It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted, but I finally have some big news. My sister recently competed in the Miss New York Scholarship Pageant in Watertown, New York. After five years of competing in the Miss America system, she has finally won! I was recently talking to Jeremy about the website I have created for my sister (www.missnewyork2006.com) and he suggested I post an entry. Feel free to visit my sister’s site to see where she is making appearances. Also, check out her photo album of the events she has already attended.

Wish her luck at Miss America in California in January!

Have you ever heard this term in the news and wondered what exactly an Israeli Arab is? I have, and I did. The first time I heard this term in high school, I naively assumed it was a person from the Arab World who had emmigrated to Isreal. Wrong. This is one of those misleading and colorless Orwellian euphemisms, like “collateral damage�, which, as I always like to remind my fellow Americans, really means dead non-white civilians bombed from the sky.

So what’s an Israeli Arab? An Israeli Arab is a Palestinian who lives inside the state of Israel, versus those who live outside of it in occupied Palestine, or those who fled and became refugees or exiles beyond occupied Palestine. More accurately, they should be called Israeli Palestinians. How did they end up inside of Israel? They didn’t. Israel ended up around them; and they make up 20% of Israel’s population. These are the Palestinians, and their descendants, whose existence on that land preceded the state of Israel before 1948. When the Zionists declared the state of Israel on the land the Palestinians had been living on for centuries, 84% fled as a result of coercion and intimidation. These remaining Palestinians were absorbed into this new political entity. These are today’s “Israeli Arabs�.

This term is problematic for a number of reasons. It doesn’t acknowledge their identity as Palestinians and thus overlooks that they existed there before 1948, a simple fact that cannot be denied no matter how lobbyists and PR slicksters finesse it. The Palestinians were present for centuries; and they identified themselves as such, Filistini (Palestinian), regardless of what British, French, Ottoman, Arab, or Roman administrators chose to call the area. By simply calling them “Arabs�, it conveniently decontextualizes their historical connection to The Land, el-Ard, the one, crucial and central issue! You never hear right-wing Israelis actually call them Palestinians. To do so would recognize their legitimate connection to The Land. So they simply call them the more general and indirect “Arabs�.

Clearly, as Palestinians living within Israel, their predicament is distinct from that of Palestinians in the occupied territories, in refugee camps in Lebanon, or in the exiled global diaspora. We’re always being reminded of how Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. Is that so? For the Jewish citizens of Israel, it’s a democracy, but not for 20% of its citizens. As a stalling tactic which allows the state of Israel to keep grabbing more land illegally, the Israeli Knesset has to this day never ratified a constitution and has never officially declared its country’s borders. In the meantime, settlements continue to be built and populated, and the defence barrier gets erected deep into Palestinian territory, far outside of Israel proper. There’s a name for this in Political Science: Imperialism. What kind of democracy is that? This would have been like saying apartheid South Africa was the only democracy in Africa. Sure, it was perfectly democratic… for the whites.

In Israel, under the Law of Return and the Nationality Law, a Jewish immigrant can move to Israel from such diverse places as Ethiopia, Poland, the Ukraine, the U.S. or anywhere else and receive full legal rights as a citizen instantly. He or she will automatically have more rights than an indigenous Palestinian. Is this healthy for a society? Is this ethical? Can we really call this democratic?

Israel’s Palestinians are legally barred from owning land, as non-Jews cannot own land in Israel. This affects both Muslim and Christian Palestinians. By the way, 20% of Israel’s Palestinian population is Christian (among the most prominent of them are Arafat’s widow, Suha, Edward Said, and Hanan Ashrawi, all associated with the cause of Palestinian nationalism. Keep that in mind next time you hear an American Evangelist unconditionally defending Israeli policy against the Palestinians. These “Christian Zionists�, as they call themselves, blindly support policies that are harmful to the direct present-day descendants of the early Christian Church. The irony would be hilarious, if it wasn’t so damn tragic and morally repulsive. Christian Palestinians suffer the same fate as their Muslim brothers.

In Israel, many social benefits, such as employment opportunities, better mortgages, partial exemptions from course fees, and preferences for public housing are dependent on your having completed military service. 9o% of Israel’s Palestinian population does not serve in the military, either by law or by discretion. This is an indirect way in which “Israeli Arabs� are discriminated against and economically marginalized. In a democracy, a citizen’s rights are not dependent on his or her having completed compulsory military service. It doesn’t work that way. In a democracy, citizens have rights simply by being born in the society.

Another indirect way Palestinians in Israel are marginalized is through the policy of “unrecognized villages�, another sanitized euphemism, which are Palestinian towns not legally acknowledged by the state as organized municipalities. What this means on the ground is that they get no funding or services whatsoever and are subject to arbitrary demolition or confiscation. Considered non-existent, they don’t appear on official Israeli maps. Palestinian families within Israel are also routinely denied building permits and have their homes demolished or confiscated when they build new ones or add on to them without the permits. Can this be called democratic? It would take quite an unhinged imagination to do so. Whoever repeats the claim that Israel is a democracy, be they journalists, lobbyists, or politicians, is either knowingly perpetuating an agenda which cannot accommodate the facts on the ground or they’re ignorant and haven’t done the research. There is no democracy and there are no “Israeli Arabs�.

The next time you hear “Israeli Arabsâ€?, know that you’re being fed a term which is essentially a political weapon to deny a people their identity and history. It’s racist spin and it’s insulting to your common sense and intelligence. You need only consume Western mainstream media and you’ll hear it soon enough. It’s become legitimate because of its constant repetition by U.S. and Israeli government officials and public relations firms. It’s a tragic irony that the first master propagandist to use this tactic and prove its effectiveness was none other then Joseph Goebbels. Known as the Big Lie, or argumentum ad nauseam, the name given to a policy of repeating a lie until it is taken to be the truth. If you live in the U.S., this should sound familiar to you. So now, in this obese land of shortcuts and convenience, the media smugly and unconsciously perpetuate the terms “Israeli Arabs” and “Israeli democracy”. Sadly, like so many other terms, these have taken on mindless lives of their own. Analysis and accuracy have been sacrificed. We’re participants by our complicit acceptance. This stops when we stop listening. Two reasonable actions you can take right now: 1.) Stop consuming news from mainstream corporate media! 2.) Tell the others! You can’t peddle shitty hack journalism if there is no audience left to consume it.

Eight school board members in Pennsylvania who supported an alternative to Darwin’s theory of evolution lost their seats to evolution supporters.

from bbc (at the very bottom)

I’ve seen a couple stories now chastising Yahoo! for not supporting free speech in the China / Shi Tao case. Basically this guy leaked secret government[1] documents and Yahoo! helped the government identify him through his email.

First off, if that happened within our own borders (i’m writing this from the US) then I would be disappointed with Yahoo! I haven’t taken the time to outline why i would feel this way (maybe its just too darned un-American) because this case didn’t happen in the US. It happened in China.

Yahoo is not in China to push a social agenda. Lets all be clear about that. Its in China because its a huge market in which to make money[2]. Yahoo! has no responsibility to spread democracy in the world. I wouldn’t want some Chinese company coming into the states and trying to suppress speech, and by the same logic, Yahoo! shouldn’t go into China and be uncooperative with the government in the name of a freedom which that government does not allow.

If you want to be a Yahoo! hater because they do business in China in the first place, be my guest. Just don’t get all uppity after the fact cause they follow the rules and regulations over there.

Oh, and the big irony of all this? If the U.S. government went to Yahoo! and said you were a terrorist, Yahoo! would have to hand over your identity too. No need for proof. Thanks to the Patriot Act. I’d like to see a comparison of China’s official policy on privacy compared to post-Patriot Act U.S. I’m sure it would be a close fight to see which is the worst

Funny Foot Notes
[1] Some of the articles refer to the chinese government just as “communists” like its just some random communists running around that Yahoo! worked with. Like it or not its the officially recognized government of China, and they happen to be part of the communist party in China.
[2] there’s a great moral debate to have, instead of this nonsense

As long as I’ve been a student of Middle East history and politics, I’ve noticed that those of us on the Left have an automatic negative reaction to the New York Times’ Thomas L. Friedman. He’s the guy whose name invokes sighs and rolls of the eyes. But why? I have to confess, I never really went along with the knee-jerk Friedman critiques because I never actually *read* any of his articles. I don’t regularly read the New York Times.

(more…)

This is rich. A group of Israelis have taken over a local hotel and forcefully resisted being removed from Gaza. Not once does the article refer to them as “terrorists” or causing “terror” in any way, however there is mention of their goal, which is to stop the “Arab terrorists.”

I love how selective that word is.

In case you’re wondering, the article refers to them as “Activists”

Heres another Red Flag for you, from our favorite spinster Donald Rumsfeld:

“If anyone here lived in the Middle East and watched a network like Al-Jazeera day after day after day, even if you were an American you would begin to believe that America was bad,”

from Salon (don’t bother clicking on Salon’s link, you’ll only get the quote and then they’ll ask you to become a member)

Of course he’s right, and for the same reason people inside America think we are so great: Bias. If al Jazeera runs stories about all the negative things America does, and Fox runs stories about how great we are, you’ll end up with ignorant people watching both networks.

I think we’re just a normal country, not a great evil or good, with one exception: We are certainly one of the most powerful countries, so our deeds, good or bad have the potential to impact much more of the world.

Unfortunately, for any country i think the trend is that foreign policy will generally be good for that country (or a subgroup thereof) and neutral or negative for other countries, and thats clearly the case with our foreign policy.

We do need to take the next step in our evolution as a country so badly.

I’m going to start posting tidbids i see in the news that, in my opinion, encourage further investigation into the situations they refer too.

From Haaretz discussing the settlements in Palestine land.

The suburban-style settler houses with red roofs, white walls and neat gardens contrast with the close-packed cinderblock buildings that are home to most of the 1.3 million Palestinians on the other side of the Strip’s barbed wire.

Here is the entire article.

The Supreme Court is hearing arguments concerning Mexican citizen, Jose Medellin, who has been sentenced to death in the U.S., but who was never provided access to consular officials from his home country. The right to consular access and notification of this right is a provision in 1963 Vienna Convention, which the United States ratified in 1969. Last year, the International Court of Justice in The Hague found that the United States violated the rights of the 51 death-row inmates and ordered a review of their cases. The treaty states that the decisions of this court are binding and in the past, the U.S. has argued for this provision and its binding nature as a means to protect U.S. citizens from being unfairly tried in foreign courts. The most notable invocation of this treaty was during the Iranian hostage crisis, where the treaty was used to put international pressure on Iran. The Supreme Court must now decide whether the U.S.’s obligation to abide by the ruling of this international court under the terms of the treaty trumps Texas’ right to limit the number of appeals available to its inmates.

The Bush administration has said three things:

1. “It is for the president, not the courts, to determine whether the United States should comply with the ICJ decision and, if so, how,” says the brief filed by acting U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement.
2. The Bush administration has announced the United States’ withdrawal from the optional protocol that established the World Court as the enforcement body for the treaty.
3. President Bush issued an executive order directing state courts to comply with the ICJ ruling and review whether the treaty violation in any way prejudiced the capital cases of Medellin or any of the 50 other Mexican nationals on death row.

Texas has already said that it will fight Bush’s order to reconsider the case of Medellin and 14 other foreign nationals on death row in Texas.

I believe the Bush administration’s plan here is to convince the Supreme Court not to intervene. The Bush administration’s recommendation to Texas will then go the way of the term “private accountsâ€? and thus, Texas’ right to execute who ever it wants
will be protected at the cost of America’s credibility in world.

The next time U.S. citizens are tried in foreign nations without counsel (and given our foreign policy this is pretty much guaranteed), and international out-cry sounds like a yawn; we can take solace in “culture of life� rhetoric of our favorite Texan. We can only hope that when Americans beg for their lives as Karla Faye Tucker did, that their capturers show more mercy than then governor Bush did.

NPR has a great story on this topic at:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4563316

Have you all noticed for a while now, whenever Sharon accomplishes anything, its always depicted as a narrow victory, like he almost didn’t win, but thank god he was strong and made it happen?

I think if he were really that “on the edge” you’d hear alot more of his failed attempts, right?

Does Sharon manufacture his slim margins of victory to look like he’s fighting a good fight?

Or does the media just not report on his failures?

Please contribute thoughts…

This is an interesting article. It talks about how people are confused about evolutions status as a “theory”. I hear people all to often voice their lack of support for evolution because it is “only a theory”. This article more lcearly explains why it is a theory and why it is also a set of facts.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.html

Wow, apparently the house is rallyiing around Bush’s request for $80 billion in emergency war funding for Iraq. Thats about what we spent on education and health care _combined_ in 2002. Thats above and beyond our already huge military budget, which was $343 billion in 2002 (over 8 times spending on education). And don’t forget, our official military budget doesn’t include military spending in Iraq and Afghanistan, I guess they file that under ‘Colonialism’ or ‘Spread the Democracy.’ I think at this point, weather you support the war (and the troops) or not, you should be questioning if all this money going to Iraq couldn’t be better spent in our own country.

So Abbas and Sharon are planning another Summit. Israel has publicly halted its mission to seek out and kill palestinian militants. Abbas has moved his security forces deeper into Gaza to prevent more rocket launches into Israel.

But won’t it all just ‘blow up’ like it always has? Won’t one side or the other do something to rouse the conflict that is now in the blood of both sides?

I hate to be so skeptic, but Israel frequently makes moves towards peace, only to hypocritically press its thumb down in some way within hours. “We want peace, but you must surrender first!” By that logic, doesn’t every army really want peace, in the form of victory?

And in Palestine, only a handful are responsible for actively resisting the occupation (and what restraint the rest show!) Are we really to believe these few extremists have lain down their arms?

In a conflict where all Israeli bullets magically hit a child, and every child is really a terrorist in disguise, how can we believe anything either side says?

So I just read this article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41475-2005Jan1.html?sub=new

maybe i’m touchy about due process, but I’m starting to think about gulags and camps.