OMNI
ANTICIPATING ISRAELI
BDS DAY (BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, SANCTIONS) AND PALESTINIAN LAND DAY, MARCH
30, 2025, Today January 30, 2025.
COMPILED BY
DICK BENNETT FOR A CULTURE OF PEACE, JUSTICE, AND ECOLOGY.
https://omnicenter.org/DONATE/
Also see:
International Day of
Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Nov. 29. https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/11/un-international-day-in-solidarity-with.html
Local Actions
Tonight JANUARY 30,
2025 6:30 AT OMNI
Boycott Documentary
Screening and Discussion
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Here
is a reminder to come join us to watch Boycott and explore the intersection of
civil rights, activism, and the legal system tonight.
Date: January 30th
Time: 6:30pm
Location: OMNI Center, 3274 N Lee Ave, Fayetteville, AR 72703
Did
you know that Arkansas became a battleground over the right to boycott? "Boycott" delves
into the stories of individuals, including a newspaper editor from Arkansas,
who took a stand against anti-boycott laws that target free speech and
activism, including support for the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and
Sanctions) movement.
The
film follows three Americans who take on anti-boycott laws in a fight for free
speech in "Boycott". Attorney Mikkel Jordahl, speech
therapist Bahia Amawi, and Arkansas Times publisher Alan Leveritt each face
personal and professional challenges after refusing to sign pledges against
boycotting Israel. From Arizona to Texas to Arkansas, their legal battles
reveal the far-reaching implications of these laws on democracy and individual
rights.
See you there! Friends of Palestine NWA
Emergency Protest for Rafah/Gaza
2-13-24
(It's late in the day but can you please post this? )
Hands off Rafah!
Emergency Protest
Washington County Courthouse, Fayetteville
5:00 PM Today Feb 13
Sponsored by: NWA for Palestine, Friends of Palestine NWA,
Christian Voice for Peace
Happening in Rafah now
TEXTS National and
International
A Brief selection mainly of divestments during 2024, ending with a meditation
on Picasso’s Guernica.
“Downward spiral of a genocidal Israel”
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Jan 2, 2025, Truthdig, Arun Gupta, https://www.truthdig.com/articles/israels-downward-spiral/
Israel’s
Downward SpiralL The nation's success on
the battlefield masks the beating it is taking as an international pariah.
Israel
is riding high after carrying out the most audacious campaign of military
conquest of any nation since the 1940s. Following the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks,
Israel has begun an open-ended occupation in
Lebanon, seized Syrian territory twice the size of Gaza, wiped 50
Palestinian villages “off the map” in the West Bank, bombed Iran and Yemen, and
weathered more than a year of resistance, global revulsion and protest, while
carrying out a horrific genocide in Gaza that has no end in sight.
From
the beginning, Israel has enjoyed the full support of
the Biden administration — militarily, financially, politically,
diplomatically and morally. Israel’s extermination of children, families, aid
workers, doctors, teachers and artists has earned it only a few occasional
peeps of official protest from Washington, while regional powers such as Turkey
and Saudi Arabia are trying to have it both ways. They have reduced economic
and political ties with Israel to pacify domestic anger, while quietly aiding it
because their governments are aligned with U.S. interests.
But
this moment doesn’t represent the triumph of Zionism so much as the beginning
of the end. Israel has become an international pariah, led by an incompetent
and corrupt government, and it is experiencing a debilitating brain drain. Its
society is riven by multiple fractures, with deep political divisions and
intractable conflicts, not just between Jews and Palestinians and Israeli
Arabs, or those for or against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right
government, but between secular Jews and a growing ultra-Orthodox
population.
Meanwhile,
the gulf between Israel and the rest of the world has never been deeper. In
January, a Tel Aviv University poll showed almost universal backing among
Israeli Jews for its war on Palestinians with 95% either believing
the military was using the right amount of force in Gaza or too little. Nearly
60% support killing all 2.3 million residents of Gaza through
starvation. Outside of the West, opposition to Israeli savagery is nearly
universal and has reinvigorated the 2005 call by Palestinian civil society for
“boycott,
divestments and sanctions
against Israel until it complies with international law and universal
principles of human rights,” as well as the Palestinian Campaign for the
Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel initiated the previous year.
This
moment doesn’t represent the triumph of Zionism, so much as the beginning of
the end.
On
top of this political and economic isolation, Israel’s embrace of endless war
and Jewish supremacy is creating self-inflicted wounds. While the
country depends on Washington for its power and impunity, no amount of weapons
and dollars can prop up a regime festering with rot. Higher taxes, government
expenses, inflation, reduced social services, shocking levels of poverty
intensified by the war and mounting international pressure — all are
exacerbating a brain drain that threatens to enervate the Israeli economy.
Young,
well-educated Israelis are fleeing abroad to escape a government power
grab in the guise of a proposed judicial “reform” that critics argue would
“codify the subjugation of women” and the LGBTQ community. The planned overhaul
of the legal system, experts warn, would “pave the way for unbridled
corruption, infringement of individual rights and harm to the public interest.”
In 2023, prior to the start of the genocide, one study found Israeli
emigration had leaped by 42% compared to previous years. The study
author warned that losing tens of thousands of high-tech workers,
physicians and senior academic faculty “could generate catastrophic
consequences for the entire country.” Close to 1 million Jewish
Israelis have dual citizenship, and a high portion of them are bilingual,
meaning they can easily emigrate.
Numbers
for 2024 are murky, but emigration appears to have turned into a flood. In the
first nine months of 2024, Canada approved 7,800 work permits for
Israelis. That’s five times the rate for all of 2023. During the same period,
more than 18,400 Israelis applied for German citizenship, which is
more than three times the 5,700 Israelis who did so in 2022. The brain
drain extends to Israeli Arabs as well.
For
many secular Israeli Jews, the war is “the last straw” that has exposed an
onerous double burden: They pay taxes and serve in the military, while the
far-right government, which relies on religious parties to stay in power,
protects ultra-Orthodox men from the draft. Ending the war will only revive
long-broiling secular-religious strife over suffocating religious laws and
policies that provide “a vast system of government subsidies,
stipends and other benefits” that allows half of Orthodox men to avoid work as
full-time yeshiva students.
There
are also external pressures. Many Israelis are asking why they would want to
live in a pariah state, “a symbol of oppression, immorality and
illiberalism,” as New York Times columnist Ezra Klein put it in an interview
with Haaretz.
One
little-reported phenomenon is how campus protests in solidarity with
Gaza — which spread to more than 140 U.S. universities and 25
countries by May — supercharged the movement to boycott, divest from
and impose sanctions
on Israel. In their wake, the rector of Hebrew University in
Jerusalem noted a “tsunami” of boycotts, saying, “I can’t count the number of
academic relations that have been suspended or even broken off.” This led to a
“barrage” of conference invitations withdrawn, papers pulled from review and
funding halted, according to Bloomberg. Some 20 universities in
Europe and Canada have cut ties with Israeli universities and academics since
last spring.
Haaretz
admits that the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement is “working
vigorously and effectively in the cultural realm,” which has made life more
difficult for those working in international fields, particularly science and
the arts. In October, hundreds of prominent authors signed
a letter vowing not to “work with Israeli cultural institutions that
are complicit or have remained silent observers of the overwhelming oppression
of Palestinians.” Meanwhile, refusals to work with Israel’s film and TV
industry are limiting its reach, and boycotts by musicians are
deepening its isolation.
The
hardest blows to Israel are directly economic. Turkey, a major economic partner
with Israel with $8 billion in bilateral trade, has reduced
its business with and is under popular pressure to crack
down on third-party shipments to Israel. Colombia, Israel’s top supplier of
coal, has stopped exports of the fuel that accounts
for 20% of Israel’s electricity supply. Nor is Israel’s military
immune from international opprobrium. Belgium, Spain, Canada, the Netherlands,
Italy, Germany and Britain have banned or restricted weapons
sales. Israeli weapons makers have been nixed from
or skipped military trade shows. . . . MORE https://www.truthdig.com/articles/israels-downward-spiral/
For
many secular Israeli Jews, the war is “the last straw.”
Under
pressure “from activists and governments,” many financial
firms, including sovereign wealth funds, pension funds and companies
in France, Italy, Ireland, Norway, Denmark and the United Kingdom, have
divested from Israel or companies connected to the war and occupation.
In
June, Israel was dealt an especially painful blow when Intel announced it
was suspending work on a $25-billion chip plant that would have
employed 12,000 people, although there is no evidence it was connected to the
war. Intel Israel has also laid off hundreds of employees, and
Samsung Next, which funded 70 Israeli companies and startups over a
decade, shut down operations in Tel Aviv in 2024. Pret A
Manger dropped plans to open 40 stores. Starbucks and McDonald’s admitted pro-Palestine
boycotts have contributed to declining profits.
Israel’s
tech industry accounts for 20% of gross domestic product and 53% of
exports. It prides itself as the “startup nation,” but that’s more myth than
reality. Over the past decade, Israeli startups have dwindled 45% to
fewer than 800 in 2023, and only 5% of those raise more than $50 million.
Israel’s high-tech sector, meanwhile, has slipped to 2018 levels, and venture
capital fundraising has sunk by 70%. One entrepreneur said the loss of
funding is “directly tied to the Gaza War.”
All
of this points to Israel edging toward a vicious cycle. As its workforce
shrinks in medicine, technology and academia, Israel’s tax base declines, its
capacity for innovation and ability to attract talent diminishes, and staying
becomes less and less desirable for those remaining.
These
problems are compounded by hits to other sectors. Tourism has been
virtually wiped out, with an estimated $5.2-billion loss from pre-pandemic
levels. Agriculture has seen a 30% drop in output that has pushed
up the price of meat by 7% and produce by 9%. Local businesses are on
track to record 50% more closures in 2024 than in a normal year. And
a staggering 29% of Israelis now live in poverty, and one in
four are food insecure.
Israel’s
cost of insuring debt has tripled since the genocide began. Foreign direct
investment plunged 29% in 2023 and probably fell further in 2024, and foreign
investors have dumped nearly $13 billion in Israeli stocks and bonds. True to
form, Wall Street banks are benefiting from Israel’s pain by notching
higher profits from volatility in its bonds and currencies caused by the
war. That is costing Israel money, as currency gyrations increase the cost of
importing and exporting goods.
Meanwhile,
international agencies such as Moody’s have lowered Israel’s credit
to a few notches above junk bond rating, citing politics as an economic threat
— namely the “high social tensions” resulting from changes to the judiciary and
allowing the ultra-Orthodox to avoid military service.
Here,
again, the divide between religious and secular Israelis poses perhaps the
greatest long-term threat to Israel and the Zionist project. The Haredim have a
far higher birth rate than secular Jews, and because community patriarchs keep
them poorly educated to control them, it’s estimated that in a decade or so
Israel’s high-tech economy will be unsustainable, as its skilled workforce will
have evaporated.
A
competent government might be able to help the country weather these crises.
But Netanyahu’s ruling coalition is singularly focused on “looting” government
coffers to reward religious fanatics and violent settlers.
All
of this points to Israel edging toward a vicious cycle.
The
crisis has come to a head in the government’s proposed budget for
2025, which “includes some of the biggest spending cuts and tax increases
Israelis have ever known, in order to finance the war.” The budget slashes
spending on health, welfare and aid to the elderly, disabled and Holocaust
survivors. At the same time Netanyahu, has been pushing a bill to
“subsidize day care for children of full-time yeshiva students who dodge the
draft.”
The
far right that effectively controls Israel is banking on being able to soak
secular Jews for taxes as they do all the fighting and keep the economy humming
while trying to subject them to a prejudiced religious judicial system.
Arabs and ultra-Orthodox make up 35% of Israel’s population, but less
than 5% of tech workers.
Israel
has wounded itself deeply through external brutality and internal bigotry. Add
to that the small but regular cuts that the BDS movement is inflicting on it,
and the state has become far more fragile, far more quickly, than many had
imagined possible.
January
2, 2025
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“Doing
Time For Palestine” By Corinna G. Barnard, Consortium
News.
Popular Resistance.org (11-1-24). Almost
a year ago a photograph of two figures standing on a rooftop of a building in
Merrimack, New Hampshire, attracted interest in the social-media sphere
attentive to the Palestine-Israel conflict. The people in the photograph were
wearing masks and holding greenish smoky flares over their heads. Beneath them
was a sign, “Elbit Systems of America.” That’s a wholly owned U.S.
subsidiary of the Israeli weapons company Elbit Systems. The parent,
Haifa-based company is a leading supplier of weaponry — military drones,
artillery, munitions and electronic warfare systems — that the Israeli military... -more-
“The
ICJ finds that BDS is not merely a right, but an obligation.” Editor. mronline.org (8-17-24).
The ICJ’s
authoritative ruling on the Israeli occupation makes clear that boycotts,
divestment, and sanctions against Israeli occupation, colonization, and
apartheid are not only a moral imperative but also a legal obligation.
Originally published: Mondoweiss on August 13, 2024 by Craig Mokhiber (more by Mondoweiss) | (Posted Aug
16, 2024)
Human
Rights, Inequality, State
Repression, WarAmericas,
United StatesNewswireBDS,
International Court of Justice (ICJ), Israeli
Occupation, Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF)
Israel and its lobby have, for years now, been
engaged in a frenzy of activity to further insulate Israel from accountability by using their
influence in the West to effectively outlaw organized opposition to Israel.
Foremost among these efforts has been the Israeli campaign to penalize calls to
boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel for its gross violations of human
rights. As a result, countless laws and policies are now on the books across
the U.S. and the broader West, trampling on core constitutional principles and
internationally guaranteed human rights in defense of Israeli impunity. But an
advisory opinion issued last month by the International Court of Justice (ICJ)
should help to turn that around.
In its historic
ruling, the ICJ found that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East
Jerusalem, and Gaza is entirely unlawful, that Israel practices apartheid and
racial segregation, and that all states are under a duty to help bring this to
an end, including by cutting off all economic, trade and investment relations
with Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. In other words, as a matter
of international law, all countries are obliged to participate in an economic
boycott of Israel’s activities in the occupied Palestinian territory and to
divest from any existing economic relations there. . . .
7.11.24 Veterans for Peace talk Boycott, Divest, and Sanction, the time is NOW
Dr. Javeria Farooqi
joins us to talk BDS: its importance, its successes, its impact, and how YOU
can take part in ending apartheid, occupation, and genocide. Dr. Farooqi shows
us specifically the tools we can use to Boycott. From Apps to Websites, you can
view products and stores to support or avoid. She also talks about how your
investments can be powerful in changing the world for the better, for the
humane, for the compassionate.
From: Friends
of Sabeel North America <friends@fosna.org> A
Christian Voice for Palestine
Date: Fri, May 24, 2024 at 5:09 PM
Subject: Some Observations and Reflections from Palestine
To: Mack Paul <mpaul49@gmail.com>
Dear
Mack,
Since returning to Palestine last week, I have been speaking with trusted
individuals and extensively monitoring Hebrew broadcasts on TV and radio. I
developed a number of observations about Palestinians and Israelis that are
often missing in the Western Press:
1. Palestinians
in the West Bank and Israel have a deep sense of fear and foreboding. They were
shocked at the intensity and brutality of the Israeli response to Hamas’ attack
and the inability of the world community to respond adequately to what they
clearly perceive as an ongoing genocide.
2. Many
are also surprised at how long the crisis is taking. They strongly fear that
the end is nowhere in sight, and that if hostilities in Gaza were to cease or
become significantly reduced then the West Bank would be next. The heightened
level of Israeli settler and army violence as well as impunity is only the
first step towards a more massive attack, with the possible aim of another
large-scale population transfer–this time in the West Bank and towards Jordan.
3. Israelis
also are reacting as if in the midst of an existential battle, sensing the need
(and perhaps the opportunity) to reach a final resolution of their dispute with
the Palestinians, by means of a crushing and lasting victory and the
implementation of an unclear plan to resolve matters in their favor once and
for all. The sense one gets is that Israelis are living in a bubble, with no
appreciation for the suffering of the Palestinians (which is rarely depicted in
their media) or the opinions of the rest of the world (which they dismiss as
antisemitism). There is only a determination to use massive power, out of a
sense of superiority combined paradoxically with a feeling of vulnerability.
There exists also a sense of entitlement and impunity clearly demanding that
Israel be exempt from normal standards of behavior and that the world see
things their way, and complaining of victimhood if the world (or anyone) fails
to support their version of reality.
4. There
is very little interest in Israel any more to maintain the façade of democracy,
liberality, freedom of speech, right of dissent, or judicial restraint. There
exists a vengeful spirit and a feeling that the outrages of October 7 gives
them the right to do anything they want. The anger at Netanyahu personally
hides the fact that Gallant and Lapid do not really disagree with him at all on
the overall handling of the Gaza issue or the Palestinians.
5. In
the West Bank there is real economic suffering, since tourism has virtually
stopped as well as work permits for Israel. Last month, there was also a 50%
reduction in salaries from the Palestinian Authority. At the same time, there
is increased settler violence and an overall sense of foreboding as people are
waiting for worse things to develop. Ultimately, there is a tremendous
disappointment with the reactions of the Arab countries and of the Palestinian
Authority, which is losing all credibility.
6. Generally,
there is a feeling that major things may happen soon, none of them at all good,
yet there is a fierce determination for sumud and resilience.
These are merely some of my observations. While I am here, I will continue to listen and absorb what I see and hear.
Sincerely, Jonathan Kuttab, Executive Director
Fwd:
Aipac/Billionaires funneling money to defeat progressives+Universities &
War industry
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From Sunny San Juan. Date:
Fri, May 24, 2024 at 9:06 PM From: The intercept, May 24, 2024 A new report from The Intercept reveals
the same donor that is funneling millions of dollars into an IDF battalion
— one that even the U.S. was going to sanction for human rights violations —
is funding the campaigns of George Latimer, Wesley Bell, and AIPAC. AIPAC and its aligned dark-money Super PACs
have made their intentions clear — they are coming after Rep. Jamaal
Bowman (D-NY-16) with everything they have to knock the pro-peace member
of Congress out of his seat in his June 25th primary race. They’ve pledged to
spend nearly $20 million between now and the primary election day, running
opposition and smear ads against him. In just the last two weeks alone
they’ve dropped nearly $6 million in the district with a hatchet job of
ads smearing his record. Republican Stephen Rosedale is the president of Friends
of Nahal Haredi, the U.S. nonprofit that’s funneled millions of dollars
to this battalion, which is notorious for human rights abuses including the
death of a 78-year-old Palestinian American man in 2022. Rosedale has given almost $100k to AIPAC’s
super PAC and directly contributed to the campaigns of George Latimer and
Wesley Bell From: Canadian Foreign Policy Institute This morning the International Court of Justice ruled
that Israel must “immediately halt” its military offensive in Rafah.
On Monday the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court announced
he’d seek warrants for Israel’s PM and defence minister. |
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Tell
Universities: Divest from the War Industry Now
Demand
University Divestment From Weapons Manufacturers And Defense Contractors Now.
Billions of dollars from university
endowments are invested in the stocks of weapons manufacturers and defense
contractors. These corporations are directly responsible for untold human
suffering around the globe with their bombs and missiles raining down on
civilians from Gaza to Yemen.
Year after year weapons manufacturers
successfully lobby Washington to greenlight more war and bloodshed. This is the
industry that our universities are supporting with their investment dollars –
an industry that profits from unthinkable violence against human beings.
And for what? For returns on an
endowment portfolio? To add a few more dollars to an already massive university
fund? No matter how they try to rationalize it, universities that invest in
weapons companies have blood on their hands.
Divestment
is only a first step toward building a world beyond war, but
it's a powerful one because institutions of learning must lead in the pursuit
of justice and human flourishing.
The American
Association of University Professors says the efforts have become so widespread
and heavy-handed that it amounts to a “new McCarthyism.”
But in the absence of any official,
central database on the firings and suspensions of academic workers, hard data
was hard to come by. So The Intercept went to work to uncover the
facts.
What we’ve found so
far are academics in fields as diverse as politics, sociology, Japanese
literature, public health, Latin American and Caribbean studies, Middle East
and African studies, mathematics, and education who were fired, suspended, or
removed from the classroom for criticizing Israel — and this may be just
the tip of the iceberg.
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As Norway’s largest private pension fund, we are divesting
from Caterpillar
There is no excuse to be silent over the role of companies linked
to Israel’s illegal actions in the occupied Palestinian territory and its war
in Gaza.
Kiran Aziz
Head of Responsible Investments, KLP
Published On 26 Jun 2024, https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/6/26/as-norways-largest-private-pension-fund-we-are-divesting-from-caterpillar
At Norway’s largest private pension fund, KLP, we have decided to divest from United States
industrial group Caterpillar over concerns about its role in human rights
abuses in occupied Palestine.
KLP has previously divested from companies linked to the illegal
Israeli settlements and the separation wall in the West Bank following the
important United Nations report on businesses linked to settlements.
Caterpillar’s D9 series bulldozers are imported to Israel by
Israeli Tractors and Equipment (ITE), part of Zoko Enterprises. In partnership
with the Israeli military’s Technology and Maintenance Corps, Zoko Enterprises
has rebuilt these machines with vehicle-mounted weapons and armoured drivers’
cabins for use in the occupied Palestinian territory. The widely used
Caterpillar D9R bulldozers weigh around 62 tonnes, are four metres tall and
wide, and eight metres long.
The constant use of these weaponised bulldozers in the occupied
Palestinian territory has led to a series of human rights warnings from United
Nations agencies, and nongovernmental organisations over the last two decades
about the company’s involvement in the demolition of Palestinian homes and
infrastructure.
On June 20, UN human rights experts called on Caterpillar and
weapons companies like BAE Systems to immediately stop the transfer of weapons
and other military equipment to Israel as they may constitute serious
violations of human rights and international humanitarian laws, risking
complicity in international crimes, possibly including genocide. This demand is
in line with recent calls from the Human Rights Council and the independent UN
experts to states to cease sending military equipment to Israel even if
executed under existing export licences.
Around 100 Caterpillar D9R bulldozers were reported to be used in
Gaza at the beginning of the latest war, after October 7. In December 2023, the
Israeli forces were accused of using bulldozers to bury alive civilians outside
the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya in Gaza following a nine-day siege. The
NGO Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has demanded an investigation into the
allegations.
Throughout 2022 and 2023, there have been reports of Caterpillar
bulldozers being used in the attacks on homes, refugee camps and infrastructure
in the West Bank.
KLP considers that such use of bulldozers both paves the way for
and worsens the human rights abuses taking place, since such use may be both
effective and injurious to people. Even though Caterpillar does not sell
equipment directly to the Israeli military, the company has been made aware of
how its equipment is being used. This has also gone on for a long time and in a
steadily worsening situation, without the company being able to demonstrate
that it has performed enhanced due diligence assessments or made any real
changes. The time aspect indicates that the company is unwilling to do very
much.
On the basis of the information available, it is therefore
impossible to assert that the company has implemented adequate measures to
avoid becoming involved in future norm violations.
These extensive reports of violations come against the backdrop of
a broad international consensus that West Bank settlements violate
international law including the UN Charter on using force to acquire territory.
An occupying power transferring its own civilian population into territory it
occupies is a war crime under Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The
International Criminal Court also deems this a war crime.
When KLP has previously divested from Motorola, Israeli banks,
construction and engineering, energy and communication companies linked to the
illegal Israeli settlements and the illegal separation wall in the West Bank,
we were vocal.
When we blacklisted companies producing controversial weapons
globally such as Elbit, Rolls-Royce and Thales, and when we pulled out of
Russian companies, and Adani over its role in Myanmar, we were also vocal.
There is no excuse to be silent over the role of companies linked to Israel’s
illegal actions in the occupied territory and its war in Gaza. Blacklisting
Caterpillar and others linked to illegal settlements should become the norm for
pension funds who claim to care about human rights.
Robert C.
Koehler. “A World Under
Spiritual Construction.” Common Wonders. TRANSCEND Media Service. TMS PEACE JOURNALISM. 15 May 2024.
Recent announcement by Union Theological Seminary, affiliated with
Columbia University, that it is divesting from “companies profiting from
war in Palestine/Israel,” fully supporting the student encampments, and
condemning arrests and police violence on the peaceful, culturally diverse
protests. There’s something happening here . . . Read more...
“Palestine
Action Target Two Companies At Once, Complicit In Israel’s Genocide
“ By The Canary. PopularResistance.org (2-16-24). Palestine Action targeted two
companies complicit in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza on Wednesday 14
February – shutting down one completely and shaming the other by painting it
blood-red. First, and the group “drenched” the Manchester offices of Bank
of New York (BNY) Mellon in red paint, to symbolise the bank’s complicity in
Palestinian bloodshed. Activists also sprayed a message calling for Elbit to be
shut down: BNY Mellon invest over £10m in Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest
weapons firm, Elbit Systems, which provides 85% of Israel’s military drone
fleet and land based equipment, as well as missiles... -more-
Editor.
mronline.org (
Raouf Halaby:
"To say that I was awed is an understatement."
From Guernica
to Gaza
Originally
published: Janata Weekly on February 4, 2024 by Raouf Halaby (more by Janata Weekly) | (Posted Feb
13, 2024)
Culture,
Media,
Movements,
WarEurope,
France,
Gaza,
Middle
East, SpainNewswireGuernica,
Pablo
Ruiz Picasso
Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, 1937
To say
that I was awed is an understatement.
Standing
in front of Picasso’s 11.5 ft. x 25.5 ft. celebrated painting Guernica is
one of the most sobering encounters I’ve had the displeasure of experiencing.
Displeasure because the massive composition’s theme is revoltingly gruesome.
Since that dastardly first-of-its-kind-waging-of-wars, nations have not learned
to abide by and practice peaceful and harmonious existence.
World
War 2 was followed by wars in Hiroshima/Nagasaki, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia,
Laos, the Near East/Palestine (8 wars), Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Libya,
Ukraine, Yemen, and Gaza, to name but a few. And in each of these wars massive
bombings and aerial bombardment have been the weapon of choice, resulting in
the death of millions of human beings.
Aerial
bombardment is brutal, heinous, and vicious. Aerial bombardment is the cowardly
weapon of arrogant, fascistic, hegemonic, and egotistical maniacs. Aerial
bombardment is the screen behind which powerful thugs hide to absolve
themselves of crimes against humanity. Aerial wars’ indiscriminate annihilation
of mostly innocent civilians, reducing them to paupers and beggars, goes
against every decent norm.
For
well over 35 years I’d been showing Guernica to my students,
expounding on the painting’s blending of a heinously ghoulish theme executed in
the cubist style on a-never-seen-before massive scale. One of the world’s most
prominent museums, Madrid’s Museo Reina Sofia, is finally home to this one-of-a-kind
artistic expression bearing witness to ghastly human depravity.
On my
last visit to Spain some 12 years back, I spent well over an hour studying
Picasso’s ingenious blending of form and theme in monochromatic colors.
Standing in front of the composition, I viewed it from every angle, and I
relived years of lecture terms, phrases, descriptions, questions, answers,
student responses/opinions, and so much more.
On
April 27, 1937, mostly German and Italian warplanes conducted the first
large-scale aerial bombardment on the town of Guernica. Nestled in northern
Spain and with the complicity of Franscico Franco, Spain’s Fascist dictator,
the Germans wanted to test their newly fabricated war machinery—the Nazi
Luftwaffe’s planes and their newly designed bombs—produced solely for
destruction on a massive scale. Because of its remoteness, Guernica was chosen
as the perfect out-of-sight out-of-mind target.
Like
today’s Gaza, Guernica was reduced to massive rubble shrouding innocent
civilians whose flesh, blood, bones, and sinews cloaked the bleak landscape of
rubble, rebar, and crater-size pocked apocalyptic destruction where once
high-rise structures, streets, and alleyways existed. And hospitals,
ambulances, mosques, churches, and schools are being targeted—deliberately and
mercilessly.
In
response to this nightmarish bombing, Picasso isolated himself in his studio
for a lengthy time and vented his fury by working long hours and in isolation
on what is perhaps the world’s foremost artistic political statement.
Here
is what I see today in Picassos’ composition: to the far right is a Gaza woman
holding her arms to high heaven; she is screaming, pleading, imploring the gods
for deliverance. At the top is a light, accompanied by a hand holding a lamp as
though to shed light on the unfolding carnage. Call this the 90 plus
journalists killed by Israeli snipers and drones so as to draw a curtain on
what God’s chosen are doing in Gaza, today’s “graveyard of children.” In
addition to its military strength, Israel is adept at conducting its carnage
under the cover of dark. And its powerful choking of U.S. media is adept at
portraying it as the victim. To the top left Netanyahu and Co., along with
Biden and Co., prance bullishly over the devastation as they squash the emaciated
mother holding on to her dead infant. How many white shrouds have to be buried
to appease the Hebraic God of revenge? And how many corpses have to be pulled
out, with bare hands, from under the rubble? And how many tattered remains have
to be placed in makeshift bags? Careful scrutiny of the foreground depicts
newsprint, Picasso’s manner of telling the world “I am Guernica: Remember Me,
Remember What Heinous Crimes You’ve committed.” And the crushed supine figure
holding onto a broken weapon represents trampled, crushed justice under the
weight of brute force.
It is
worth noting that while Peter Paul Rubens, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and scores
of mostly European artists have produced a massive volume of compositions under
the title Massacre of the Innocents, a theme associated with Herod
(the Not so Great), King of Judea, and around the time of Christ’s birth,
Picasso’s Guernica stands in a class of its own.
And is
it not ironic that right around the time Christendom is about to celebrate the
birth of its Savior, the Prince of Peace, the Redeemer, the Israelis are
raining down 2000-pound bombs, some of them the awful phosphorus kind that
vaporize their victims? To date the equivalent of three Hiroshima/Nagasaki
bombs have been dropped on a starved, thirsty, disoriented 2.3 million
displaced citizenry.
And
could we say that to date, timed with Christmas 2023, Israel has massacred over
8,000 thousand innocent children—and counting. And the West, today’s bastion
of Christianity, is abhorrently supportive and silent?
Yes,
in the last few years Fascism has slowly sneaked into our halls of
justice, our public spaces, our airwaves, and our digital formats. Joe “I am
a Zionist to the Core,” Netanyahu’s puppet and apologist, has draped
himself in the Israeli flag and has fashioned and emblazoned his tie, his
shirt, his suit, and his rhetoric in the same style and rhetoric of Netanyahu,
his alter ego and master.
On
December 10, 2023, Spain, the only Western nation with the moral
fortitude to express its outrage at the Gaza carnage, held a solidarity event
in the Basque city of Guernica’s market square, the same square that was bombed
by the Nazis and Fascist forces way back in 1937. An aerial view depicts a
massive Palestinian flag (the size of the entire square) in mosaic form the
tesserae of which were held by citizens, trade unionists, artists, anti-war and
anti-fascist groups, along with a large depiction of Picasso’s image depicting the
mother, her child in her arms, crying to the high heavens.
And
for a whole minute the sirens blazed in solidarity with Gaza’s mothers and
children. Viva Espana. Viva Palestina.
Raouf J.
Halaby is
a Professor Emeritus of English and Art. He is a writer, photographer,
sculptor, an avid gardener, and a peace activist. Courtesy: CounterPunch.
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