http://www.countercurrents.org/fleming010908.htm
By Eileen Fleming
01 September, 2008
Four decades ago, Israel banned The Beatles fearing their
revolutionary message of love and peace would corrupt their youth.
On September 25, 2008, Sir Paul McCartney will perform his
'Friendship First' concert in Tel Aviv for $4.3 million and is being
promoted as one of "music's most revered stars" and a holder of "the
key principals of friendship – loyalty and respect."
As I wondered what Lennon might have said to his old mate in regards
to making money from an apartheid state, I reminisced to REVOLUTION
The Beatles - Revolution
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87yq372R4Ts&feature=related
You say you want a revolution? Well, you know we all want to change
the world, but when you talk about destruction, don't you know that
you can count me out; when you [take] money [from] people with minds
that hate, all I can tell you brother is:
No Way! Haven't you seen The Wall of Hate?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPpkCf6637E
Haven't you heard The Word from The Palestinian Campaign for the
Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel/PACBI that urged you to just
say no to Israel, because its creation 60 years ago dispossessed and
uprooted over 700,000 indigenous Palestinians from their homes and
lands, condemning them to live like a refugee in exile and destitution.
Israel at 60 is still denying Palestinian refugees their inalienable
human rights and UN-sanctioned rights, because they are "non-Jews."
The world allows Israel to illegally occupy Palestinian and other
Arab lands, in violation of numerous UN resolutions. Israel
persistently defies international law and denies fundamental human
rights with impunity! US and European economic, diplomatic and
political support collude and treat Palestinian citizens with
institutionalized discrimination.
Israel has been "committing horrific war crimes in the occupied Gaza
Strip, where its illegal and immoral policy of collective punishment
-- through a hermetic military siege and an almost complete blockage
of fuel, electric power, and even food and medicine -- is pushing 1.5
million Palestinian civilians to the brink of starvation. Without
electricity, incubators are shutting down; hospitals are fast coming
to a standstill; water is not being properly purified nor separated
from raw sewage; whatever is left from the local economy is
undergoing a meltdown; and the most vulnerable sectors of the
population, the children, the elderly, and the acutely ill, are
languishing under unspeakable hardships." [1]
Israel's wanton killings of civilians, demolition of homes and
property, uprooting of more than a million fruit bearing trees,
incessant theft of land and water resources, denial of freedom of
movement to millions, dividing indigenous Palestinian's into
Bantustans caged by walls, fences and hundreds of roadblocks, is not
to be celebrated, but condemned and changed.
In 1985 Bono joined forces with a group of artists concerned about
Apartheid in South Africa. I IMAGINE, if Lennon were with us today,
he would be among a group of artists concerned about Apartheid in
Israel Palestine.
I also hope that Paul just doesn't yet know that Apartheid can be
summed up as a structured process of gross human rights violations
perpetrated against a conquered ethnic majority by a state and
society mainly controlled by an invading ethnic minority and its
descendants, mainly immigrants that have been deemed part of the ethnic elite.
The following nine categories make up the necessary, sufficient, and
defining characteristics of apartheid regimes:
1. Violence: Apartheid is a state of war initiated by a de facto
invading ethnic minority, which at least in the short term originates
from a non-neighboring locality. In all main instances of apartheid
most if not all members of the invading group originate from a
different continent. The invading ethnic minority and its
self-defined descendants then continue to dominate the indigenous
majority by means of their military superiority and by their
continuous threats and uses of violence.
2. Repopulation: Apartheid is also a continuation of depopulation and
population transfer. One example is seen in the obliteration of the
indigenous Bedouins that Israel denies free movement to graze their
herds and are silently transferring the Bedouins to new locales, such
as atop of garbage dumps.
3. Citizenship: The indigenous people are often denied citizenship in
their own country by the apartheid state authorities, which are
ironically and irrationally, run and staffed by the recent arrivals
to the country.
4. Land: Apartheid entails land confiscation, land redistribution and
forced removals, almost without exception to the benefit of the
invading ethnic minority. Usually, members of the ethnic majority are
forced on to barren and unfertile soils, where they must also try to
survive under impoverished and overcrowded conditions.
5. Work: Apartheid displays systematic exploitation of the indigenous
class in the production process and different pay or taxation for the
same work.
6. Access: There is ethnically differentiated access to employment,
food, water, health care, emergency services, clean air, and other
needs, including the need for leisure activities, in each case
ensuring superior access for the favored ethnic community.
7. Education: There are also different kinds of education offered and
forced upon the different ethnic groups.
8. Language: A basic apartheid characteristic is the fact that only
very few of the invaders and their descendants ever learn the
language(s) of the indigenous victims.
9. Thought: Finally, apartheid contains ideologies or 'necessary
illusions' in order to convince the privileged minorities that they
are inherently superior and the indigenous majorities that they are
inherently inferior. Much of apartheid thought is shaped by typical
war propaganda. The enemy is dehumanized by both sides' ideologies,
words and other symbols are used to incite or provoke people to
violence, but mostly so by the invaders and their descendants. [2]
After recently returning from Palestine's West Bank and Gaza Strip,
Ronnie Kasrils, Minister of Intelligence in South African Government
wrote how it was "like a surreal trip back into an apartheid state of
emergency. It is chilling to pass through the myriad checkpoints --
more than 500 in the West Bank. They are controlled by heavily armed
soldiers, youthful but grim, tensely watching every movement, fingers
on the trigger…A journey from one West Bank town to another that
could take 20 minutes by car now takes seven hours for Palestinians,
with manifold indignities at the hands of teenage soldiers…The
monstrous apartheid wall cuts off East Jerusalem…Bethlehem too is
totally enclosed by the wall, with two gated entry points. The
Israelis have added insult to injury by plastering the entrances with
giant scenic posters welcoming tourists to Christ's birthplace." [3]
Upon The Wall next to the checkpoint that leads from Jerusalem to her
sister city, Bethlehem that enormous Orwellian sign Karlis refers to
hangs and in Orwellian speak proclaims:
"PEACE BE WITH YOU"
The Wall is spun as a 'security barrier' but it "is designed to crush
the human spirit as much as to enclose the Palestinians in ghettos.
Like a reptile, it transforms its shape and cuts across agricultural
lands as a steel-and-wire barrier, with watchtowers, ditches, patrol
roads and alarm systems. It will be 700km long and, at a height of 8m
to 9m in places, dwarfs the Berlin Wall. The purpose of the barrier
becomes clearest in open country. Its route cuts huge swathes into
the West Bank to incorporate into Israel the illegal Jewish
settlements -- some of which are huge towns -- and annexes more and
more Palestinian territory." [Ibid]
"It has become abundantly clear that the wall and checkpoints are
principally aimed at advancing the safety, convenience and comfort of
settlers."- Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad. [Ibid]
"The West Bank, once 22% of historic Palestine, has shrunk to perhaps
10% to 12% of living space for its inhabitants, and is split into
several fragments, including the fertile Jordan Valley, which is a
security preserve for Jewish settlers and the Israeli Defence Force.
Like the Gaza Strip, the West Bank is effectively a hermetically
sealed prison...roads are barred to Palestinians and reserved for
Jewish settlers. I try in vain to recall anything quite as obscene in
apartheid South Africa." [Ibid]
John Lennon did say that "Our society is run by insane people for
insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal
ends...I believe that as soon as people want peace in the world they
can have it. The only trouble is they are not aware they can get it.
…All we are saying is give peace a chance…All you need is
love…Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I'm a
dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and
the world will be as one."
On December 20, 2006, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who received a Nobel
Peace Prize for his relentless work confronting and challenging South
Africa's Apartheid regime spoke to The Guardian: "I've been deeply
distressed in my visit to the Holy Land. I have seen the humiliation
at the checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white
police officers prevented us from moving about…Israel will never get
true security and safety through oppressing another people. A true
peace can ultimately be built only on justice…If peace could come to
South Africa, surely it can come to the Holy Land."
Justice requires equal human rights, liberty and self-determination
for all people. Justice requires honoring International Law and the
Declaration of Human Rights. There can be no peace without justice;
and that will take require either a Revolution of love-or BDS:
Boycott, Divest and Sanction.
--
LEARN MORE:
http://www.pacbi.org/press_releases_more.php?id=655_0_4_0_C
Open Letter to Artists Against Apartheid
Read more...
1. http://www.pacbi.org/press_releases_more.php?id=655_0_4_0_C
2. Paraphrased from pages 71-73, Apartheid Ancient, Past, and Present
Systematic and Gross Human Rights Violations in Graeco-Roman Egypt,
South Africa, and Israel/Palestine, By Anthony Löwstedt. Page 77..
3. Mail & Guardian, Israel 2007: Worse than Apartheid, by Ronnie
Kasrils.
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=308966&area=/insight/insight__comment_and_analysis/
Other Sources:
http://www.paulmccartney.com/index.php
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3587825,00.html
--
Eileen Fleming, Reporter and Editor WAWA:
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Author "Keep Hope Alive" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American
'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"
Producer "30 Minutes With Vanunu" and "13 Minutes with Vanunu"
.
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