionage.
He was later assassinated as part of the FBI’s COINTERLPRO operation aimed at undermining domestic political organizations, which oversaw a raid on his apartment in Chicago, Ilinois, that saw heavily armed officers raiding his home at dawn. He had been asleep at the time of his killing, with a police officer killing him in his bed with two gunshots to the head.
He was only 21-years-young at the time of his death, but his legacy went on to redefine the black struggle for decades to come.
No longer separate, but not so equal
The black US population, though emancipated and granted civil rights and equality, is still suffering from chronic discrimination in its home country, having contrasting ratios with their white counterparts in the various socioeconomic aspects of life.
Labour and wages
Black workers comprise nearly 13% of the US workforce but disproportionally make 9.6% of total US wages, with the median annual wage for black workers being 30% lower than that of their white counterparts, which heavily affects the black community and weighs down their ability to make wealth and leads to wider racial wealth gaps comparable to those pre the civil rights act.
The wage gap leads black people, due to making less and high-cost housing, to live in poorer neighborhoods, sometimes “the projects”, which are infested by crime and drugs due to the terrible social and economic conditions plaguing these communities.
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, throughout the past two years, the unemployment rate of black men over 20 is more than double that of white men. Unemployment rates between black (7.72%) and white (4.51%) women over 20 are less severe but still vast.
This practically sets up black communities for a life that they are criticized and incarcerated for.
Incarceration ratios
The way life for black people is set up is reflected in terms of imprisoned population by ethnicity, the US does not try to hide its prejudice with 1,096 black prisoners incarcerated per 100,000 prisoners while the white population only has 214 white prisoners incarcerated per 100,000 prisoners.
Black minors are just as heavily affected by systemic racism, only making up 15% of American minors; US minors comprise 35% of all juvenile arrests all over the country.
The justice system completes the circle by disproportionally imprisoning black people. How?
Sentencing disparities
We’ve already established that more black people are incarcerated than whites, but the judicial system is the one that put them behind bars, to begin with.
Black people mostly face a harsher sentence for the same crimes as white people, as black male offenders receive sentences 19.1% longer than similarly situated white counterparts. Non-sponsored departures also contribute to these disparities, as judges get to sentence prisoners at their own discretion, bringing color to a system not meant to see it.
Black males are 21.2% less likely to receive non-government-sponsored departures and variances than white males, and upon receiving one, their sentences are 16.8% longer than those of white males.
Before reaching the justice system, prisoners naturally go through the police force, but many don’t make it through, as police brutality claims countless lives, most of which, ratio-wise, are black.
Colored police brutality
Black people are nearly three times more likely to be killed at the hands of the police than white people in the United States.
Making up 12.8% of the population, black people, through data collected between 2013-2022, suffered 61 killings per one million people in the United States, and this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Data on nonfatal police brutality is lacking, but it surely constitutes a reflection and an augmentation of fatal police brutality, with the police force using force against suspects without any trial before a court of law, showing the extent of police brutality in the US to which no solution has been found.
Representation?
Black representation in private and public positions is definitely better than it used to be a hundred years ago, which is quite easy to calculate since there was none.
Today, those who claim to advocate black equity argue that representation is in a good state in America; however, representation is not necessarily serving the black population.
Current US Vice President Kamala Harris, upon serving as deputy district attorney and district attorney in Oakland, California, was behind mass incarceration of black people despite her ethnicity.
Former US President Barack Obama, though the first-ever black president in the history of the country, failed black people by not pursuing any efforts or policies to close the racial wealth gap, and under his administration, the racial unemployment rate gap had not improved since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The black people holding political positions are mere token individuals handpicked to serve the government’s goals of imperialism, not achieve the goals of black liberation movements and abolish the racist status quo.
Looking back at the past and comparing it to the present, one sees that the United States is basically just the same, except in the constitution. Though the situation may be better, hatred is rampant. Otherwise, protests would not have roamed the US with global support to demand racial equality and the protection of black lives.
Just a few days ago, in a scene similar to Fred Hampton’s killing, police broke into a young black man’s home at dawn and murdered him while he was on his sofa, where he was supposed to be safe, and this is a reflection of the past, showing that despite all self-proclaimed progress in the United States, the American population is still on square one, not having moved at all.
Days after his passing, Cape Town, South Africa celebrated the life of anti-apartheid icon Desmond Tutu.
From Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s commemoration ceremony in Cape Town
Cape town held Wednesday a musical in commemoration of anti-apartheid icon Desmond Tutu, who passed away just a few days ago.
The service was held at City Hall as a tribute to Tutu, and it was attended by his family members and politicians. Many attendees wore purple in honor of the Nobel peace laureate’s renowned purple robes. He had been nominated for the prize in 1981, 1982, 1983 and finally won it in 1984.
The funeral was one of many events held to commemorate the South African icon known for his activism that knew no bounds, which he did not stop despite his old age.
He was one of the main figures to lead to the end of South Africa’s apartheid rule, under which black South Africans suffered at the hands of the white minority of the country.
Ahead of his funeral on Saturday, South Africans commemorated him all over their country, celebrating the life of the hard-working liberation fighter, who was also renowned for his criticism of human rights abuses across the world.
The late was a confidant and friend of South African leader Nelson Mandela.
He saw that the Palestinian struggle against the Israeli occupation was similar to the liberation struggle against the South African apartheid government, comparing the two oppressive regimes, and taking a solid stance in favor of Palestine, which he eternalized in many of his addresses and articles throughout his life.
Tutu went as far as to urge the Episcopal Church not to invest in companies that support the Israeli occupation, and asked for a global boycott of “Israel”.
Despite limited numbers due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the commemorations appropriately celebrated the icon, with many South African artists attending and performing in a tribute to the late Archbishop.
Here is a story of a clash of ideas between two 18th-century thinkers, the Anglican Bishop George Berkeley (1685-1753) and litterateur/curmudgeon Samuel Johnson (1709-1784). At this time, there was an argument over the nature of reality. Berkeley argued that what we know of reality is limited to the ideas the mind derives from our senses. It is not that there is no reality external to us, it is just that we can’t know it in and of itself. We can only be aware of it (including features such as solidity) as sensory impressions. This was misunderstood by folks like Johnson, who thought Berkeley was denying an external, material world. He famously told his friend and biographer James Boswell that “I refute him [Berkeley] thus” and kicked a stone.
Despite Johnson’s scorn, there is room to draw lessons from Berkeley’s insight. Almost all of us mingle belief with reality. That is, we assume that the ideas in our heads reflect reality faithfully. Most of the time the two do correspond well enough, at least at a mundane level, for us to get through our day. But the correspondence is not there all of the time, and this fact can get us into trouble. Yet, so powerful is the assumed melding of perception and reality that we rarely bother kicking the stone—which here stands in for seeking objective evidence of that apparent connection. Instead, we go with first impressions, automatically accept community or peer group judgments, or are committed to misleading ideologies. Having done so, confirmation bias sets in and we downgrade any suggestion that our views are inaccurate.
If one is interested in examples of these sorts of problems, there are a number of good books to consult. One classic is Irving L. Janis, Victims of Groupthink (Houghton Mifflin,1972). Janis looks at such historical incidents as Kennedy’s decision to support the Bay of Pigs invasion and the misbeliefs that contributed to the U.S. war in Vietnam. One should also take a look at Madeleine L. Van Hecke, Blind Spots (Prometheus Books, 2007), which takes up such topics as thoughtlessness, “my-side bias,” and “trapped by categories.”
Part II—Critical Race Theory, Part 1
Today, we have an ongoing example of what happens when you mistake the ideas in your head for reality. It is the controversy that rages due to a purposefully distorted and fear-driven misrepresentation of critical race theory (CRT). CRT began as a field of academic study. This actually honed its accuracy as a social critique because, within the academic setting, it itself was open to critical analyses based on logic and evidence. What the theory posits is that, despite the reality that all human beings are biologically the same, “racism is institutionalized and is embedded in America’s history, legal systems, and policies.”
There is plenty of historical evidence for this. The process of institutionalization began quite early. The U.S. Constitution, as originally promulgated, legalized slavery. That status lasted into the 1860s, by which time racial bias and discrimination were accepted aspects of white society. Even after slavery was officially done away with, popular racist attitudes stood firm. Thus, following a brief period of “reconstruction,” the federal government turned a blind eye to state-based laws and practices that affirmed the continuing legal nature of racial discrimination. That official myopia lasted until the 1960s.
Thus, for most of the country’s history, over 200 years, racism was an expression of the white majority’s belief in non-white, and especially Black, inferiority. Such a long-embedded belief system does not go away easily. Indeed, a more common move is to defend it as part of sacred tradition. Therefore it is, even today, an element in the American psyche. On this basis, CRT “critiques how institutionalized racism [still] perpetuates a caste system [white privilege] that is inherently unequal.”
Despite the relative ease with which CRT’s claims can be defended using an objective reading of U.S. history, it remains both disturbing and confusing to most white Americans. For instance, many conservative white people dismiss CRT as a cover for the failure of those Black Americans to better themselves by their own efforts. These conservatives point to their own immigrant ancestors, many of whom were unofficially discriminated against yet “made it” to a comfortable middle-class life. While there is some truth to these immigrant stories, the comparison they engender is a false one. The mostly European ancestors of white Americans were never legally enslaved, were not systematically discriminated against via legalized racist practices lasting for multiple generations, and thus were relatively quickly able to assimilate into the dominant white society.
Some liberal white Americans have an even harder time with CRT. They often regard themselves as personally free of racism. They resent being seen as part of society’s racist problem by virtue of a white privilege they neither chose nor could have avoided. Structured into the institutions of their society, white privilege was simply there for them when they were born.
Part III—Critical Race Theory, Part 2
A reaction to CRT based on emotion has caused it to become a major point of public contention in the nation’s never-ending culture war. Here is an example. On Tuesday, 2 November 2021, I went to vote for a number of local elected offices, including school board membership. As I was walking to the poll building, a woman came up and, shoving a flyer at me, said I must vote for this write-in candidate because she is “against teaching CRT to our children.” I asked her to explain CRT to me. She said, “I don’t know much about it” but showed me an handout allegedly used in a public school that traced episodes of institutional racism in the U.S. in the 20th century. When I pointed out to her that, as far as I could tell, the examples were all historically accurate she got flustered and declared, “It’s politics. We have to keep politics out of the classroom.” When I suggested that the decision by a school board to censor history is a political one, she turned around and walked away. A certain idea of CRT had taken residence in her head and resulted in the distortion of reality. She obviously never bothered to “kick the stone” in order to get at the truth of the matter.
This sort of episode is not unique. The syndicated columnist Will Bunch, writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer of 7 November 2021, pointed out that in the recent Virginia governor’s election (won by the Republican candidate) “a surprisingly large number of Virginians [25% of voters] said they were energized [to vote Republican] by the out-of-nowhere rise of the perceived issue of critical race theory.” Bunch goes on to explain that a twisted notion of CRT has come to stand in for how the issue of racism is taught in the schools. He also noted that this same distorted notion is presented nightly by “Fox TV’s race-baiter-in-chief Tucker Carlson,” who also recently confessed “I’ve never figured out what critical race theory is, to be totally honest, after a year of talking about it.” Bunch concludes that the high-anxiety response to the idea of CRT in the schools is based on the fear that white children are being seduced away from “a traditional [white-dominated] American way of life.”
We can compare Will Bunch’s outlook with that of Marc Thiessen, a syndicated columnist who represents the hard right. How hard? Thiessen learned his trade as a speechwriter for George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, both arguably war criminals responsible for the unnecessary U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Thiessen’s columns also appear in the Philadelphia Inquirer, and one concerning CRT was published on 12 November 2021. He also focuses on the Virginia voters’ concerns about race education in the schools. He sees as legitimate the fears and anger of some parents in Virginia’s Loudoun County because the local teachers were allegedly exposed to CRT during a series of inservice sessions run by Equity Collaborative, (EC). EC is “a national consulting firm focused on helping schools, school systems, and youth development organizations create educational equity.” Thiessen accuses EC of using CRT to teach that “racism is an inherent part of American civilization.” He does not challenge the accuracy of CRT’s view, but assumes it is, in any case, a scandalous proposition promoting the notion that even the American school systems support “systematic oppression.” Thiessen cites support for his charge using isolated quotes and the complaints of parents upset with CRT. EC has taken note of the charges and responded with a posting on its web site which describes its activities in Loudoun County and the concepts that were taught to the teachers attending their sessions.
Thiessen is also upset by what he describes as the “Left’s denial” that CRT is being taught to children in the schools. He says that the denial is “intellectually dishonest.” How so? Well, he asserts that America’s children are being instructed by teachers “trained in CRT to see everything through the prism of race.” He compares it to having all schoolchildren taught by “teachers trained in Marxist thought.” The truth is that most teachers report that they are not being pressured to integrate CRT into the curriculum, nor do they want it to be. As we will see below, these attitudes reflect the nation’s
tensions.
So Thiessen is wrong. CRT is not being pushed onto K-12 faculty or students. In fact, for most of the nation’s history, school systems have been doing just the opposite. Take a look at the interview with the historian Donald Yacovone published recently in the Harvard Gazette. Yacovone is an expert on the presentation of Black America in U.S. textbooks. He explains that the issues of slavery and subsequent discrimination and segregation of Black Americans were largely absent from textbooks and school lessons until the 1960s. “In the mid-1960s, textbooks began to change because attitudes and scholarship were changing in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement.” However, Yacovone points out that “even when textbooks are accurate, teachers have to be willing to teach it. We know there are many white teachers who are afraid of doing it. And you have to have school systems, both public and private, committed to doing this work and not to punish teachers for doing so.” He concludes that today such punishment is being carried out or threatened. Certainly this punitive approach was favored by some parents and educational administrators in Virginia.
Could it be that the backlash described by Will Bunch in Virginia is part of the effort to prevent teachers and school systems from teaching an accurate portrayal of the historical and contemporary influence of race in American society? And could it be that Marc Thiessen favors that suppression?
Part IV—Conclusion
There can be little doubt that traditional white America has always been deeply racist. As Yacovone concludes, “white supremacy precedes the origins of the United States. Every aspect of social interaction, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, was dominated by white identity, and white supremacy became an expression of American identity.”
This attitude persisted without effective challenge for over 200 years. That was plenty of time for socially contrived beliefs about white supremacy to dominate over the reality of a shared human status of all races. A challenge (the kicking of the stone) finally came in the 1960s when a successful alliance of black and white progressives temporarily marshaled the political power to overcome racist resistance at the state and federal government levels. The result was the enactment of laws that banned discrimination in the public realm. However, a decade of progressive political victories could not be sustained on a foundation of 200 years of racist tradition, and by the 1980s a pushback by conservative whites began. We are still experiencing that effort today.
That pushback has exacerbated tempers in an already divided nation. Unlike those capable of original thinking, such as Berkeley and Johnson, the average person sees his environment largely through community or peer group judgments and ideologies. It is groupthink that is comfortable for most, so no fact checking seems necessary. However, CRT is just that: fact checking. The result is a potentially effective challenge to assumptions that rationalize white privilege. And the result of that is school board meetings with parents screaming their heads off.
Israel demolished a Palestinian house in Lod. (Photo: via WAFA news agency)
Israeli authorities on Sunday demolished a Palestinian house in the Palestinian city of Lod inside Israel, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.
Israeli forces, accompanied by bulldozers, raided the al-Mahatta neighborhood in Lod and demolished the house, according to eyewitness reports. The house belonged to Ibrahim Touri, a Palestinian man who has Israeli citizenship, WAFA noted.
“The house demolition came under the Israeli pretext it was built without getting a permit from the Israeli government,” Touri told local media, according to WAFA.
In the 1948 war, about 957,000 Palestinians, or 66 percent of the Palestinians who lived in historical Palestine, were expelled and displaced.
The remaining Palestinians continued to live in their cities, which were inside Israel’s 1948 border. They were subsequently given Israeli citizenship.
The Palestinian community today makes up 21 percent of Israel’s total population of more than 9.3 million.
Palestinians in Israel have suffered discrimination from authorities, according to rights groups reports, and have seen many of their homes demolished under the pretext of not having the required permits – which is often not granted or takes a long time to be approved.
Over 1,600 employees at tech giants Amazon and Google have urged their employers to pull out of a contract under which they will sell “dangerous technology” to the Zionist entity and its military and cut all ties with the regime over its atrocities against the Palestinian people.
Initially, more than 90 workers at Google and more than 300 at Amazon anonymously signed an open letter published by the Guardian newspaper on Tuesday, demanding the termination of Project Nimbus, which will provide cloud services for the Tel Aviv regime.
“The technology our companies have contracted to build will make the systematic discrimination and displacement carried out by the ‘Israeli’ military and government even crueler and deadlier for Palestinians,” the employees said in the letter.
“We condemn Amazon and Google’s decision to sign the Project Nimbus contract with the ‘Israeli’ military and government, and ask them to reject this contract and future contracts that will harm our users,” they said.
They underlined the need for the two companies to stop contracting with any militarized organization in the US and beyond.
Project Nimbus is a $1.2bn contract awarded last April to Google and Amazon, which succeeded in beating out bids from Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM, to provide cloud services for the ‘Israeli’ occupation regime and its military.
There are fears that the technology would allow for further illegal surveillance of Palestinians and facilitate the expansion of the Zionist regime’s illegal settlements across the occupied territories.
“This contract was signed the same week that the ‘Israeli’ military attacked Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, killing nearly 250 people, including more than 60 children,” said the “employees of conscience,” referring to the ‘Israeli’ regime’s latest war on Gaza which occurred in May and lasted for 11 consecutive days.
“We cannot look the other way, as the products we build are used to deny Palestinians their basic rights, force Palestinians out of their homes and attack Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, actions that have prompted war crime investigations by the international criminal court.”
In another opinion piece posted hours later on NBC, two workers at the tech giants updated the number of signatories, saying that nearly 1,000 anonymous signatories at Amazon and more than 600 at Google have joined the campaign.
“Since we have no ability to guarantee that the technology we build won’t be used to commit human rights abuses against Palestinians, cutting the contracts entirely is the only ethical option left for our companies,” Gabriel Schubiner, software engineer and researcher at Google, and Bathool Syed, content strategist at Amazon, wrote in the article.
The two employees said they agree with the two companies’ stated commitment to ethics, but also pointed to their hypocrisy. “We want to work for companies that do more than pay lip service to ethical business practices,” they noted.
“Instead, our companies signed contracts that they knew would be highly controversial, yet relinquishes their ability to enforce their own publicly stated principles while attempting to deny workers our say in how our labor is used.”
Many observers and organizations make parallels between the apartheid segregated Society of South Africa, the Jim Crow racial segregation laws of North America, and “Israel”.
Apartheid (/əˈpɑːrt(h)aɪt/, especially South African English: /əˈpɑːrt(h)eɪt/, Afrikaans: [aˈpartɦɛit]; transl. “separateness”, lit. “aparthood”) was a system of institutionalized racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South-West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 until the early 1990s.
20 years on from the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance, in conjunction with the International Decade of the World’s Indigenous People, held in Durban South Africa, where are we now?
The use of the law, in this case, an unjust and immoral law in South Africa by the minority white Dutch Afrikaans and the minority white British colonial invaders, was designed to keep white Europeans, in the ascendancy in South Africa.
Thirteen percent of the population who were white-ruled sixty-eight percent of the population who were black with an Asian community representing the remaining nineteen percent.
First, they ruled through a brutal military occupation, using the gun.
Then they ruled through a brutal racist government using repression and separation laws.
It was the use of apartheid laws that legalized and enforced a system of ‘separateness’. A system of dual apartness which left the races unable to socialize, congregate or work together as brothers and sisters, equal and indivisible under the constitution.
In South Africa, they legalized colonial white supremism through parliamentary statute, police enforcement, and judicial sentencing.
The first apartheid law passed in 1949 was the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act. This was followed by the Immorality Act of 1950 which made it illegal for many South Africans to marry or have sexual relations across racial lines.
The Pass laws were designed to force black people to live in designated areas, corralled as it were, like animals in a pen, thereby making them available as cheap labor for white farmers.
It was the coming to power of the African National Party in 1948 who created the apartheid laws and system of governing South African society, that reinforced the racial discrimination already self-evident in the country. A series of Land Acts gave more than 80% of the land to whites and banned Black crop sharers from working the land.
A series of discriminatory, racially biased laws, saw the permanent separation of the races, alongside a parallel system of separate transport systems, public lavatories, and housing districts.
In effect, the National Party which won the 1948 parliamentary elections on the slogan of Apartheid meaning ‘separateness’ created a privileged white minority class that used the indigenous black South Africans as a labor pool to work on the farms, clean their homes, as a subjugated underclass, kept in perpetual poverty, in appalling substandard housing units in shantytowns with poor education, poor health, and poor social provision.
Like all colonialists, they strove to keep the people apart by fomenting sectarian tensions between the regional ethnic groups in order to prevent a unified opposition to their racist endeavor. They encouraged black-on-black violence in the townships and in the countryside.
A land of milk and honey for the white supremacist colonial invaders beside a land of despair, oppression, and governmental indifference for the natives.
Apartheid lasted for 50 years in South Africa and only officially ended when the ANC, African National Conference which had historically opposed the apartheid system and fought a legitimate war against the unjust white only parliamentary system, finally came to power in 1993, when the majority of citizens were given the right to vote and they elected Nelson Mandela as the first Black President of the Republic of South Africa,
It can be claimed that not much has changed for the indigenous peoples of South Africa, While it is true they have a majority black representative government, the whites still own the land. White farmers still get rich while employing cheap black labor.
The captains of industry are still white although a new elite cadre of black politicians and civil servants may now live in gated (separate) communities, much of the pain of being poor, disenfranchised, and black has changed very little for so many.
A new black capitalist class also rides high above the black dispossessed workers and those who go to bed hungry.
Many observers and organizations make parallels between the apartheid segregated Society of South Africa, the Jim Crow racial segregation laws of North America, and “Israel”. The use of Israeli-only roads and Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank are prime examples of Israeli separation laws.
The discrimination against black African Americans is again reflective of the white European racism that underpins white American society. It is mirrored in the majority of the white legislator, judiciary, police, and army aficionados in power in American civil society and in the corporate, business, and banking sectors.
White Americans control the levers of power and influence, in the media as well as on Capitol Hill.
The continued destruction of black Afro American society through the widespread use of drugs, criminal gangs, poverty, underinvestment, governmental neglect, police brutality, judicial repression, are continued proof if it were needed, that a white European colonial mindset underpins discrimination and racial prejudice in societies where white Europeans want to maintain an internal hegemonic position of superiority which is then reflected in their foreign policies of exploitation and subjugation, in order to maintain white economic privilege in the countries of the EU, North America, Canada, and Australia.
All the countries I have mentioned above are guilty of genocide, racial intolerance, oppression, military adventurism, and ethnic cleansing.
Is “Israel” any different?
“Israel” is a white European colonial settler state.
It has followed all the steps taken by previous white European settler-colonial states such as South Africa, North America, Canada, and Australia,
It has colonized, subjugated, ethnically cleansed, and marginalized the indigenous populations of the country they have militarily conquered and supplanted.
“Israel” has its Nations state Law which many international observers see as a template for a Jewish only Israeli state that separates non-Jews and others from playing an active role in the state.
“Israel” now has usurped 85% of historic Palestine.
To me, apartheid is an abhorrent manifestation of a supremacist ideology that seeks to separate one from the other, to create disharmony, bitterness, hatred, and a divided dysfunctional broken society based on racial or religious purity.
“Israel” fulfills all these roles but it does so much more.
An apartheid state might use the law to discriminate. It may use the law to repress and isolate those it seeks to subdue but it doesn’t bomb kindergartens, schools, hospitals, and bakeries, does it?
It may have separate roads and separate housing areas but it doesn’t shoot countless children in the legs for throwing stones or bringing water to the kids resisting an illegal occupation, creating crippled boys, does it?
It does not shoot paramedics and leave the wounded to bleed out on the street to die, does it?
It does not murder physicists in another jurisdiction, indiscriminately bomb bridges and civil infrastructure in neighboring countries, does it?
It does not count the calorific intake of those it is legally responsible for, to break their will to resist, to withhold food, medicine, vaccines, fuel in order to impoverish and emasculate an entire population of 1.8 million people, does it?
It does not bomb neighboring countries that are not at war with it, deny building permits to the indigenous population while simultaneously dismantling their homes in a land you are illegally occupying, and forcing homes owners to destroy their properties. To detain citizens under Administrative detention, internment without trial. To murder, maim, imprison, torture, and kill at will with impunity, is this Apartheid? I think not. Yet these are the everyday actions of a rogue unaccountable state immune to international law and international sanctions, actively supported protected, and facilitated by the other white European ethnic colonies that Israel aspires to be.
“Israel” is Beyond Apartheid.
We must find a new way to describe “Israel” based on its everyday practices of Ethnic cleansing, murder, colonization, dispossession, and expansion.
We must call “Israel”, not an Apartheid State which it is, but an Ethno cleansing pariah genocidal rogue state, because that it was, it does? That is what it is. That is what we must call it.The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.
Iranian President Sayyed Ebrahim Raisi visited the Islamic Republic’s remotest border province of Sistan and Baluchestan, where he pledged to wipe out poverty and discrimination as he talked to locals to get to understand the problems and challenges of living in the deprived province.
Raisi arrived in Sistan and Baluchestan on Thursday, marking his second unannounced visit since he became president, in what is widely regarded as his attempt to fulfill his campaign promise of uprooting poverty and wealth inequality.
He said living in huts due to poverty is not a desirable situation for the people of the area, stressing that any measure to improve the living conditions of deprived areas is an admirable deed for those behind the move.
While also paying a visit to the coastal region of Makran, Raisi described Makran coasts as a “national treasure”, and said more attention should be paid to the coastal region.
“We should develop a good mechanism for a production boom [in the region],” he said. “The issue of development of Makran coasts must be seen and followed in a special way.”
“If given the required attention, the Makran and Chabahar regions by themselves will increase the capacity of the province’s economic development and eradicate poverty in Sistan and Baluchestan,” Raisi added.
He also expressed joy over the unity he witnessed between Shias and Sunnis in the province.
Raisi continued his trip to different areas of Sistan and Baluchestan on Friday, when he promised to follow up on the people’s water issue in order to turn the “threat” and “problem” into an “opportunity” and resolve the underprivileged people’s problems with respect to drinking and agricultural water.
“We intend to pursue everything that is raised during provincial trips and inform people about the outcomes afterward,” he said.
Raisi noted that he was saddened over the issues faced by the people who live in huts in the suburbs, and said measures must be carried out immediately to address those issues by the end of the current Iranian year, which falls on March 20.
According to him, more power and privileges have been given to the governors of deprived provinces, including Sistan and Baluchestan, in order to resolve their problems more rapidly.
Raisi made his first unannounced visit to Iran’s key province of Khuzestan last Friday, only two days after the formation of his cabinet. There, he promised to launch a concerted campaign to tackle the province’s problems.
“People should know that in the administration, we will put solving the problems of the country in general and solving the problems of Khuzestan in particular on our agenda, and it seems that with the participation of the people, many knots will be untied,” he said upon arriving at the General Qasem Soleimani International Airport in Ahvaz city on August 27.
Stanford University study reveals: “Some 80% of (Jews of colour) respondents said that they had ‘experienced discrimination’ within Jewish settings, including synagogues, congregations, and Jewish spiritual communities.”
By Gilad Atzmon
People who are familiar with the history of Zionism are aware of the rich history of White Jewish (AKA Ashkenazi) abuse towards Arab and Sephardi Jews in Israel. In the years after the creation of the Israeli state hundreds of babies went missing. Their parents, mostly Jewish immigrants from Yemen, were told their children had died, but suspicions linger that they were secretly given away to White Jewish childless families. The Israeli government approved earlier this year a NIS162 million settlement with the families of these ‘vanishing’ children.
Volunteering the Israeli population as guinea pigs wasn’t invented by Netanyahu or/and Pfizer. Blood samples drawn from Yemenites Jews in the 1950s were tested to determine whether they had “Negro blood.” According to the Times of Israel “60 hearts were harvested from the bodies of new immigrants from Yemen post-mortem for purposes of medical research, in a project purportedly funded by the US.” Also in the same period, the Jewish state irradiated children who arrived from North Africa and the Middle East en masse in an attempt to fight ringworm. In the years to follow many of these children died from cancer. In 1995 the Israeli government decided to compensate the victims and families of the Ringworm Affair.
In the late 1950-1960s Jewish immigrants from Morocco were sprayed with DDT as soon as their feet touched the ‘promised land.’ For them, this bitter departure was merely an introduction to decades of abuse and humiliation that is still taking place.
It took the Israeli Government more than a few decades to lift its 1977 ban preventing Jews from Ethiopia donating blood. This late immigration wave of African Jews sent their children to serve in the army and to die for Israel but apparently their blood wasn’t as good as their fellow Israelis.
The Yemenites, Moroccans and Ethiopians have something in common. They are ‘Jews of colour,’ not exactly the most privileged Jews in Israel. Just slightly above the Palestinians and the African non-Jewish immigrants. Some anti-Zionists may insist that this is exactly what we should expect from a racist criminal State. However, the fate of American Jews of colour isn’t any better, in fact it is far worse.
The Jerusalem Post reported yesterday on a study conducted by researchers at Stanford University that delved into the experiences of American Jews of Color. The new report titled Beyond the Count revealed large and systemic discrimination and scrutinization based on race in the Jewish Society.
The data was gathered at Stanford University by a multi-racial team of researchers, with over 1,118 respondents participating. It revealed that “Some 80% of respondents said that they had ‘experienced discrimination’ within Jewish settings, including synagogues, congregations, and Jewish spiritual communities.”
“Additionally, respondents indicated that they had previously experienced an increased sense of awareness regarding how others perceive them because of either their race or their Jewishness.” Some participants admitted they found it “more difficult for their identities to co-exist in predominantly white Jewish spaces than in Black indigenous people of color spaces.” Furthermore, 44% said they had changed how they dress or speak in white Jewish spaces, and 66% reported feeling “disconnected from their Jewish identities at times.”
I wouldn’t dare to ask Jews or anyone else to morph, to become more tolerant or harmonious, as that is not my task in life. I wouldn’t expect anyone who upholds racist and/or white supremacist views to change their spots. I just expect Jews in general and Jewish institutions (such as the ADL or AIPAC) in particular, to look in the mirror twice before they preach to us about ‘race’ in general or white privilege in particular.
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 