The Distant Ocean

Before and after

Last night I was stunned to see an article on the New York Times web site titled "Israeli Airstrike Kills Three Generations of a Palestinian Family", which led off with this text:

An Israeli bomb pummeled a home deep into the ground here Sunday afternoon, killing 11 people, including nine in three generations of a single family, in the deadliest single strike since the cross-border conflict between Israel and the militant faction Hamas escalated on Wednesday.

The airstrike, along with several others that killed civilians across this coastal territory and hit two media offices here — one of them used by Western TV networks — further indicated that Israel was striking a wider range of targets.

This was a shock because it's almost unheard of to see a story in any mainstream U.S. press, and particularly the Times, that gives a relatively unbiased view of the kind of vicious violence the Israelis are visiting on Palestinians.  Though the story did make a few nods to Israeli-centric "balance" later on, the headline and the first two paragraphs made it enough of an outlier that I wondered how it even saw the light of day.

I also doubted it would continue to see the light of day, though.  You may have noticed that the link I provided points to a current-at-the-time copy of the story rather than the actual story itself.  Why?  Because this morning, the story at the original link has been re-titled "Hamas Leader Dares Israel to Invade Amid Gaza Airstrikes", and the text I cited above a) is now buried deep in the article and b) has been changed to the following, which I invite you to compare to the original version:

An Israeli bomb pummeled a home deep into the ground here on Sunday, killing 11 people, including nine in three generations of a single family, in the deadliest single strike since the latest conflict began. Members of the family were buried Monday in a rite that turned into a gesture of defiance and became a rally supporting Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers.

A militant leader said Tel Aviv, in the Israeli heartland, would be hit "over and over" and warned Israelis that their leaders were misleading them and would "take them to hell."

Now, it's true that the Times and other outlets sometimes maintain stories for current events that are updated regularly as circumstances continue to change.  Nonetheless, I can't help but suspect that the original story was produced on a Sunday night when the regular staff of the Times was off for the evening, and when that regular staff came in on Monday morning they quickly corrected the unpalatably accurate, insufficiently Israeli-friendly version of events their night crew had published.

Whatever the case, it's reassuring to see once again that our systems of disinformation are self-correcting.

Droning on

And I was so looking forward to war being wrong again for four years.

I'll punch your teeth in if you don't stop claiming I'm violent

Given that I've written about the crack team of thought police over at CommonDreams on several occasions, I couldn't possibly pass up this gem from founder and chief control freak Craig Brown:

Commenters who react to the infrequent spam filter glitches by screaming "Censorship!" and spreading conspiracy theories about mass "censorship" will also be banned from commenting on the site.

Almost too perfect, isn't it?

WITH APOLOGIES TO BEAVERS: The 2007 article where I discovered that Brown and his goons had banned me from the site had at least 133 comments at one point, but they'd whittled it down to 127 by deleting both my comments and all responses to my comments by other people (you can see this for yourself in that first posting I cited above).  Looking at that same article again today, five years later, it's down to just 120 comments—so the busy beavers at CommonDreams eventually achieved a 10% comment censorship rate on that one article.  Impressive, but no surprise given that their scorched earth methods of erasing people involve removing not just a) the comment that crossed their invisible line but b) every comment the person has ever made on the site, c) responses to those comments by other people, and even d) comments by other people that merely mention the disappeared commenter's username.  (They ban their victims by IP address as well, though that's outside the scope of our little analysis.)

Has CommonDreams maintained this impressive 10% rate of censorship?  Does a 10% deletion rate make them the most aggressively censoring news and opinion site on the Internet?  And do the little Napoleons there ever feel even a twinge of conscience as they go about their shabby work?  So many uninteresting questions we'll never have answers for.

Apotheosis of insignficance

Who will win tonight's debate: black Romney or white Romney?  Unwitting kabuki fans everywhere are feverish with anticipation.

Birds of a feather

I can't tell you how tired I am of bringing up my news page in the morning only to be greeted by the stare of yet another remorseless mass murderer: Anders Breivik, Jared Loughner, Barack Obama,Wade Michael Page, etc.

Four more years

George Monbiot's latest has this keeper:

Political systems that were supposed to represent everyone now return governments of millionaires, financed by and acting on behalf of billionaires.

It's funny 'cause it's true!  Oh wait, it's not funny.  Still true though.  And then there's this:

You have only to see the way the United States has savaged the Earth summit's draft declaration to grasp the scale of this problem. The word "equitable", the US insists, must be cleansed from the text. So must any mention of the right to food, water, health, the rule of law, gender equality and women's empowerment. So must a clear target of preventing two degrees of global warming. So must a commitment to change "unsustainable consumption and production patterns", and to decouple economic growth from the use of natural resources.

Most significantly, the US delegation demands the removal of many of the foundations agreed by a Republican president in Rio in 1992. In particular, it has set out to purge all mention of the core principle of that Earth summit: common but differentiated responsibilities.

You really should click through on that link he provides, which shows the actual changes made by the US and its co-conspirators to the draft.  In fact you should so really click through on that link he provides that I'm going to make the rest of this paragraph one big clickable link so that if you even innocently click in this window to change the mouse focus and accidentally nick the side of this paragraph you'll end up following it.  Please don't hate me for helping you.

That's the first most important thing people are ignoring as they obsess over the minutiae of the most inconsequential election in living memory.  Here's the second and even more important thing, which is intimately related:

LORI WALLACH: The [Trans-Pacific Partnership] requires that every signatory country conform all of its laws, regulations and administrative procedures to what are 26 chapters of very comprehensive rules, only two of which have anything to do with trade. The other 24 chapters set a whole array of corporate new privileges and rights and handcuff governments, limit regulation. So the chapter that leaked—and it’s actually on the website of Citizens Trade Campaign, it’s a national coalition for fair trade—that chapter is the chapter that sets up new rights and privileges for foreign investors, including their right to privately enforce this public treaty by suing our government, raiding our Treasury, over costs of complying with the same policies that all U.S. companies have to comply with. [...]

[E]ach of these agreements has gotten bolder, more expansive in its limits on government regulation and in its granting of corporate powers. This one could be the end, because what they intend to do is leave it open, once it’s done, for any other country to join. So, this is an agreement that ultimately could have the whole world in it as a set of binding corporate guarantees of new rights and privileges, enforced with cash sanctions and trade sanctions. It is not an exaggeration to say that the TPP threatens to become a regime of binding global governance, right at the time that the Occupy movement and movements around the world are demanding more power and control.

Which shows that even though underappreciated heroes like Wallach managed to kill the Multilateral Agreement on Investment over a decade ago, its worst provisions have shambled zombie-like through the sweaty dreams of neoliberals, waiting to find new life in yet another secretly negotiated corporate constitution with global ambitions.  (I've always found it bitterly amusing that while hyperventilating right wingers conjure up conspiracies to establish a UN-controlled one world government in nefarious plots like the attempt to increase bike ridership, corporations are taking actual, concrete and successful steps to render democratic self-governance—in the broadest sense of the phrase—all but meaningless.)

No matter which millionaire wins, the entrenchment of corporate control over every aspect of our lives and the destruction of the ecosystems in which human civilization developed will both continue without a pause.  "Four more years" isn't an aspiration—it's a threat.

Let's get back to reality

Last year I uncharitably suggested that one of the liberal threats to Obama in 2012 boiled down to: "We'll think about running a primary challenge against you! Not that we will, of course, but don't you imagine for a second we won't think about it."  And here's what the editors of the SF Bay Guardian said in their endorsements for the June 5th primary:

Last fall, when a few of the most progressive Democrats began talking about the need to challenge Obama in a primary, we had the same quick emotional reaction as many San Franciscans: Time to hold the guy accountable. Some prominent left types have vowed not to give money to the Obama campaign.

But let's get back to reality. [...] We're mad at Obama, too — but we're realists enough to know that there is a difference between moderate and terrible, and that's the choice we're facing today.

Here's another threat I suggested: "We'll vote for you again—but with slightly less enthusiasm!"  And here's Daily Kos himself:

"I’ll tell you what. If [Obama] shows that he’s going to fight for the things that I care about, I will fight twice as hard for him." And if he doesn’t? "Then I’ll vote for him," says Moulitsas.

As much as I'd like to say this proves I'm more prescient than Nostradamus, it's hard to make that claim when I was joined in these far-seeing predictions by the entire Democratic Party establishment.

FORGIVE OUR THOUGHTCRIME: But my favorite part of that Guardian endorsement:

No, this one's easy. Obama has no opposition in the Democratic Primary, but for all our concerns about his policies, we have to start supporting his re-election now.

Got that?  Even in this entirely meaningless exercise in which Barack Obama was literally the only candidate on the Democratic primary ballot, and despite the fact that he would have won a crushing victory in California even if he had faced token principled opposition, the Guardian editors felt that asserting the tiny measure of dissent of withholding their primary vote from him would have been going too far.  After all, if someone had looked at the vote total in San Francisco and noticed it was even one lower than expected, who knows what might have happened?

I imagine Obama's written down the Guardian's "concerns about his policies" on a roll of toilet paper, so he can give them all the attention they require.

Antidote

If you haven't already, odds are good you're going to have someone point you to this wretched bit of Obamaphilia in the next few months (I warn you that clicking through may cause nausea, vomiting or uncontrollable seizures).

The first time I saw that I thought that someone really needed to put together a corrected version—and happily, someone did (thanks, the Internet!).  Bookmark it now and you won't have to track it down later when some Democratic hack coughs up that first link.

Taking Responsibility (part 6: the Church of the Nativity)

[ Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5.  The comment thread for all parts is available here.  If you're wondering about the lack of photos in this final installment, the Israeli military took my last roll of film and never returned it; the images I've included below came from other sources.  If you're curious you can read more accounts of the action at the Church of the Nativity here, here or here. ]

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I checked in to the hostel in Jerusalem, feeling a bit adrift and melancholy.  Everyone I had been traveling with up to that point had either left or had drifted off to other areas, and there were few internationals in the hostel that early in the afternoon.  I was just thinking about going out for lunch when I decided to give Huwaida Arraf of the ISM a quick call, to see if there were any actions planned in the next few days.  She said there was an action planned, at the Church of the Nativity, but not in the next few days—they were set to head out to Bethlehem in two minutes.  I blanched.  It would be a 15-minute walk at least to where the buses were staging, and I really did need to take a day off; would it even be worth trying to make the walk?  I told her I would try, but in fact I was still trying to make up my mind about it.

Then my conscience kicked in.  This was exactly why I'd come to Palestine, and I'd been hoping to be involved in an action at the church ever since I'd arrived.  The Israelis had put the church under siege in the first days of their invasion after some Palestinians sought refuge there, and they had maintained the siege over the protests of the international community and the Catholic Church.  The people inside—including nuns, priests, and monks in addition to the Palestinians—were running out of food and water, and the situation for them was desperate.  Israeli snipers had killed several people in and around the church, including the bell ringer.  The people trapped in the church needed whatever help they could get.  So I threw my things back into my bag and headed over to Jaffa gate, fully expecting that they would be gone by the time I got there.  But they weren't—the buses were just filling up with a good-sized group of internationals.  I had made it in time.  I didn't realize it then, but at that moment my fate was sealed.

We headed over to Bethlehem and met up with more people near the Indymedia offices there.  I was happy to see Jeff standing there—we had lost track of each other in Hebron, and it was good to be back together for this action.  All told there were about 25 of us, and we began making plans for the action.  We would split into three groups: a group who would be trying to get inside to act as human shields for the people there, a "media" group, and a group which would act as support for the entry group.

I was in this third group; our purpose would be to stand in front of the door, blocking the view of any Israeli snipers as the entry group made its way inside, so that the snipers would not be able to get a shot at anyone inside the church.  All of us would be carrying food and water for the people inside.

Taking Responsibility (part 5: Khan Younis, Rafah and Hebron)

[ Part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4.  The comment thread for all parts is available here. ]

We set out south for Khan Younis early in the morning.  To get to Khan Younis we had to pass the Abu Houli checkpoint; like Erez, this was no makeshift checkpoint along the lines of those in the West Bank, but rather a fortified military position.  Sniper towers were in evidence all around it.  Abu Houli is one of the most notorious checkpoints in Gaza or the West Bank, and with good reason.  It marks the intersection of the main Palestinian road in Gaza with an Israeli settler-only road, and priority is given to the Israeli settlers and military traffic.  It is only opened twice a day for Palestinian traffic, once in the morning and once in the evening, and then for only an hour or so each time.  Cars stack up, sometimes for up to two miles on either side of the checkpoint, filled with people waiting to pass to the other side of Gaza.

The actual times at which it will be opened for Palestinians are unpredictable, and sometimes the Israelis do not open it at all.  When that happens, Palestinians trapped there in the press of cars have a choice: try to walk back to their homes (assuming they're on the right side of the checkpoint, are within walking distance, and are in good enough health to do so), or sleep in their cars overnight and hope that the checkpoint will be opened in the morning.  And all the while they are waiting, either choking on the constantly blowing sand and dust or sweltering in their closed cars in order to avoid it, they can watch Israeli settlers drive by at high speed along the settler-only highway.

We were lucky to arrive in the morning shortly before Abu Houli opened; we would not be so lucky in the afternoon.  The taxi driver dropped us off well short of the checkpoint and we had to continue on foot toward it.  However, since everyone who goes through Abu Houli must be in a vehicle, we had to find cars or trucks along the way to take us through and drop us off on the other side.  As always, it was no problem to find someone willing to help.

Taking Responsibility (part 4: Gaza City)

[ Part 1, part 2 and part 3.  The comment thread for all parts is available here. ]

We traveled back to Jerusalem, staying the night with a wonderful Palestinian family in Taibe and enjoying one of the best meals I could remember.  We never lacked a place to sleep or something to eat.  Other internationals told me how they would travel the countryside freely without concern for shelter, knowing that the Palestinians in the villages, towns, and even (especially) the refugee camps would be gracious and friendly and make sure they were accommodated.  It is difficult to overstate the generosity of the Palestinian people, always willing to share what they have no matter how little that may be.

Arriving in Jerusalem again, we all faced the choice of what we wanted to do next.  The news had been filled with speculation about an imminent Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip (largely due to belligerent statements to that effect made by Ariel Sharon), and at the moment there were few or no internationals in Gaza to try to help if the attack came, so I felt that Gaza was the most important place to be.  If the Israelis attacked, we could station ourselves in the refugee camps there to act as human shields, as other internationals had done throughout the Israeli assault on the West Bank.  Jeff felt the same way that I did, but others in the group weren't yet prepared to head out on another trip and some were nearing their departure dates, so it would be just the two of us.  Some of our friends were concerned for us; Gaza is essentially a huge concentration camp, incredibly densely populated, and they felt it could be dangerous for us to go.  They also felt that unlike the West Bank, in Gaza the Israelis would not show as much concern for Western lives.

These were all genuine possibilities and we certainly didn't know what to expect, but we did know how we would feel if an Israeli invasion happened and we had chosen not to go—especially because it would be impossible to enter Gaza after the start of an invasion, since the Israelis would doubtlessly close off any and all access.  I met a few other internationals later who were going as well, and we agreed to meet up with them the next day and take the trip across Israel to Gaza.

Even though we had only been together for a few days our group had formed surprisingly strong bonds, and it was a bittersweet goodbye.  We promised to try to stay safe and return soon, and to meet them back here when we did.  The next morning, with a now-familiar mixture of exhilaration and apprehension, we set off for the Gaza Strip.

Taking Responsibility (part 3: Jenin)

[ Part 1 and part 2.  The comment thread for all parts is available here. ]

The route to Jenin was circuitous, to say the least.  We had to go from Jerusalem deep into Israel, drive north, and then head back into the West Bank.  It would have been much easier and (in a sane world) much quicker as well to drive directly north from Jerusalem to Jenin—but it was effectively impossible because we would have hit an endless array of Israeli checkpoints, one every few miles, any of which could have ended our trip.  As we drove along I thought about what life must be like for the many Palestinians who have family and relatives in other towns.

We re-entered the West Bank and drove the last few miles toward Jenin.  We approached a makeshift Israeli checkpoint—really just an APC parked in the middle of the road, with soldiers stationed around it.  They called in our identification and then denied us passage; when we asked why, they said they were just following orders.  We drove away and approached Jenin from another direction, and again encountered Israeli soldiers along the road, but our luck was better this time—these were younger soldiers, more casual, and after a few questions they let us through.  The taxi took us another mile or so and then dropped us off.  We said our goodbyes to the driver, who now seemed like an old friend, and then we hiked a short way down a hill and across a soccer field to where another van was waiting to pick us up and take us into Jenin.  We shared the ride with doctors from the group Physicians for Human Rights, just one of many humanitarian organizations that were coming to document the results of the brutal Israeli assault on the refugee camp.

As we drove into town, the evidence of the invasion became apparent: utility and phone lines had been cut just outside the camp.  On the walls and on the doors of houses, about every 10 or 15 feet, the Star of David had been spray-painted in black paint.  Some of the stars had exclamation points or "#1!" written inside of them.  The message of humiliation and control was clear; Israeli troops here had been marking their territory, making a racial and religious statement to every person in the town.  Thoughts of Kristallnacht came unbidden to my mind, and the irony was palpable.  The media had been in the Jenin camp for almost a week now, and I had followed the stories closely in print and on television, yet I had never seen or heard about these disgusting images.  I wondered what the response would be if people around the world could see this for themselves.

Taking Responsibility (part 2: Ramallah)

[ Part 1.  The comment thread for all parts is available here. ]

Back at the hospital we waited anxiously for a phone call or any news from the other group.  After what felt like hours, they came through the front door of the hospital—and they were smiling.  I breathed a sigh of relief.  They told us that six of the group had managed to make it inside, including four Americans; this was crucial, because up to that point there had been no Americans in the compound.  Because the US was Israel's benefactor, protector and ally, having American citizens inside the compound would make it extremely difficult for the Israelis to launch an assault.  I had an anxious moment as I tried to find out what had happened to my roommate Nikolaj, a Dane, and nobody seemed to know where he was—but then I finally found someone who verified that he had been among the group that made it inside.  I wasn't surprised.  Nikolaj was a scout, always full of energy, and he walked twice as fast as anyone else in our group.  I'm sure he was the first one to the door.  All in all, the action had been a great success.

Some of the group headed back to Jerusalem or to houses where they'd been staying in Ramallah, while many of us remained in the hospital overnight.  This was not simply a matter of accommodations: the IDF frequently raids hospitals, taking injured men out of their beds or sometimes out of live operating theaters (as I was to learn later from a doctor in Hebron)—just one among a litany of violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention committed on a regular basis in the West Bank and Gaza by the Israeli occupiers.  ISM volunteers would frequently stay in hospitals to attempt to stop this from happening, or failing that to at least act as witnesses.  We were placed in two rooms and given mats and blankets to spread on the floor.  We were also given a dinner by the hospital staff, cooked especially for us.  I had heard about the graciousness and hospitality of the Palestinians, and now I was experiencing it firsthand.

We talked with the hospital orderlies, and they told us some of what had been happening during the Israeli invasion over the past few weeks.  One older woman had come to visit the hospital; the cast on her leg was causing her pain, and she could no longer bear it, so she broke the curfew to come and have it looked at.  As she left the hospital, leaning on her cane for support, she was shot by an Israeli sniper.  She cried out for help, but when the hospital staff tried to go outside to bring her back inside the snipers would fire at them as well, driving them back.  They continued trying to help her but the Israelis would not let them reach her, and eventually she bled to death—within a few feet of a hospital entrance.

Taking Responsibility (part 1: Jerusalem and Arafat's compound)

It's hard to believe it's been a decade since I traveled to the West Bank and Gaza during Israel's 2002 invasion (dubbed "Operation Defensive Shield" in proper Orwellian style), but the calendar is adamant on that point.  After I returned I wrote an account of my experiences there, and though an edited excerpt was published in the book Searching Jenin I've never published the essay in its entirety—despite my own good intentions and some requests from readers here.  So ten years on, here it is, along with photos I and others took.  It was written for a general audience so you may already be familiar with some of the background information, and in some cases events have overtaken the narrative, but I'm presenting it just as I wrote it at the time.  Also, since each installment is fairly long and contains quite a few images I've broken them up so they won't appear in their entirety on the front page; just click the "Continue reading..." link at the bottom of each post to see the rest.

Without further ado, here's part 1, and when I've finished publishing the other parts I'll update this posting with links to them as well.

(As promised....)

• Part 2: Ramallah
• Part 3: Jenin
• Part 4: Gaza City
• Part 5: Khan Younis, Rafah and Hebron
• Part 6: The Church of the Nativity

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Taking Reponsibility: In the West Bank and Gaza

At the end of March 2002, the Israeli army launched a massive assault on the West Bank.  Yasser Arafat's compound was put under siege and much of it was reduced to rubble.  The Israel Defense Forces, or IDF—the misnomer by which the Israeli army is known—were systematically attacking city after city, refugee camp after refugee camp, throughout the Occupied Territories.  The professed purpose was to stop terrorism, but reports coming from the Territories told of the wanton destruction of civilian infrastructure, the targeting of ambulances, the bulldozing of houses, the killing and wounding of civilians, the cold-blooded executions of Palestinian policemen.

I followed these horrifying events in the news with a rising sense of frustration, outrage and helplessness.  This was an attack by one of the most powerful armies in the world against an almost completely defenseless civilian population.  And how had Israel come to have such a powerful military?  As an American citizen who follows foreign policy closely, I knew all too well: because of the infusion of $3 billion in military and economic aid each year from the United States, along with billions more in loan forgiveness, military support through the Pentagon budget, loan guarantees, and other financial incentives.  The total amount of aid the US has given to Israel over the years is staggering—well over $90 billion, the bulk of which has been direct military aid.  This is money provided directly by US taxpayers to the state of Israel, and it is used by Israel to finance its ongoing occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.  It was my money being used to destroy these cities and towns and terrorize these people, and I watched and read about what was happening with that fact always foremost in my thoughts.

The breaking point for me came when I saw the Israelis begin their assault on the Jenin refugee camp.  Here was a group of 14,000 people who were already victims—refugees—under assault by the most advanced weaponry US money could buy.  I felt sickened as I watched the images of a US-supplied Apache helicopter hovering over the camp, launching Hellfire missiles down into the crowded streets and strafing houses and cars with cannon fire, and read the accounts of bulldozers laying waste to the center of the camp, in some cases burying people alive beneath the rubble of their destroyed homes.  The Israelis had closed Jenin to "outsiders" so that they could carry out their violence without any witnesses; they had gone so far as to bar the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations from entering the camp to help the people inside.

But one group had managed to place people inside the camp, to document the atrocities and report back to the outside world: the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a loose coalition of people dedicated to assisting the Palestinians in resisting the Israeli occupation.  I heard the reports from ISM volunteers around the world who had picked up and left their homes to follow their consciences and put their bodies on the line in a struggle that was not their own.  I watched as ISM volunteers marched into Arafat's compound, in between tanks and APCs (armored personnel carriers), with bullets flying over their heads, to act as human shields in order to protect the hundreds of Palestinians trapped inside.  I was amazed at their bravery and inspired by their example.  I realized then that I could do something to help, simply by going to the West Bank to witness, to document, and if necessary to put myself between the Israeli tanks and the Palestinian civilians.  It was a difficult decision to make, but in the end the images coming out of the West Bank were too horrific for me to choose otherwise.  I arrived in Israel on April 19th and began one of the most important experiences of my life.

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My first stop was East Jerusalem, the gathering point for ISM volunteers (or just "internationals").  We were waiting for training before going out "into the field", and so we stayed in and around Jerusalem itself for the day.  I went out to see the town with a group of new friends, expecting a relatively quiet day since Jerusalem itself was not part of the invasion; but I quickly learned that even in this seemingly calm place, the effects of the occupation were quite visible.

As I was walking back to the hotel with my friends, we saw a police van with blue lights flashing and Israeli flags flying.  Four police (men and women) were standing at points around the van with their automatic weapons raised and aimed at a nicely dressed Palestinian man who looked to be in his 30's.  I immediately took out my camera to get a picture, in case the worst happened and this man ended up like many others who've been similarly detained by the Israelis.  My friends and I took up a position where we could witness what was happening.  The police were shouting commands at the man, and he was holding his jacket open, apparently to let them see if he was wearing a bomb vest.  He put his briefcase down on the sidewalk and began emptying some of the contents from it, moving slowly and deliberately.  I watched the gun barrels—they appeared to be aimed directly at his head.  I imagined, with a twist in my stomach, what would happen if he made any move that startled them.  The tension in the air was palpable.