Israel/Palestine
Related: About this forumPalestine, the Women's March, and imperial feminism Much effort is made in the US to maintain that
(posted here at suggestion of GD forum hosts)
Palestine, the Women's March, and imperial feminism
Much effort is made in the US to maintain that Palestine is not a feminist cause and erase the plight of its women.
Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory,walk together on Pennsylvania Avenue during the Third Annual Women's March in Washington, US, January 19, 2019 [File: Joshua Roberts/Reuters]
more on Women's Rights
Recent assaults on the reputation of Women's March cochair and prominent black American activist Tamika Mallory demonstrate, yet again, that speaking even the most basic truths about Israel and Palestine is a hazardous undertaking. Last June, Mallory was disinvited from a conference in Australia for public comments observing that the creation of the state of Israel entailed a "human rights crime" - a statement that should hardly have been considered radical, let alone grounds for a disinvitation, given that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine that accompanied Israel's founding has been well-documented, including by Israeli historians. Mallory has come under fire again for a January 17 interview on PBS's "Firing Line", in which she responded to host Margaret Hoover's insistence that she recognise the state of Israel's "right to exist" by maintaining that "everyone has a right to exist ... I just don't feel that anyone has a right to exist at the disposal of another group." Mallory's position is an accurate reflection of international law: no state has an inherent right to come into existence, and certainly not any right to commit the crimes involved in Israel's ongoing "disposal" of the Palestinians, copiously recorded by Palestinian, Israeli, and international human rights organisations.
. . . . .
Journalists like Hoover fixate on the fabricated rights of Israel, while the actual rights of Palestinians enshrined in international covenants, such as the right to self-determination, the rights to be free from discrimination and collective punishment, and the right of return for refugees, are completely erased from the picture. Clearly, what is being demanded of activists like Mallory is not an affirmation of Israeli people's rights, but a denial that Palestinians have any rights at all.
The treatment of Mallory is alarming not because it is exceptional, but because it is not. Between 2014 and 2017, American NGO Palestine Legal responded to almost 1,000 incidents involving attacks on the expression of solidarity with Palestine - baseless lawsuits, censorship, violence, threats of violence, firings, and false accusations of anti-Semitism and terrorism. Over the past few years, laws against the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, which aims to pressure Israel to comply with international law, have now been enacted in 26 US states. Targets of punishment for Palestine solidarity in the US in the last few months alone have included scholar-activist Marc Lamont Hill, whose speech at the UN in support of justice and freedom for Palestinians got him fired from his post as a commentator on CNN - an outlet that habitually features a preponderance of Israeli government and advocacy perspectives while marginalising Palestinian ones. And Angela Davis, whose Fred Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award from the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute was rescinded because of her activism for the fundamental human and civil rights of the Palestinians - a decision only reversed after it generated widespread public outcry.
. . . . .
The conceit that Palestine is not a feminist issue is sustained by perpetual erasure of the Palestinian women who, in the words of Amnesty International, "carry the burden" of Israel's American-sponsored occupation and militarism: the women whose homes have been destroyed and family members arbitrarily imprisoned or killed, the women forced to suffer the indignities of being violated by soldiers and giving birth at checkpoints, the women harassed, abused, or killed for protesting the unliveable conditions under which they are made to exist.
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https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/palestine-women-march-imperial-feminism-190129102338367.html
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Mosby
(16,319 posts)And not worthy of serious discussion.
Israeli
(4,151 posts)On August 14, 2002, Amy Goodman interviewed former Israeli Minister of Education Shulamit Aloni on the radio and television program Democracy Now. During the interview, Aloni said:
Often when there is dissent expressed in the United States against policies of the Israeli government, people here are called anti-Semitic. What is your response to that as an Israeli Jew?
Shulamit Aloni: Well, its a trick, we always use it. When from Europe somebody is criticizing Israel, then we bring up the Holocaust. When in this country people are criticizing Israel, then they are anti-Semitic. And the organization is strong, and has a lot of money, and the ties between Israel and the American Jewish establishment are very strong and they are strong in this country, as you know. And they have power (Video and full transcript below)
Aloni was a major figure in Israel. She had been Education Minister, served in the Israeli parliament for 28 years, authored six books and numerous articles, and produced a radio program.
Aloni was known as the founding mother of civil rights in Israel. For decades she worked for ethical humanism, against discrimination, and opposed the Israeli occupation. She was outspoken on a number of topics, including criticizing organized tours of Israeli high school students to Holocaust concentration camps on the ground that such visits were turning Israeli youth into aggressive, nationalistic xenophobes.
In 2000, Aloni was awarded the prestigious Israel Prize for her struggle to right injustices and for raising the standard of equality. In 2005 she was voted the 57th-greatest Israeli of all time.
Aloni passed away in 2014 at the age of 85.
For more information on Aloni go here and here. Prominent Israeli journalist Anat Saragusti made a documentary about Aloni in 2008, but this no longer appears to be available on the Internet.
Below is a video of Alonis statements on Democracy now:
TRANSCRIPT:
Amy Goodman: Often when there is dissent expressed in the United States against policies of the Israeli government, people here are called anti-Semitic. What is your response to that as an Israeli Jew?
Shulamit Aloni: Well, its a trick, we always use it. When from Europe somebody is criticizing Israel, then we bring up the Holocaust. When in this country people are criticizing Israel, then they are anti-Semitic. And the organization is strong, and has a lot of money, and the ties between Israel and the American Jewish establishment are very strong and they are strong in this country, as you know. And they have power, which is okay. They are talented people and they have power and money, and the media and other things, and their attitude is Israel, my country right or wrong, identification. And they are not ready to hear criticism. And its very easy to blame people who criticize certain acts of the Israeli government as anti-Semitic, and to bring up the Holocaust, and the suffering of the Jewish people, and that is justify everything we do to the Palestinians.
The full segment with Aloni on Democracy Now can be viewed here.
Source :https://israelpalestinenews.org/israeli-minister-called-accusation-anti-semitism-trick-silence-criticism-israel-video/
Mosby
(16,319 posts)And it's rights have been "fabricated".
Israeli
(4,151 posts)
...if I'm wrong and I don't take just your word for it .
Would appreciate you backing up your howls of antisemitism with something .
A link or a source maybe .....from some reputable web site that isnt Right wing orientated
Mosby
(16,319 posts)So the author is claiming that Israel is based on "fabricated rights", do you agree with that? Are not the Jewish people indigenous to Israel, Judea, Samaria, Levant and Mahgreb?
Are Jews allowed to have self-determination?
Will the Mizrahi Jews ever see justice for what was done to them?