"And let it direct your passion with reason,
that your passion may live through its own
daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise
above its own ashes." Khalil Gibran
On Sunday, there were no US flags and lots of Israeli
flags in a "street fair" dubbed "Ben Yehuda, Jerusalem
Street fair" in Teaneck, NJ. I came a bit early and
strolled through the few booths selling Israeli products
and Zionist ideas (no mention that Jerusalem is
illegally occupied per International law!) to some
hundreds of mostly Israeli expatriates and perhaps
30% US Jewish Zionists (In my strolling I identified
4 who were not Jewish and seemed out of place).
But then some 30-40 ultra-orthodox Jews of the
Neturei Karta came and started to picket the
"Israel celebration". With dignity, poise, and
gentleness, they responded to a barrage of angry
Zionists. They explained calmly that
"Judaism rejects Zionism" (on one of their signs)
and that the Torah forbade the establishment of
such a militarized state by people who rejected
Judaism and who despised religious Jews
(people like Herzl and Ben Gurion supported by
the British government).
Several Zionists spoke to me and one young man
seemed extremely interested and we had a nice
lengthy conversation for nearly one hour
(he is an Israeli who was sent to liaison with the
US Jewish Federation). Others were actually
violent and tried to rip banners away. My large
banner was highlighting
http://PalestineRemembered.com .
At least four who were arguing with the anti-Zionist
Jews used words like goyim and aravim
(in Hebrew and Yiddish) as inults.
Many refused to talk to me because I was "an Arab".
One said to me simply that "I don't talk to Arabs" so
I asked "why not?" and he answered with an arrogant
voice "I served in the Israeli army and I am a sniper
and I shoot people like you, that is why".
The biased and dismissive story about the event was
posted on the Website of the Local newspaper
( http://www.northjersey.com
But in the printed version, there is a section on the
protest not found on the website. It is also
dismissive/lame and also claims that people "ignored us"
(actually every one who came in and out of the street fair
saw us and you could tell by their facial expressions and
their gestures that they did not ignore us). In the printed
version they included things like " 'It is the 60th anniversary
of a tragedy' said Mazin Qumsiyeh, a Palestinian Christian
who joined a group ofg Rabbis and Jews in traditional
Hasidic dress who stood behind police barricades and
handed out fliers to passers-by who approached them"
and "Rabbi Yisroel Weiss, the spokesman for Jews United
Against Zionism, said the group's goal is to 'educate Jews
and non-Jews alike that Judaism and Zionism are
diametrically opposites' ...[and] called the creation of Israel
'the biggest factor in exacerbating anti-Semitism' " Of course
they did not report on the verbal abuse
(a form of verbal violence) that Zionists heaved on the peaceful
demonstrators. I will try to get a video tape from Rabbi Weiss
to put on youtube
(their web site is http://www.jewsnotzionists.org/ ).
In the meantime, here is an example of the kind of attack
when I was giving talk at Brookline high school
(BTW, the people videotaping are from Jewish Voices for
Peace who were extremely supportive and were critical to
the success of this talk):
Mazin Qumsiyeh's welcome at
Brookliine High School 9-16-2007
Palestinian-American academic Mazin Qumsiyeh
(author, "Sharing the Land of Canaan:
Human Rights and the Israeli-Palestinian Struggle")
is met,and harassed, by members of The David Project.
a media report on what went on inside is here
http://www.wickedlocal.com
brookline/homepage/x1649542136
Racists like Alan Dershowitz get to perform their attacks,
lies and distortions with impunity while speaking truth
can cause you physical harm. What we faced in Teaneck
or Brookline or in our work etc. is small compared top
what pioneers Prof. Norman Finkelstein and the late
Prof. Edward Said faced in trying to "speak truth to
power" let alone Palestinian nonviolent resisters face
daily from the Israeli colonization army (just this week
10 were injured in the weekly Bil'in nonviolent demonstration,
hundreds were killed doing nonviolent resistance in the past
few seven years alone including Rachel Corrie*). When we
try to bring out some facts, we are faced with a dictatorial
- prosecutorial style of verbal abuse. View the video below
of an attempt to state some facts to Dershowitz in his visit
to Yale. The part they cut off is me challenging Dershowitz
for a debate after he started to "cross-examine" me
(I am still waiting and I have debated other Zionists
including Moron Klein and David Harris). Most of the
audience was Jewish and several talked to me afterwords
to get linked to information and facts (at least one now joined
our movement for human rights after she saw the evidence
first hand of Zionist-Nazi collaboration). Many decent Jews
now recognize that Dershowitz and extremist/racist Zionists l
ike him actually do a lot of harm to Jews and Judaism by
conflating it with Zionism. Anyway here is the video:
YIISA Alan Dershowitz Lecture
(Qumsiyeh says Hitler a Zionist
Author Mazin Qumsiyeh stunned a packed Yale house by
alleging that Hitler supported Zionism. The crowd was incensed
over his remarks. Law Prof. Alan Dershowitz was the inaugural
speaker for the Professor William Prusoff Honorary Lecture
Series presented by The Yale Initiative for the
Inderdiscipinary Study of Antisemitism. Charles Asher Small is
the president and founder of YIISA.
Today I learned that Israel and the US governments are coordinating
their boycott of the UN Conference on Racism and Xenophobia
scheduled for early 2009 and will pressure other countries to
do the same (because no one is allowed to critique Zionism).
They are also coordinating releasing information on Israel's
airsrike inside Syria (a violation of the UN Charter) that was
done with US government complicity. So in retrospect, the
Israeli flags in Teaneck maybe a harbinger of things to come
(flashed in my mind the line of presidential candidates and
aspiring politicians lining up to pay homage to AIPAC/Israel's
lobby in front of the Israeli flag in Washington last year).
These two governments continue to "cooperate" to send more
US citizens as cannon fodder in Zionist wars in Iraq,
Afghanistan, and soon Iran and in the process destroy the
US economy ($2-3 trillion estimated cost for the Iraq war
alone, $1 trillion in aid to Israel etc.). This reminded me of
what was foreseen by Zionist neocons when they implored
the US to attack Iraq so that it would bring Israeli and US
policies into "alignment". This Israelization of the US that
has been going on is almost perfect now. It is actually earlity
chilling to compare the testimony of US soldiers breaking the
silence on their actions in Iraq. (see video:
WINTER SOLDIER: JON MICHAEL TURNER
Turner is a former Marine who fought with the 3rd Battalion,
8th Marines. Aired Monday March 17, 2008 on Democracy Now.
with Israeli Soldiers breaking the silence on their actions in the
occupied West Bank and Gaza (See video:
Burning Conscience: Israeli Soldiers Speak Out
A searing interview with Avichai Sharon and Noam Chayut,
both veterans of the Israeli Defense Forces and members of
Breaking the Silence. Sharon and Chayut served during the
second intifada, an on-going bloodbath that has claimed the
lives of over three thousand Palestinians and
nine-hundred-fifty Israelis. After thorough introspection,
these young men have chosen to speak out about their
experiences as self-described "brutal occupiers of a
disputed land." Producer: Sat Gwin
Alternate Focus is available on the Dish Network, Free Speech
TV, Channel 9415, Saturdays at 8:00pm EST and on cable
stations near you. Check www.alternatefocus.org for details.
and lest you have any doubts, here is an inside video
Israeli army did not want revealed:
Video Israel Doesn't Want You to See:
From the CBC Website:
http://cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view....
Israeli army embarrassed by video broadcast
Last Updated Tue Mar 19 19:52:12 2002
JERUSALEM - The Israeli army has expressed a note of
contrition after a television station aired a videotape
showing an army assault on a Palestinian home in which
a mother of five children died.
When CBC News spoke with Ismail Hawarjeh at Bethlehem's
hospital earlier this month, there was no way to verify the
story he told about how his wife had died, until Israel's
Channel 2 broacast the tape last weekend"
Will the old wisdom of violence begetting only more violence
be lost on a suicidal society? Will apathy win over action?
Will we finally remember what ENLIGHTENED
self-interest is about?
*Media report on my talk in Albany on the
Anniversary of Rachel Corrie's murder:
http://cms.dailygazette.com
2008/mar/17/0317_palestin
(one of hundreds of events held around the
world to remember)
Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD
http://qumsiyeh.org
http://peace-action.org
http://justicewheels.org
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