Two small American cities vote yes to and support an anti-Zionist municipal ballot question which supports equality between Jews and Non-Jews in Israel. Quote below from article.
The election of Obama was important step in American history.
"But it also deserves to go down in history for another reason. It was the
first day when Americans rejected the instructions of their pro-Israel
politicians and newspapers and instead voted for the principle that
non-Jews should be equal with Jews under the law inside Israel,
and not discriminated against as they are today in apartheid Israel."
Please pass on to your friends. I am not aware of a single media report on this story and victory for the principle of equality for all.
Ed CorriganElection day in the United States, 2008, will be remembered in most
history books as the day Americans elected the first African-American
as president. But it also deserves to go down in history for another
reason. It was the first day when Americans rejected the instructions
of their pro-Israel politicians and newspapers and instead voted for
the principle that non-Jews should be equal with Jews under the law
inside Israel, and not discriminated against as they are today in
apartheid Israel.
The Somerville Divestment Project (SDP) placed Question 4 on the
ballot in two state representative districts, one in Somerville and
the other in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The question asked, "Shall
the state representative from this district be instructed to vote in
favor of a non-binding resolution calling on the federal government
to support the right of all people, including non-Jewish Palestinian
citizens of Israel, to live free from laws that give more rights to
people of one religion than another?" The "Yes" votes outnumbered
the "No" votes 9,100 to 5,542 in Somerville, and 9,637 to 3,650 in
Cambridge. If Obama had won by this kind of a margin it would have
been declared a Super-Landslide!
Not a single politician or newspaper supported Question 4. On the
contrary, the Somerville Journal reported in its election week
edition that, "The City of Somerville, including all city aldermen,
does not support questions 4 and 5, said spokesman Tom Champion. The
mayor of Somerville also opposed Question 4 and the so-
called "Progressive" Democrats of Somerville were silent (apparently
supporting equal rights is not part of the "progressive" agenda.) The
only other Somerville newspaper, the Somerville News,
editorialized, "The Somerville Divestment Project has divided
Somerville residents by bringing up far-away, world conflicts in a
municipal context. Reject the tactics of the Somerville Divestment
project and vote no on Question 4." Apparently the voters saw things
differently.
In 2006 the SDP placed two questions (5 and 6) similar to Question 4
on the ballot in Somerville. One called for Somerville to divest from
Israel and the other called for supporting the right of all refugees,
including Palestinian refugees, to return to their homeland. The
Boston Globe, both Somerville newspapers and the Israeli Consul for
New England told people to "vote no" on both questions. Mayor
Curtatone, Congressman Capuano, and both candidates for governor—
Deval Patrick (now the Democratic Party governor) and Kerry Healy the
Republican—jointly produced glossy mass mailings and signboards with
photographs of all four politicians saying "We Stand With Israel,
Vote No on Questions 5 and 6." The unanimity of all
these "respectable" leaders saying "vote no" made many voters wonder
if perhaps the SDP's ballot questions that seemed so reasonable on
the surface might actually reflect some kind of bad hidden agenda.
And yet despite this intense "vote no" campaign, the "Yes" vote was
31% for divestment and 45% for supporting the right of return of
Palestinians. Tuesday's vote was therefore not the first time voters
rejected the mainstream politicians to support human rights for
Palestinians.
The law prohibits placing the same question on the ballot twice in a
row, which is one reason why Question 4 focused on apartheid inside
Israel this time.
How Did Somerville Voters Respond to the Stance of Politicians and
Editors?
Voters watched three presidential debates in which the two candidates
offered unconditional support of Israel's apartheid enterprise. Yet
instead of towing the party line (both parties' line!), voters looked
at the facts, they read the SDP's Question 4 brochure (we distributed
15,000 of them, reaching nearly every household in the Somerville
district) that said "Apartheid Is Inside Israel, Not Just the
Occupied Territories" and that presented copious examples of specific
Israeli apartheid laws, and then they chose to side with justice and
equality.
Somerville and Cambridge voters are to be congratulated for being the
first voters in the United States to clearly stand up for equal
rights for Palestinians and oppose Israeli apartheid.
The Significance of This Vote is Enormous
The significance of this vote is enormous. It demonstrates that
Americans support the principle of equality, and believe that Israel
is wrong in discriminating against non-Jews under the law. It shows
that Americans do not want their government to support this
discrimination inside Israel, regardless of whether Israel is "our
ally" or a "Jewish state." It shows, in other words, that when given
a chance to choose between the principle of equality versus the
Zionist principle of inequality (that Israel must be a "Jewish" state
in which the sovereign authority is "the Jewish people" and not all
citizens equally) then Americans chose equality, even when their
politicians and newspapers tell them not to.
Pro-Apartheid Zionist Forces Tried to Block the Ballot Question in
September
Zionist influence on the American public depends on preventing
Americans from understanding clearly that Zionism conflicts with the
principle of equality, and preventing them from ever having an
opportunity to express their choice. This is why the pro-Zionist
forces in Somerville hired a lawyer to try to keep Question 4 off the
ballot. The lawyer wrote to the state's Attorney General that the
question was pretending to be just about equality but that it was
really also criticizing Israel, and that to be "fair" the question
should be split into two separate questions, one about equality and
the other about Israel. The Attorney General rejected this argument
and replied that the question upheld a general principle and merely
stated that it also applied to Israel. What drives the Zionists crazy
is that the SDP has successfully framed the debate about Israel as a
question of being for or against the principle of equality. The
Zionists know they can only win when the debate is framed as being
for or against anti-Semitism. They are quite skilled at winning the
latter, but incapable of winning the former.
Now that voters in Somerville and Cambridge have made it clear where
the majority stands, pro-Israel forces are trying to put the best
spin on it that they can, by denying the significance of the vote,
saying things like, "Of course Question 4 won, it's just 'Mom and
apple pie,'" as if affirming equality for non-Jews and Jews under the
law in Israel did not constitute a scathing indictment of the entire
Zionist enterprise.
Equality and Democracy are Inseparable
The SDP also placed Question 5 on the ballot in Somerville, in order
to inject into the public discussion an opinion that many hold but
few express out loud--that we do not have real democracy in the
United States, because ordinary people have no real say in what the
government does, and Big Money calls the shots. Question 5 asked,
therefore, "Shall the state representative from this district be
instructed to vote in favor of a proposal to amend the Constitution
of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to replace the state Legislature
with 100 randomly selected adult residents of the Commonwealth, each
serving a one year term, to be called the Commonwealth Jury and to
have all the legislative and other powers of the current
Legislature?
" At first this might seem like a dramatic change, but
consider that a recent University of Rhode Island poll found that 74%
of Americans do not think their government should take the side of
Israel in the Israel/Palestine conflict. Yet no American politician
expresses this view, which illustrates just how unrepresentative our
so-called "representative democracy" is. When (and only when!) the
spirit of Question 5 prevails at the federal level, and ordinary
Americans shape U.S. foreign policy, will it stop giving
unconditional support to Israel's ethnic cleansing and apartheid
laws. This is why the fight to turn around the pro-Israel foreign
policy of the United States, and the fight to win real democracy in
the United States, are inseparable.
The Somerville News, not surprisingly, wrote, "Vote no on Question 5
and reject this silly measure." The Somerville Journal opted to scare
people into voting "No" by writing, "Question 5 attempts to overthrow
state government" (as if letting ordinary people make the laws
amounted to overthrowing government.) Despite the novelty of the idea
and the scare tactics of the press, and despite the fact that the
people who think our "representative democracy" doesn't really
represent us are the people who are least likely to vote, Question 5
received a "yes" vote from 23% of the voters--3,468 people.
Why Do the Politicians and the Mass Media Defend Israeli Apartheid?
Before mass-distributing brochures for Questions 4 and 5, the SDP
distributed thousands of copies of a leaflet titled, "Why Our
Government Supports Israel's Government, and Why We Shouldn't." We
wanted people to understand why all the politicians, Jewish or not
and no matter what political party, support Israel and tell people to
vote "No" on SDP questions. The reason, we explained, is that the
politicians and the media are beholden to Big Money. Big Money in
turn needs to keep ordinary Americans under their control lest they
revolt in anger against what Big Money is doing. Big Money is making
our society dramatically more unequal and undemocratic. Big money is
transferring trillions of dollars from ordinary Americans and good
purposes--like health care, education, infrastructure and jobs that
produce other useful products and services--to the pockets of a
corporate elite for bad purposes--like enabling a small number of
people to be billionaires and producing more and more weapons. The
weapons aren't really for protecting us from real enemies, but rather
to make the wealthiest and most powerful people around the world more
secure. Big Money is transferring these trillions of dollars from us
to them by means of the new "bailout" of banksters and by means of
the long-standing military-industrial-complex scam. This scam is
fueled by lies such as the infamous one about "weapons of mass
destruction." But it has two real purposes. One is to transfer our
tax money to the owners of the military-industrial-complex. The other
is to provide Big Oil and other huge corporations--who fear losing
their huge profits if real democracy ever "broke out" in the Middle
East or elsewhere—protection from pro-democracy forces in the world
by an American military with a budget that alone accounts for 48% of
all military spending by all nations in the world.
Big Money controls Americans with Orwellian wars of social control—
today it is the "war on terror." But the "war on terror" needs a
credible enemy. To make us fear terrorists, our rulers tell us that
Israel is "the only democracy in the Middle East" and that the anger
of Palestinians and others against Israel is the anger of irrational
hate-filled anti-Semitic terrorists who "hate our freedom" and will
kill us unless we obey our leaders in every way and surrender
whatever freedoms they say are necessary to dispense with so they can
wage their "war on terror."
What Next?
The SDP aims to help Americans throughout the nation understand that
the principles of equality and democracy that they overwhelmingly
support are the opposite of the principles of inequality and top-down
control that our politicians and mass media defend by telling us lies
about Israel and about Palestinians.
People from cities across the U.S. have already called in asking for
information and help from the SDP so they can replicate what has
happened in Somerville and Cambridge, and some have already begun
planning campaigns. The SDP will certainly provide all the help to
such people that we can.
Why the SDP Focuses on the Israel/Palestine Conflict
This relationship between Israel and the "war on terror" and its
employment by America's rulers as an Orwellian means of controlling
Americans, is the reason why the SDP focuses on the Israel/Palestine
conflict more than, say, the conflict between the Saudi Arabian
government and the victims of its notoriously undemocratic and brutal
regime that denies people the right to worship in any religion other
than the state-approved one and even denies women the right to drive
a car, or the conflict between the Iranian government and Iranian
workers whom it arrests for simply going on strike to get wages they
earned but were not paid, or other conflicts elsewhere in the world
where brutal regimes kill innocent people in large numbers. As long-
lasting and as horrible as the oppression of Palestinians by Zionists
is, it is not the only example of brutal oppression. Some people,
therefore, still wonder, "How come the SDP focuses on the
Israel/Palestine conflict and not others?" Here is why.
We live in the United States, not some other country. In the United
States, no other conflict is used by our rulers the way the
Israel/Palestine conflict is used, to control Americans. Whenever
people oppressed by the Saudi Arabian government--or the Iranian
government, or the Egyptian or Syrian or Chinese government, or by
any other foreign government besides the Israeli government--fight
back, even violently, to protect themselves or resist oppression,
they are hardly ever reported on by our mass media; and if their
struggle is reported, it is not done so in a manner to persuade
Americans that they are evil terrorists who would kill us if they
could. But when Palestinians fight Israeli oppression, the American
mass media cover up the truth about their oppression--the ethnic
cleansing to make Israel a "Jewish state" and the apartheid laws that
make life as difficult as possible for non-Jews who are Israeli
citizens--and lie to us that their struggle is fueled by anti-
Semitism and irrational hatred that supports terrorism against
Americans because we defend "the only democracy in the Middle East."
Related to this is the fact that, as Americans, we need to focus on
what our government has chosen to focus on. If the U.S. government
gave more military, economic and diplomatic support to the Saudi
Arabian government than any other government, then it might make
sense to focus there. But the United States government has chosen to
give virtually unconditional diplomatic support (all those UN vetos!)
and over-the-top economic and military support to Israel, not to any
other government. (Egypt is the 2nd largest recipient of economic
aid, but it comes with strings to prevent Egypt from opposing Israel;
Israel's aid has no strings to prevent it from opposing any of its
foes.) Our government's support of Israeli ethnic cleansing and
apartheid is a beam in our own eye. The principle behind focusing on
the Israel/Palestine conflict is simple, and was stated clearly a
long time ago: "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy
brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of
thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?"
Somerville Divestment Project
www.divestmentproject.org
P.O. Box 441259
Somerville, MA 02144
Phone: 617 230-2835
SDP opposes all attacks by anyone, anywhere, and at any time where
unarmed civilian casualties are clearly likely, whether the attacks
are aggressive or retaliatory. At the same time we support self-
defense actions and armed resistance against individuals who use
physical violence to oppress people.
WVNS editor comment
I think Somerville's ongoing educational process and recent success
can be attributed to the fact that it is NOT affiliated with any
ethnic or religious group. There is just a group of people who agree
to work on a project together. There have been a lot of disagreements
on ideology, mainly because of defensiveness and reactionary impulses
due to media slurs. As a result a number of the more hardline anti-
Zionists were nudged out of the movement. And also, the Liberal
Zionists got nudged out due to their belief in a two-state solution
and SDP's position on that issue. So they were left with a
certain "type" of activist. And obviously, since footwork is the
deciding factor in an anti-establishment ballot question, persons
willing to donate hundreds of hours of time had more sway than those
simply donating money now and then.
What it showed me was that, even though the Zionist victory over SDP
the first two ballot questions was swift and brutal, the propaganda
had minimal lingering effects. As long as SDP continued to educate
people through flyering, personal conversations door to door, and
holding a free film series, the population continued to get more
educated on the issue. As soon as the population got more knowledge,
their support for SDP did not shift. The Zionists were playing upon
public ignorance with their expensive marketing campaign. They had
posters of Deval Patrick (Massachusett's Obamaesque governor) and
other politicians with the message, 'Stand with Israel, vote against the SDP.'
Once people got beyond the brand names though, and the issue became
more clear to the public, which takes time and effort, they would make
the right choice on the ballot.
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