zionist warmongers @ Boston University Commencement

I know that anti-war and pro-Palestine activists are planning to protest John Kerry giving the commencement address at UMass Boston on Friday May 29 because of Kerry's support for "Israel" and his support for the US wars and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

So I thought people would be interested to note that there are similar zionist warmongers speaking at the Boston University Commencement today Sunday May 17. http://www.bu.edu/commencement/2009/address.html

The principal Zionist warmongering speakers are Michael Capuano, the main speaker at the afternoon commencement exercises, and Gloria White-Hammond, the speaker at the morning baccalaureate service. Both Capuano and White-Hammond have worked with Zionist groups and in particular have participated in agitating for war against Sudan, the oil-rich (but financially impoverished because of two decades of US sanctions and US-sponsored overt and covert war) largest country in Africa. I hope some BU students are protesting somehow. But at least from what I read in the mainstream Boston Globe and BU Daily Free Press, the main complaint BU students have is that they would rather that their commencement speaker be a more famous and high profile imperialist warmonger than Capuano. Previous BU commencement speakers have included Henry Kissinger and Hamid Karzai. http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/05/09/capuano_who_some_at_bu_say_choice_of_grad_speaker_is_a_bust/

http://www.dailyfreepress.com/us-rep-to-speak-at-commencement-1.1742139

Congressman Michael Capuano is going to be giving the Commencement address at the All University Commencement Exercises at Nickerson Field at 1 PM http://www.bu.edu/commencement/2009/main.html

Michael Capuano is a big supporter of "Israel". Capuano, a former mayor of Somerville, campaigned against the Somerville Divestmeent Project's (SDP) initiatives for governmental bodies in Somerville to divest from "Israel". In 2004, when an initiative for the City of Somerville to divest from "Israel" was before the Somerville Board of Aldermen, Capuano wrote a letter, which was published in newspapers including the Jewish Advocate, asking the Somerville Aldermen not to adopt the divestment resolution. In the letter Capuano said that "Israel ... is a shining example of Democracy." (See this letter halfway down the page at http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archives/005075.shtml )

The opposition to the 2004 Somerville divestment initiative was led by JCRC - the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston - which is an umbrella group of most of the major Jewish pro-"Israel" groups in the Boston area (including AIPAC and the ADL as members) http://www.jcrcboston.org/about/leadership.html . JCRC is funded by CJP (Combined Jewish Philanthropies) and has a multi-million dollar budget which it has used for pro-"Israel" activism and for pro-war activism against Afghanistan, Sudan, Lebanon and Iran. Initially SDP got several of the Somerville Aldermen to sponsor the initiative to divest from "Israel". But after pressure from JCRC and Capuano's letter, all but one of the Somerville Aldermen withdrew their support from the initiative. I was at the Aldermen meeting where the divestment was voted down. The meeting was packed with "Israel" supporters holding JCRC signs. For his help in stopping the City of Somerville from divesting from "Israel", JCRC rewarded Michael Capuano with a trip to Palestine ("Israel") in January 2005. See Capuano's own webpage about this trip at http://www.house.gov/capuano/news/2005/prMiddleEast.shtml

Capuano also lent his name to ads opposing SDP's 2006 ballot questions (for divestment from "Israel" and for a resolution in support of the right of return for Palestinian refugees) in a Somerville State Rep district

Also in 2006, on July 20 during the Zionist war of aggression cluster-bombing against Lebanon, Capuano voted 'yes' for a US congressional resolution supporting "Israel" and supporting "Israel"'s attacks on Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. It is a very heinously worded racist resolution turning facts around, demonizing the Palestinian and Lebanese victims, supporting the Zionist aggressors, and even demonizing Iran and Syria. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/HR921.html

On Jan 9, 2009, Michael Capuano voted yes on the House resolution to support the genocidal "Israeli" attack on the Gaza Strip. http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2009/roll010.xml . Text of the resolution at http://www.israelemb.org/Operation%20Cast%20Lead/US%20official.htm#hres34 . The US House of Reps, including Capuano, officially accused Hamas of breaking the ceasefire.

Michael Capuano is also one of the biggest congressional hawks for war against Sudan. This ties in with Capuano's work for JCRC and the Zionist lobby as JCRC also does anti-Sudan activism. In 2006 JCRC changed their strategy about how to oppose divestment from "Israel". Instead of only concentrating on defending "Israel", JCRC started working on an alternative campaign to divest from an Arab Muslim country Sudan instead. Some far-rightwing Zionists even disagreed with JCRC and thought that JCRC should continue focusing on directly opposing divestment from "Israel". See http://www.jrtelegraph.com/2006/10/naomi_federland_1.html

The "Massachusetts Coalition to Save Darfur" is a JCRC frontgroup that was founded by JCRC and whose website was part of the JCRC website for many months or years before they separated it to try to make it appear that they are different groups. JCRC has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on anti-Sudan propaganda in Massachusetts such as $80,000 for anti-Sudan billboards in Park Street Station in 2007 http://fidelityoutofsudan.googlepages.com/pressstory9

Michael Capuano is a co-founder and co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on Sudan. Capuano's vision for Sudan is for a brutal U.S. military intervention in the country. In 2005 Capuano co-sponsored a bill that would have had Congress authorizing President George Bush to launch unilateral military attacks against Sudan. http://thomas.loc.gov/home/gpoxmlc109/h1424_ih.xml Capuano's bill "strongly encouraged" Bush to use drone aircraft, like the ones that Obama is now using against Pakistan, to attack Sudan, and also sought to authorize Bush to "use force to enforce a no-fly zone over the Darfur region" similar to the no-fly zones imposed on Iraq between the Gulf War and Bush's invasion of Iraq. Capuano's bill cited Iraq-liar Colin Powell's accusation of "genocide" in Darfur as part of the pretext to authorize Bush to attack Sudan. Like the WMD's in Iraq, the "genocide" does not exist.

Here is an excerpt, the most warmongering part, from Capuano's bill:

"SEC. 6. AUTHORIZATION TO USE FORCE TO STOP GENOCIDE IN DARFUR, SUDAN.

(a) Authorization To Use Force.—The President is authorized to use all necessary means, including use of the United States armed forces, to stop genocide in Darfur, Sudan, consistent with the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, to enforce United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1556 and 1564, and in response to the Comprehensive Sudan Peace Act of 2004.

(b) Authorization To Neutralize Perpetrators Of The Violence.—The President is authorized and strongly encouraged to consider utilizing unmanned armed planes and other military assets to neutralize—(1) Janjaweed or other militia groups intent in targeting civilians; (2) helicopters or fixed aircraft used to attack civilians or to provide cover and assistance to militia groups; and (3) intelligence or military headquarters used to plan and direct attacks against civilians.

(c) No-Fly Zones.—The President is authorized to use force to enforce a no-fly zone over the Darfur region by utilizing American military assets, including— (1) those currently stationed in the Horn of Africa region and/or use of NATO forces; (2) options that employ technological capabilities to intercept and jam communications between the Government of Sudan and the Janjaweed; and (3) cost-effective equipment such as aerostats, airships, or unmanned aerial vehicles to achieve situational awareness."

US private military contractors (mercenary companies), including PAE / Lockheed Martin and Dyncorp, have been operating in Darfur since 2004 and have received tens or hundreds of millions of dollars from the United Nations and from the US government for their activities in Darfur. http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11598 http://www.innercitypress.com/lockheed101507.html http://www.innercitypress.com/uklockheed102407.html http://www.innercitypress.com/un2lockheed020708.html

Michael Capuano has received campaign contributions from Lockheed Martin and also from arms manufacturers Raytheon and Textron http://www3.capwiz.com/msnbc/bio/fec/?id=307&cycle=2007-2008 Capuano has also voted yes on some appropriations bills for the Iraq war.

Gloria White-Hammond is the speaker at BU's Baccalaureate Service this morning at 11 AM at Marsh Chapel at 735 Commonwealth Ave. http://www.bu.edu/commencement/2009/main.html She is probably speaking right now.

Gloria White-Hammond started her anti-Sudan work as a member of the Board of Directors of the so-called "American Anti-Slavery Group" (AASG). http://iabolish.org/our_history/ The AASG was founded in 1994 by Charles Jacobs. Jacobs is a Zionist anti-Muslim extremist who has also been involved in the founding and leadership of CAMERA (The so-called "Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America") and the David Project for Jewish Leadership, two groups who run smear campaigns against anyone (reporters, editors, college professors) who dares to criticize "Israel". The David Project's anti-Muslim vitriol has even extended to trying to stop the construction of the Islamic Society of Boston's mosque in Roxbury.

Jacobs founded AASG to make false accusations of "slavery" against Muslim Arab Africans in Sudan and Mauritania. In the 90s these false accusations were part of the pretext for the US government of the Clinton administration implementing starvation sanctions against Sudan and supporting the SPLA, one of the anti-government factions in the civil war in South Sudan. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed wrote a good detailed article about US anti-Sudan activity during the Clinton era is that is available at http://www.mediamonitors.net/mosaddeq16.html . The real reason for Clinton's anti-Sudan policy was because the Sudanese government did not support the US war against Iraq, supported the Palestinians rather than "Israel", and resisted some neo-liberal schemes to allow western corporations to plunder Sudan's resources. During the Clinton era, US financial support to the SPLA was counted in tens of millions of dollars and was funneled through Uganda, Ethiopia and Eritrea . The SPLA fought against other factions in the south as well as against the government of Sudan. Over a million Sudanese fled the US-backed forces in the south and became refugees in Khartoum. (See sources in Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed's article). In October 2002, President George W Bush signed the so-called "Sudan Peace Act" which escalated US support for the SPLA in the civil war to one hundred million dollars per year in direct support http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/19897.pdf.

At that point Gloria White-Hammond started travelling to the SPLA-controlled area in South Sudan on phony "slave redemption" missions. White-Hammond claimed that in a process that only took a couple of days, she was able to negotiate the purchase of thousands of slaves for around $33 each. http://www.tufts.edu/home/feature/?p=white-hammond This is ridiculous. What really happens is that people were rounded up or recruited to pretend to be slaves to participate in the phony "slave redemption" industry. The SPLA went along with the whole thing because it provided good propaganda against the Sudanese government who were blamed for the alleged "slavery" even though this was all happening in areas not under control of the government. Sudan "slave redemptions" were so blatantly phony that even 60 Minutes exposed the hoax. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/05/14/60II/main508928.shtml

The civil war in south Sudan ended in a peace and power-sharing deal without changing anti-Israeli, anti-American and anti-neoliberal policies of the Sudanese government. Then American and Zionist imperialists fomented civil war in Darfur in the west of Sudan. At this point liberal imperialist and Zionist groups in the "USA" escalated the propaganda campaign against Sudan falsely accusing the government of Sudan of "genocide" in Darfur. Gloria White-Hammond has been speaking regularly at Zionist-organized pro-war anti-Sudan events demonizing the Sudanese government and people with false allegationss of crimes in Darfur and exaggerations and lies about what has been happening in Darfur.

Gloria White-Hammond's husband is Ray Hammond. Ray Hammond is the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Boston Foundation which has assets of over $700 million and gives out over $70 million of grant money each year. It is a tax write-off for billionaires such as Bob & Myra Kraft (the owners of the New England Patriots and many Boston-area radio stations, etc.) and way for them to use their money to exert influence on Boston politics. Myra Kraft is on the Board of Directors of the Boston Foundation, and Myra Kraft is the chair of the board of CJP (Combined Jewish Philanthropies) which provides the multi-million dollar annual budget to JCRC for Zionist, pro-war and anti-Muslim activism. The Kraft's also own a stadium in Jerusalem and at least one business in "Israel". http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1201523806913&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

For their work laundering money for Jewish-Zionist billionaires and demonizing Muslims & Arabs in Sudan and painting "Americans" and "Israelis" as the good guys, Gloria White-Hammond and Ray Hammond were given the annual Norman S Rabb award by the American Jewish Committee on October 14, 2007. Anti-Zionist activists protested the award ceremony. American Jewish Committee is a group that is notorious for campaigning against the UN's "Zionism is racism" declaration in the 1970s.

Incidentally Gloria White-Hammond was the commencement speaker at UMass Boston two years ago. UMass Boston, in choosing John Kerry this year, also has not deviated from standard policy of having imperialist warmongers as commencement speakers. Three years ago UMass Boston had Barrack Obama as the speaker.

~ David Rolde

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JLC Attempts to Shut Down Boston Conference on Zionism

Jewish Labor Committee Attempts to Shut Down
Boston Conference on Zionism

Zionists walked into a well-known center for left
activists in Boston this week and managed, with a single
complaint, to take away an already
agreed-upon meeting space for an April conference on
Palestine organized by the New England Committee to
Defend Palestine. Around March 9, the local
branch of a national group called the Jewish Labor
Committee told the director of Encuentro 5 and the landlord
of the building that houses Encuentro that the New
England Committee to Defend Palestine is a "hate
group" and demanded that it not be allowed to hold
the conference in Encuentro's meeting space.

On March 14, the director of Encuentro informed
the conference organizers that he would have to
accede to pressure from the
Jewish Labor Committee and UNITE-HERE (
the Union of Needle trades, Industrial and Textile
Employees and Hotel Employees and Restaurant
Employees Union). UNITE-HERE is connected to
a trust that owns the multi-story brick industrial building in
Boston's Chinatown. Encuentro's
space is on the 5th floor of this building
and is held without a lease,
making it vulnerable to landlord threats.

Beneath the facts of the case lie a number of ironies:

* Attacks like this are exactly the subject
of the disputed conference. The
purpose of the conference, whose title is
"Zionism and the Repression of Anti-Colonial Movements,"
is to expose attacks on activists as they have
been carried out historically by zionist forces.
Activists scheduled to speak have been involved
in the Native American struggle against European
genocide on the North American continent,
the Black liberation struggle in the US from slavery onward,
the struggle against US imperialism in Central
America, the movement against apartheid in South Africa,
the struggle against US imperialism and genocide in Iraq,
and the struggle against US-Israeli genocide in Palestine.

* Encuentro bills itself as
"a space for progressive movement building" in
Boston (http://www.encuentro5.org

Massachusetts Global Action -- the organization that runs
Encuentro--argued the need for a "tactical retreat" and
offered us $400 and help finding another venue if we would
consent to leave. We told them that this would undermine the
meaning of our conference, their own work, and the
movement as a whole. Our suggestion to Encuentro was to
take this matter to the activist community --
to the people who use the space -- to tell them
what was taking place and invite them to help organize
a struggle to defend the integrity of our collective work.

Zionist organizations like the JLC have more material
and political power than perhaps at any time in the past.
But this power is increasingly hollow,
since it must increasingly assert itself by shutting down
a discussion about that power--a discussion that is growing
and moving into the mainstream. The
JLC did not succeed by persuading Encuentro 5,
but by threatening them through the building's owners.
These are clearly threats that they have the
power to carry out--a fact that proves what
critics of zionism are saying.

But this also demonstrates that while they
have more material power than ever before, they have
less ideological support than ever before. The
legitimacy of the zionist project--the passive consent
given to US support for "Israel"--is collapsing. That
collapse must come before the serious
fight over material power--a fight that is coming.

We are disappointed that Encuentro 5 and Mass
Global Action decided that it was not strategic for them
to challenge this abuse of power now. We know
that the repercussions might well have been severe, and
recognize that this would affect a great deal of effort and
work that has gone into building their organization. We offer
the following as a challenge--not so much to
them, but to the movement as a whole, since finally
the question is not about any of our specific,
struggling organizations:

Can we build a movement against imperialism,
or against social injustice in the United States, if the limits of
our discussion can be set by organizations like the JLC--
organizations that are committed to ensuring
that billions of dollars in US military and economic support are given
yearly to one of the most militarized colonial states in the world?

There is widespread discontent with zionist power.
This discontent will not turn itself into a meaningful response
until it becomes organized around specific battles.
This can only take place if at some point people are
willing say "it stops here."

* "Progressives" are not progressive. The "progressives"
are the Jewish Labor Committee, which calls itself "
the Jewish voice in the labor movement."
The JLC did not come in from the outside but actually has an
office in Encuentro's own space.
The Jewish Labor Committee's web site
(http://www.jewishlabor.org

shows its president, Stuart Applebaum,
standing proudly with war criminal
Shimon Peres in February in Jerusalem.
The JLC has put out a statement
condemning the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment,
and sanctions against "Israel." The JLC statement asserts
that Israelis, who have brutally occupied Palestine for 60 years,
carrying out a program of genocide ever
since, should not be seen as "victimizers."

The progressives are UNITE-HERE, the brave union
for oppressed garment and hotel workers, which acted in
this fiasco as a landlord bully threatening
to kick out tenants for political speech.

The progressives are leftists who support resistance
in Palestine, but not resistance that uses measures of a
kind used by its enemy -- namely, armed
struggle. The leadership of the resistance in Palestine,
Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan today is Islamic.
Progressives in the US support secular political movements,
so they don't support the people who are actually
carrying out the resistance in these countries which
the US and "Israel" are busy devastating. Support for
resistance by oppressed people should be given
without qualification.

* The criminal has accused his victim of the crime. The real hate groups are
those who support genocide in Palestine. The Boston Jewish Labor
Committee's accusation that the conference organizers are a "hate group"
comes right out of the manual of the Anti-Defamation League which has gone
to great pains to define political speech and action as good or bad in terms
favorable to the zionist project. The ADL is a "progressive" organization --
it seems to be for the right thing, except when it comes to criticism of
"Israel." Criticism of "Israel" is anti-Semitism -- that's hate speech,
that's against the law. The ADL was part of a recent attack on a mosque
being built in Boston. It was exposed for lobbying Congress against a bill
that condemns the Armenian genocide. During the late '70's and early '80's,
it spied on organizations in the U.S. that supported the struggle against
white supremacist apartheid in South Africa. This do-good "no place for
hate" organization is actually a front group for a racist foreign power.

The limits of political speech on the left are now
being defined by the very organizations who say they're
working for the good. There is no open
debate. The idea is to simply prevent political speech.
Why is support for a nasty racist state in occupied
Palestine driving so much of US and international politics?
And the question goes beyond Palestine, since these
same organizations have the power to set limits on the
discussion of "social justice" and racism here inside the
US. This includes a history of demonizing black nationalists
like Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, and the
Black Panthers as "anti-Semites." In many cases people's
careers have been ruined and their reputations smeared by
forces who never came out in the open. Joseph Massad, Tony Martin,
Ward Churchill, and most recently Catherine Wilkerson, are examples.
Ward Churchill will be among the speakers at the conference.

The New England Committee to Defend Palestine assures
all those who have been invited to and registered for the
April 12 and 13 conference that we have secured another
venue and will be announcing it soon. We couldn't have
provided a better example of zionist interference in
anti-imperialist activism than the one that just happened here.
We have great speakers coming from many different movements.
We hope that supporters of the struggle in
Palestine, and all those who recognize the need to build
a truly independent
opposition to oppression inside the US, will join us for this event.

New England Committee to Defend Palestine
http://www.onepalestine.org

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Desmond Tutu Likens Israeli Actions to Apartheid

BOSTON - South African Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu compared conditions in Palestine to those of South Africa under apartheid, and called on Israelis to try and change them, while speaking in Boston Saturday at historic Old South Church."We hope the occupation of the Palestinian territory by Israel will end," Tutu said.
"There is a cry of anguish from the depth of my heart, to my spiritual relatives. Please, please hear the call, the noble call of our scripture," Tutu said of Israelis.

"Don't be found fighting against this god, your god, our god, who hears the cry of the oppressed," Tutu said.

Tutu spoke with political activist and lecturer Noam Chomsky and others to a largely religious audience about "The Apartheid Paradigm in Palestine-Israel," a conference sponsored by Friends of Sabeel North America, a Christian Palestinian group.

Israeli policy toward Palestine is an inflammatory topic in the U.S. and is not commonly discussed in large, public forums.

In Boston, complaints were lodged with Old South Church in the weeks prior to the event, in an effort to halt the conference. The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting complained that Sabeel is "an anti-Zionist organisation that traffics in anti-Judaic themes," according to press reports.

Outside the church Saturday, Christians and Jews United for Israel demonstrated against Tutu and the conference.

"Sabeel is an organisation that seeks to demonise Israel. Tutu several years ago made anti-Semitic comments," May Long, president of the group, told IPS. Long did not hear Tutu's speech, she said.

Tutu was an inspirational leader in the South African fight against apartheid, which officially ended 13 years ago. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 and today continues to speak around the globe for peace and justice, and to call for Palestinian rights.

The 76-year-old Tutu also appears to have won a battle against prostate cancer, which he was last treated for in 2000.

"Because of what I experienced in South Africa, I harbour hope for Israel and the Palestinian territories," said Tutu, who invoked passages from the Christian bible throughout his talk.

Tutu drew parallels between the apartheid of South Africa and occupied Palestine of today, including demolitions of Palestinian homes by the Israeli government and the inability of Palestinians to travel freely within and out of Palestine.

"I experienced a dÈj‡ vu when I encountered a security checkpoint that Palestinians must negotiate every day and be demeaned, all their lives," Tutu said.

Tutu said that Palestinian homes are being bulldozed, and new, illegal homes for Israeli's built in their place.

"When I hear, 'that used to be my home,' it is painfully similar to the treatment in South Africa when coloureds had no rights," Tutu said.

Tutu is a pacifist and he said only non-violent means should be used to confront the oppression at play in Palestine.

"Palestinians ought to try themselves to restrain those who fire the rockets into Israeli territory," Tutu said.

Tutu said that while fighting apartheid in South Africa he drew inspiration from the Jewish struggle as the bible describes it.

"Spiritually I am of Hebrew decent. When apartheid oppression was at its most vicious, and all but knocked the stuffing out of those of us who opposed it, we turned to the Hebrew tradition of resistance," and the belief that good will triumph over evil, and that a day of freedom from oppression will come, he said.

"The well-to-do and powerful complain that we are mixing religion with politics. I've never heard the poor complain that 'Tutu, you are being too political,"' he said.

"I am not playing politics when it involves children who suffer," Tutu said. "A human rights violation is a human rights violation is a human rights violation, wherever it occurs."

Tutu recently bumped up against U.S. discomfort with discourse about Palestine, when a Minnesota university president yanked an invitation to Tutu that had been extended by a youth group.

Rev. Dennis Dease, president of the University of St. Thomas, in St. Paul Minnesota, said he did not want Tutu to speak because the Nobel Laureate's position on Palestine was viewed by some as anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic.

Dease also fired Cris Toffolo as head of the university's peace and justice programme, who had supported the invitation to Tutu.

Dease apologised to Tutu three weeks ago.

Tutu said Saturday that he accepted Dease's "handsome apology", but that he will not consider speaking at the school until Toffolo is reinstated and her record cleared.

At the conference, Chomsky said the U.S. provides heavy financial support to Israel and has a profound influence on Israeli policies, including those toward Palestine and foreign trade.

"If the U.S. doesn't like what Israel is doing, it just kicks Israel in the face," Chomsky said. In 2005, Israel wanted to sell improved missiles to China. The Bush administration halted the sale, Chomsky said.

"It blocked them and refused to allow Israeli officials to come to the U.S. The U.S. demanded an apology from Israel. It dragged Israel through the mud," Chomsky said.

The U.S. began its close relationship with Israel after the Israeli victory in the 1967 "Six Day War" against Egypt, Syria and Jordan, Chomsky said.

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