Ahed Tamimi and the Israeli Apartheid State

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Opening Theme

Lowkey “Long Live Palestine”

Welcome to Back in the USSR on 93.3 FM CFRU, I am Siegfried, and tonight, on the last show of 2017, I’m going to pick up where I left off last week talking about the Palestinian people and their struggle for liberation against the Apartheid state of Israel and its US ally.  Last week I talked about the recent decision by the Trump administration to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem, in violation of international law and the aspirations of the Palestinian people for a viable independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital.  I also talked about how this action, which was overwhelmingly condemned at the United Nations, was not in defiance of but actually was the logical conclusion of the so-called “peace process” starting with the Oslo accords in 1993, which, far from granting a viable independent state for Palestinians or guaranteeing refugees the right of return to lands stolen by Israel, reduced the Palestinian people to living in a permanent state of siege – hemmed in by expanding Israeli settlements, subject to constant aggression by Israeli security forces, and dominated by a Palestinian Authority that actively collaborates with the Israeli government in its oppression of the Palestinian people.  I quoted from Greg Shupak’s excellent article “The Jerusalem Gambit”, in which he details how these things are connected in what is a decidedly colonial situation as Israel illegally grabs more and more Palestinian land with the aid of the United States, the supposedly “honest broker” in peace talks that offer nothing but betrayal to the Palestinians who have fought an anti-colonial struggle since 1947.

Since U.S. President Donald Trump 'recognized' Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on December 6, 610 Palestinians have been arrested for resisting the occupation, including 170 children and 12 women, the Palestinian Prisoner's Society (PPS) reported on December 27, so even these figures are out of date.

According to the Israeli human rights organization, B'Tselem, at least 6,831 Palestinians are already being held in Israeli custody, including 331 children.  The latest arrests bring the total number of Palestinian prisoners to 7,441.  

In addition, 12 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since Trump's Jerusalem declaration and many thousands wounded from rubber bullets, tear gas and the many other weapons in the IDF's arsenal.

But if there's one case that has truly stood out and captured headlines recently, it's the case of a sixteen 16-year old Palestinian girl, Ahed Tamimi, who was arrested and is currently being held without charges by Israeli authorities.

I'd like to read an Al-Jazeera article on this case from December 26th in full, because I believe it shows quite well the kind of reality Palestinians in the Occupied Territories are living in today.

"Ahed and Nariman Tamimi's detentions extended"

The Real News Network interviewed Ahed Tamimi's father earlier this week, a man who has long been active in the Palestinian liberation struggle.  This is what he had to say.

Play "Ahed Tamimi's father, Israeli occupation will not break us"

Play Bik - "Monsters, Devils and Strangers"

Play Public Enemy - "By the time I get to Arizona"

You're listening to Back in the USSR.  One of the tactics of a colonial power is always the ideological demonization of those it colonizes, and Israel is no exception.  You've seen how Israeli social media demonized Ahed Tamimi, a sixteen year old girl, baying for her blood because she stood up to Israeli soldiers and would not be intimidated.  We've seen how high-profile Israeli government ministers have called for outright genocide of the Palestinian people.  We've even seen current Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu try to blame the Holocaust on the Palestinians, effectively letting the Nazis off the hook in an attempt to demonize the resistance against his own genocidal policies.  That was back in 2015 when Israel launched its last assault on Gaza and more than a thousand Palestinian civilians, including hundreds of children, were killed, and the Israeli media and political establishment was bending over backwards trying to justify the atrocities they were committing on a daily basis.  This is what Max Blumenthal had to say about this horrendous propaganda from an interview he did with the Real News two years ago.

Play Max Blumenthal "Netanyahu's record of inciting violence against Palestinians"

Play Harry Fear "Erasing Gaza, Israeli shell hits another UN school"

Lowkey "Keep your hand on your gun"

Michael Parenti "On racist imperial propaganda"

Amir Sulaiman - "Danger"

Lee Reed "Bazooka Rap"

Trump, Jerusalem and the Palestinian Liberation Struggle

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Opening Theme

Lowkey - "Long Live Palestine"

You’re listening to Back in the USSR here on 93.3 FM CFRU, I am Siegfried.  I was absent from Guelph last week, visiting a good friend of mine in Ottawa-Hull so I didn’t do a live show last week, as you might have noticed, but before I left I said that I’d be addressing a particularly pressing issue on the show when I got back.  A subject that I have unfortunately not devoted enough attention to this year, and that is the subject of Palestine and the Palestinian liberation struggle in the face of Israeli settler-colonialism and Apartheid.  This issue was recently thrust back into center stage with the recent decision of the Trump administration to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem, thus recognizing Israel’s claim to the entire city and denying the aspirations of the Palestinians who have long sought an independent viable state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

To give some historical background: During the 1947-48 ethnic cleansing campaign through which the Israeli state was created, Israel took control of West Jerusalem. Twenty years later, East Jerusalem was occupied and, in 1973, the Israeli government mandated a 73 to 26 percent demographic advantage for Jewish residents.

Since that time, 280,000 settlers have illegally moved in, and Israel has stripped 14,500 Palestinians of their residency rights, made it prohibitively difficult for the remaining Palestinians to get building permits, enacted discriminatory budgets, and provided municipal services unequally.  In short, Apartheid was introduced to East Jerusalem.

However, the city, long the center of Palestinian life, does not fall under Israeli sovereignty according to international law. In this respect, Trump’s decision, in the words of the Palestine Centre for Human Rights, amounts to “recognition from those who do not own to those who do not deserve.” In the words of the Palestinian Youth Movement, the decision is “tantamount to spitting in the face of our people and decades-long anti-colonial struggle and even constitute[s] a form of colonial incitement,” a “symbolic coup-de-grace towards Palestinian assertion of our rightful self-determination and agency over our shared social, cultural and historical heritage.”

Likewise, the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq noted that the “recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel violates the inalienable Palestinian right to self-determination” while the Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights points out that it is a “blatant breach of UN resolutions 476, 478, and 181 and undermines the rights of the Palestinian people.”

Palestinians have launched mass protests in response to Trump’s blatant assault on their national rights.  Israeli forces have bombed Gaza, killing two, and wounding approximately one hundred Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.  The US government and the Israeli government remain defiant of international law and worldwide condemnation and are moving ahead with their clear agenda of further colonization and displacement of the Palestinian people.

As my friend Greg Shupak, who recently published a book about the Palestinian struggle for self-determination, has pointed out, this move by the US to recognize Israeli occupation of Jerusalem is nothing new.  It pre-dates the Trump administration by decades in fact, and has overwhelming bi-partisan support in the US Congress and Senate.  Democrats have actually been pushing for this for the past twenty-five years.

Bill Clinton and Barack Obama both came into office saying they supported moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, and, in 1995, Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act, which mandated that the United States move its embassy to Jerusalem. Thirty-two Democrats, including Joe Biden and John Kerry, cosponsored the bill.

In June 2017, the Senate voted 90-0 to reaffirm the 1995 law and to call on the president to follow its provisions.  Prominent Democrats like Cory Booker, Ben Cardin, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Chuck Schumer co-sponsored the resolution and Bernie Sanders voted in favor of it. Chuck Schumer, the Democrats’ leader in the Senate, actually criticized the president in October for his indecision over the issue and now claims he advised Trump to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s “undivided capital.”

In this regard, the Jerusalem declaration represents another instance of bipartisan support for Israeli settler colonialism.

The US government provided significant support to Israel since its creation, but the 1967 Six-Day War consecrated the relationship. Since then, Israel has served as, in Greg Shupak’s words. “an invaluable proxy for the American state, providing mercenary services against Arab nationalism, Middle Eastern leftists, Soviet allies in the region and beyond, and any force considered a barrier to American capital.”

Israel has also become a lucrative arms market for US firms, and the ruling classes of both nations are so deeply enmeshed in sectors such as technology and security that it’s difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins.  Israel could not have committed its innumerable crimes against the Palestinians and others in the region at any approaching the scale that it has without the United States underwriting it financially, military, and politically.

The so-called “peace process” is part of this relationship.  At the end of the Cold War, American and Israeli capitalists and politicians decided it would be within their best interests to integrate Israel into the regional order in the Middle East. For that to happen, they would have to put the Palestinian question to rest and either eliminate or co-opt the anti-colonial resistance movement among the Palestinian people.

The 1993 Oslo Accords, negotiated in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse, were the culmination of this effort.  Denied their strongest ally, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, similar to the ANC in South Africa in the same period, was forced to make painful compromises.  The agreement put off the issues of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees’ right of return to an unspecified date and gave Palestinians only limited sovereignty over Gaza and the West Bank.

Oslo assigned the administration of these territories to the Palestinian Authority (PA), which was itself created as a result of the accords.  Mandy Turner accurately describes the PA as “a non-sovereign entity whose existence is subject to continuous negotiations with its occupier, Israel,” as well as with international donors unaccountable to Palestinians, making it “party to a complex process of co-optation while Israel continued its colonial practices.” The PA has regularly fulfilled both Israeli and American wishes, even collaborating with Israeli security forces in suppressing Palestinian resistance to the occupation.

Oslo did nothing to halt the Israeli settler colonial project.  Since 1993, the number of Israelis illegally settled in the West Bank — including East Jerusalem — has more than doubled. Gaza has been effectively reduced to the world’s largest open-air prison, where Israel has slaughters thousands, while Palestinian citizens of Israel continue to face systemic discrimination. The violence inherent in all these colonial relationships underlines the fact that “peace” is a misnomer: better to think of the process as one more phase of the 21^st Century equivalent of the American Frontier, with the Palestinians playing the role of Native Americans on the receiving end of ultimately genocidal policies.

As Rashid Khalidi documents in his book Brokers of Deceit, the United States has not stayed neutral in talks between Palestine and Israel but has acted, in his words, as “Israel’s lawyer.” US politicians have acted in accordance with “domestic politics and the politics of big oil and the big arms industry, all of which favored maintenance of a status quo predicated on preventing a just and peaceful resolution” in Palestine-Israel.

From this perspective, Trump’s assertion that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel can only be understood as the logical conclusion of the so-called “peace process”. 

Greg Shupak’s latest article "The Jerusalem Gambit", which my script for this show is mainly based on, appeared in Jacobin magazine.  Here's a report by the Real News Network on the UN's motion condemning Trump's move and the significance it has:

Phyllis Bennis (TRNN 2017) - "UN Defies Trump Threats in Jerusalem Vote"

National Anthem of Palestine

TRNN (2017) - Palestinians resist Israel and its US enabler

MDC - Who's the terrorist now? (song from second intifada)

Abby Martin (Breaking the Set 2015) - Apartheid state gives impunity for IDF soldiers

The Wolfe Tones - Plastic Bullets

Shir Hever (TRNN 2015) - Manifestations of Israeli Apartheid

Saree Makdisi (FORA 2015) - Out of Sight Out of Mind, Israel trying to erase Palestinians

Lowkey - Soundtrack to the Struggle

Abby Martin (Breaking the Set 2015) - How the term human shield is used to justify state sponsored massacres

Michael Parenti (Rambo and the Swarthy Hordes 1989) - On racist imperialist propaganda

Lee Reed - Bazooka Rap

Back in the USSR's Tribute to Fred Hampton

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Bobby Seale “Black Panther Party Ten Point Platform”

You’re listening to Back in the USSR, here on CFRU 93.3 FM, I am Siegfried.  Tonight I want to pay tribute to a revolutionary, an African-American, a man who fought against racism, stood up against imperialism, and unified people – black people, white people, latino people – against their real enemies, the American ruling class.  And they killed him for it.  They killed him for it.  He gave him life for what he believed in.  I’m speaking of Fred Hampton, of the Black Panther Party, an unapologetic communist who was murdered in cold blood by the Chicago Police at the age of 21 while asleep in his own bed, on December 4^th 1969, along with Chicago Black Panther leader Mark Clark.  And thus these two men joined 26 other Black Panthers who were executed by the police in 1969.  Even though this crime took place 49 years ago, we still see how trigger-happy American police are with black lives, and how eager they are to take down political radicals who try to mobilize people against a racist capitalist system.  Tonight I want to pay tribute to this man’s life, his work, his legacy.  And I don’t want to do it in my words, but his own.  So we’re going to start with Fred Hampton in his own words, words that he addressed not only to his own people, but to the oppressed and working class people of Chicago and America.

Fred Hampton “Political Prisoner”Link

See that’s Fred Hampton: you don’t fight racism with racism, you fight racism with solidarity.  You don’t fight capitalism with black capitalism, you fight it with socialism.  And he put this into practice in Chicago, as the Black Panthers did all over America, whether it was patrolling and standing up to abusive police or having free breakfast programs for kids or building alliances with other oppressed communities.  This is what Michaela Warnsley of the PSL wrote about Fred Hampton in an article entitled “Fred Hampton: An Exemplary Life” from 2015.

“Fred Hampton: An Exemplary Life”Link

Fred Hampton “You Can’t Kill the Revolution” Link

All power to the people.  This is the message of the Black Panther Party and this was the message Fred Hampton lived and died by.  He lived for the people, he struggled for the people, and he died for the people.  And that dignified example that he set as a revolutionary still holds to this day, still shines to this day.  This is Michael B Jordan reciting one of Fred Hampton’s speeches at MLK Now in 2016.

Michael B Jordan recites Fred Hampton Speech Link

M1 Dead Prez & Bonnot - Sacrifice 2 (Welcome Home Comrades) feat. Divine RBG Link

Brendan Campisi on state repression of the Black Panther Party and Fred Hampton’s internationalism in Chicago Link

The Murder of Fred Hampton Movie (1971) Link