Should We Boycott Israeli Art?

Sarah Gillespie started an interesting debate on deliberation.info with her article, “The BDS Cultural Boycott and Integrity.” BDS stands for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel. She opposes the call by the BDS to sabotage or ban any mode of expression delivered by state-enforced Israeli artists, musicians and thinkers because “art has the capacity to transcend the binary world of ‘placard politics’ (‘for’ this or ‘against’ that) and deliver the transforming might of pathos, spirit, sadness and beauty… We should boycott Israeli products, not art, spirit and ideas.”

While I share her reservations about why only Israeli-born Zionists are being boycotted, the inevitable ethical inconsistencies that arise in trying to avoid supporting any type of organized violence, especially when that would include boycotting one’s own country, and the funding by George Soros of the BDS movement, I disagree with her that “Art” is something that should never be boycotted.

Art is a luxury product. Jewish gift stores give a lot of legitimacy to Israel’s folk narrative by selling Israeli made handicrafts and clothes. People who shop there are usually buying those products in order to help support the financial existence of illegal settlers in Occupied Palestine.

Likewise, the Israeli government purposely promotes Israeli artists and musicians, considering them ambassadors for the legitimization of the Zionist State of Israel. The Shakespeare play shown in London, which Gillespie opposed boycotting, was not only funded by the State of Israel but was rewritten in order to generate more sympathy for the Jewish character, transforming it into a standard work of propaganda.

Boycotters make exceptions for those Jewish Israelis who are openly opposing Zionism, yet it would be ridiculous not to assume that all Israelis who are selling us products whether art or plastic storage boxes are participating in Zionism. In any case, they are paying taxes to the Israeli government and are at the very least in that way participating in genocide.

If we apply the same morals to Jews as we do to others, all Jews as a group, if they do not consciously defect from the Zionist racist movement, are guilty of participating in Zionist aggression, preventing public comment, or letting racist violence happen without comment.

It is quite standard to revile an artist or academic if he has ever been a member of any other racist organization.

For example, mainstream media consistently refers to former Congressman David Duke without his Doctor title as a way of belittling him, even though he has claimed that the KKK in his town was nothing more than a neighborhood organization. Nobody starts jumping up and down fuming at the mouth when someone condemns or boycotts a former member of the KKK, insisting, “But not all KKK members are violent!” Most people simply accept that the KKK is a purveyor of racist violence and try to avoid supporting it, even indirectly.

Yet we are asked to distinguish carefully between a non-violent Zionist and Zionism as a movement, even though all Israelis are required to serve in the Israeli military and are thus guilty of participating in organized crime.

The question of whether or not boycotting a theater production would ever end the Israeli state needs to be looked at in context of the American Jewish lobby. Any Palestinian poet who tried to book a show in New Jersey would automatically find himself canceled and playing outside the cafe in the street due to a deluge of angry phone calls from Zionist Jews, even if his poster had a picture of a dove on it.

It would probably be wise for more Americans to become similarly aggressive about getting Zionist performances cancelled. That way, the theater will learn to either avoid all controversial performances OR they will be forced to adopt a more balanced approach (for example showing both Palestinian and Israeli art productions). What happens when only Jews protest, the Jews get what they want while others just stew.

It is impossible to boycott entirely a country in which you live, but you can still make wisest choices about how to spend your money. I would only encourage a foreigner to spend money on American artists if I knew for sure that this artist’s world view supported something that person could morally accept. Paintings are a dime a dozen. If all you want is a pretty picture, frame a calendar photo. You should buy a painting because you are supporting a revolutionary movement – you want to give money to a particular artist because you want them to continue in their struggle for truth and beauty.

There are Israeli musicians and writers I support because they are outspoken anti-Zionists. But if some random Israeli musician was playing at my children’s elementary school I would oppose it, because that would be giving a public message that Israelis are cute and cuddly, that we should bond with them emotionally and give them our tax dollars and feel sorry for them because they are such good musicians.

The main idea behind a boycott is to delegitimize the fake Zionist narrative. There were a couple kids in my elementary school whose parents forbade them to participate in Israeli folk dances and it made long lasting impressions on their fellow students. At first we did not understand why these students opposed Israel, but eventually we figured it out.

One can only imagine with trepidation a world where no one ever spoke truth in the face of power and privilege.

Tarek Mehanna Gives Rousing Speech at Sentencing

On April 12, 2010 Tarek Mehanna was sentenced to over 17 years in prison. It was a sad moment for his supporters, who packed the Boston courthouse, but they were rewarded with an historical, moving speech, as Mehanna described how he came to view it as his duty to defend the oppressed.

“I couldn’t see these things beings done to my brothers & sisters – including by America – and remain neutral... [T]his trial was not about my position on Muslims killing American civilians. It was about my position on Americans killing Muslim civilians, which is that Muslims should defend their lands from foreign invaders – Soviets, Americans, or Martians,” stated Mehanna, who compared Muslim fighters overseas to American Revolutionary Minutemen fighting invading British occupation soldiers.

 

Mehanna's speech was on point and delivered very well. He gave a detailed analysis of his youthful intellectual processes, as he learned about American history and painful current events. One news report was particularly shocking to the young teenager: 

“I learned about Abeer al-Janabi, a fourteen-year old Iraqi girl gang-raped by five American soldiers, who then shot her and her family in the head, then set fire to their corpses.”

I'm sure most of us have gone through a similar educational process when we were young, realizing at some point that the world can be a violent and unfair place. Last night, my five-year-old daughter saw a nature show on TV where whales were eating fish swimming under the sea. She was so horrified that she cried, “I'll never eat fish again!” Imagine how she will feel when she learns about Abeer al-Janabi. 

 

True leadership inspires people to transcend fear and to make sacrifices for the sake of others. This author recalls that when I was in fifth grade, a documentary about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. inspired me to pray to God right then and there at my school desk to make me among the martyrs. I asked Him to purify me, to fortify me, and to make me worthy.

Mehanna spoke of the examples of true leadership that inspired him to commit the “crime” of translating online Arabic documents related to jihad:

 

“When I was six, I began putting together a massive collection of comic books. Batman implanted a concept in my mind, introduced me to a paradigm as to how the world is set up: that there are oppressors, there are the oppressed, and there are those who step up to defend the oppressed. This resonated with me so much that throughout the rest of my childhood, I gravitated towards any book that reflected that paradigm - Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and I even saw an ethical dimension to The Catcher in the Rye.”

Mehanna listed among his heroes Paul Revere, Tom Paine, Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, John Brown, Emma Goldman, Eugene Debs, Anne Frank, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Ho Chi Minh, and Nelson Mandela. He said he still has all his notes from history class! Malcolm X in particular made him dig deeper into his Islamic roots, to read the Quran and to learn about the Prophet Mohammed (s).

Mehanna testified, “the more I learned, the more I valued Islam like a piece of gold. This was when I was a teen, but even today, despite the pressures of the last few years, I stand here before you, and everyone else in this courtroom, as a very proud Muslim...”

He continued: “I wasn't tried before a jury of my peers because with the mentality gripping America today, I have no peers. Counting on this fact, the government prosecuted me - not because they needed to, but simply because they could...

“In your eyes, I'm a terrorist, and it's perfectly reasonable that I be standing here in an orange jumpsuit. But one day, America will change and people will recognize this day for what it is. They will look at how hundreds of thousands of Muslims were killed and maimed by the US military in foreign countries, yet somehow I'm the one going to prison for 'conspiring to kill and maim' in those countries - because I support the Mujahidin defending those people. They will look back on how the government spent millions of dollars to imprison me as a 'terrorist,' yet if we were to somehow bring Abeer al-Janabi back to life in the moment she was being gang-raped by your soldiers, to put her on that witness stand and ask her who the 'terrorists' are, she sure wouldn't be pointing at me,” Mehanna declared.

“It was made crystal clear at trial that I never, ever plotted to "kill Americans" at shopping malls or whatever the story was...

"The government says that I was obsessed with violence, obsessed with 'killing Americans.' But, as a Muslim living in these times, I can think of a lie no more ironic.”

Mehanna's appeal process has already been set in motion. His defense will take this to appellate and Supreme Court if necessary.

You can read Mehanna's entire sentencing statement at http://freetarek.wordpress.com/

Why Arabs are Backing Sudan's Bashir

10 April 2009
Khaleej Times


Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir, despite being indicted on March 4, 2009 on seven counts of war crimes by the International Criminal Court, was given a “hero’s welcome” by the Arab League Summit hosted by Qatar last week. The 22 nations warmly supported Al Bashir with a resolution opposing the dubious ICC arrest warrant.

Bashir called the ICC an “undemocratic institution that ... applied double standards, targeted the weak and gave a blind eye to the criminals.”

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, also present at the summit, likewise objected to the ICC. “Why do they not order the capture of Bush? Why not order the arrest of the president of Israel?”

“If anything happened to Omar Al Bashir and Sudan ended up in chaos, the whole of Africa will sink into chaos,” warned Shaikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the Amir of Qatar.

Amr Moussa, the Arab League Secretary-General, said that the arrest warrant was aimed “at undermining the unity and stability of Sudan.”

In response to the arrest warrant, which was issued at behest of “Save Darfur,” an activist coalition mobilised by pro-Israel organisations committed to pressuring the US administration to treat Sudan like Iraq, Al Bashir evicted 13 western NGOs from his country.

Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report comments, “Any government in the world that believes it has been targeted for regime change by the United States and its allies would be foolish to allow western-based nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) to operate freely in its territory.”

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, “Almost the entire Arab and African world supports Sudan against the ICC, arguing it is a biased and political 
tool that only targets Africans and infringes sovereignty.”

“The allegations at the ICC have nothing to do with reality, and we will use our friends in the United Nations to stop them,” says Abdel Malik Al Naiem, spokesman for the Sudanese Embassy in Cairo.

“In one year we will Sudanise all the aid on the ground and we can fill the gap in food distribution within one year because the Sudanese Red Crescent already distributes 45 per cent of the food in Darfur,” Al Bashir promised during a recent visit to Saudi Arabia.

China and Russia back the central government in Khartoum and support local peace agreements between Sudan’s warring tribes while the US, Britain, Israel and France materially support insurgent militias and promote increased foreign intervention with massive, internationally coordinated propaganda. Michel Massih, Al Bashir’s leading attorney points out, “I have never heard in my legal career of a chief prosecutor that launches media campaigns against a defendant, regardless of the nature of the charges.”

Columbia Professor Mahmood Mamdani, whose new book ‘Saviours and Survivors’ just came out, says he began to look at the issue of Darfur in 2003. He was struck by the rapid globalisation and the fact-indifference of the Save Darfur movement, which consistently misrepresented the facts 
in a media blitz.

Mamdani points out in a recent IslamOnline interview with Ismail Ikashkash: “The Save Darfur movement does not educate the people… about what issues drive the conflict. So they know nothing about the politics of Darfur, the history of Darfur, the history of the conflict. All they know is that … Darfur is a place where ‘evil lives.’”

In his book, Professor Mamdani describes in detail how the Save Darfur Coalition presented itself primarily as an inter-religious coalition promoting Islamophobia by implicitly creating a division of responsibility among faiths:

“The Christian faith packets were the most explicit: They spoke of ‘divine empowerment’ and ‘the burden to save’…The Jewish faith packets emphasized the special moral responsibility of Jews as ‘quintessential victims’ to identify genocide whenever it occurs…Muslims were asked to fight oppressors in their midst.”

Save Darfur board chairwoman Gloria White-Hammond, an African-American Christian minister in Boston who has been groomed to promote Zionist politics by Israel advocacy group “The David Project,” met with President Obama and his Sudan envoy General Scott Gration, before their recent trip to Sudan. She and Save Darfur president Jerry Fowler pressured Obama to revive Sudan’s internal conflicts and to threaten Khartoum with further international isolation.

America imposed economic sanctions on Sudan in 1997, but peace in Sudan requires foreign investment and political reform. Sudan has the largest underground freshwater lake in all of Africa. With some technology, Sudan could become the Breadbasket of Africa. Bush made it illegal for American-allied businesses to invest in life-saving infrastructure, and even threatened a delegation of African-American businesspeople with criminal prosecution for discussing investment ideas with President Al Bashir.

President Obama will have to choose between continuing Bush’s policies, which leave millions of Sudanese civilians in mortal jeopardy, and which have earned America international scorn, and reconciling with an international community whose support for the people of Africa is destined to grow.


Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based 
writer on the Middle Eastern affairs

The Emotional Violence of Jewish Advocacy

Gideon Levy a Ha’aretz newspaper reporter recently asked: “If Israelis were so sure of the rightness of their cause, why the violent intolerance they display toward everyone who tries to make a different case?”

In "Survival Instinct or Jewish Paranoia?" my favorite shrink, ex-Israeli Avigail Barbanel writes that, “The implications of seeing the conflict from within the lens of Jewish trauma are very serious. Can we really negotiate with this? Can we explain to Israelis that their perspective on life and on the conflict is seriously flawed? If we tried will they listen, and do the Palestinians have time to wait until they do?”

It seems that Americans are kind of in an abusive marriage situation with Israel, where because love and friendship are assumed to be there, the abused partner keeps feeling guilty and acting hyper-responsible, and tries even harder to please the abuser. Many Americans maintain friendships with pro-Israel Jews and simply decide not to discuss politics; however there is an emotional blackmail going on because if you did mention Israel or Jewish-American genocidalism, the relationship would be over.

I was just thinking today about the aspect of emotional violence within Israel advocacy techniques that are used to shut down discussion about Jewish destructive behavior patterns or the State of Israel. This method is used against Gentiles primarily. Sometimes there is even a good cop-bad cop routine, with groups ganging up on someone to try and make the person feel ashamed for their alleged anti-semitism.

A Gentile in America, even a child, is raised to accept a very heavy sense of personal responsibility that far exceeds anyone else's normal sense of personal responsibility. It creates a neurotic personality who is always feeling guilty and thus is too weak to stand up to Zionist criminal behavior and the comical, obviously non-factual Zionist ideology.

Jews in America are socially empowered to go way beyond the learned trauma of the Jewish experience that results in typical reactionary behavior. They actually participate in group behavior that is deliberately manipulative and abusive - aimed at punishing activists who stand up for human equality and justice. Over the years, US Jews have become increasingly nutty not only due to current events but due to the internet "alerts" coming to them from Jewish lobbyists, who solidify their brains in this self-righteous fantasy world where Hamas is a terrorist organization, where Israel has some kind of right to kill and rob non-Jews.

So we are dealing with not only dangerous reactions based on past trauma - actually learned trauma based on a glorified and fictionalized past - but American Jews are actually being trained since childhood to interact with non-Jews in a deceitful and arrogant manner, in coordination with each other, to emotionally destroy Gentiles and Israel critics, in addition to wrecking their careers and interfering with their social relationships. This is actually deliberate, wicked, planned behavior motivated by a narcissistic self-righteous fury.

I think it's impossible to help heal Jews from Zionism without first somehow snapping off that connection with the Lobbyists. Mainstream gullible Jews and their dishrag friends tend to naively believe anything racist against Muslims – even from someone as disloyal to the United States Constitution like Charles Jacobs of CAMERA or the psychotic racist freaks at HonestReporting - who send them some unsubstantiated talking points memo - and people never even do any fact-checking.

American Jews tend to enforce blind conformity, bullying and shaming people into agreeing with a bogus sham written by a Polish immigrant funded indirectly by US taxpayers whose money was illegally laundered through the JCRC. Whatever happened to “Question Authority”?

So many Gentiles fall into this trap and start doing the work of the Zionists, attacking people if they deviate from political correctness. If we could focus on the emotional violence of Israel advocacy techniques we might be able to empower Gentiles to stand up to the psycho Zionists without enduring quite as much emotional pain.

The problem is that Gentiles are taught through emotional pressure and violence via the media and the school system to be very sensitive to Jewish suffering so when a Zionist becomes outraged at them for challenging their world view, the Gentile really has to fight against his own inner self in a huge battle against his "inner Jew" making him feel inadequate and intimidated. But the Jew doesn’t care how much he or she hurts others. Jews only care about what's good for the Jews.

The world needs to intervene to save Jews from their murderous selves, and to save the Palestinians. However, sending in the UN as an occupation force would be an insult to the Palestinians especially given the UN's past record of backing up Israel and neocon wars in general and the previous example of Bosnia. Instead of helping Bosnians, NATO dismantled their country and now uses it as a CIA base for kidnapping white prostitutes to sell to Israel.

Intervention involves convincing world leaders to do the right thing, which seldom happens and does not empower us to action other than begging them.

What is possible and in fact quite easy is to find a way to deal with Zionist Jews in our local area, especially those who are involved in the organizational structures of Zionist organized racism.

Obviously, prosecuting Zionist organizations also requires convincing the establishment to define Zionism as a criminal ideology, like we do Nazism, and going after the leadership.

However, meanwhile, there should be a way for ordinary people to wear down ordinary Jews and their leadership by engaging them in arguments, and so on. The nicey nice "interfaith dialogue" routine is not working to help the situation as it just teaches Gentiles to be friends with Jews by never mentioning Israel's crimes against humanity.

One occasionally effective path for helping Jewish friends snap out of their ideological programming is to simply state the facts over and over again.

Obviously, coming up against a Jewish narcissist is always a painful experience and yet - as with a child molester - you have to intervene. If a person is walking around believing lies that enable violent crime, you would be a BAD person not to mention it to them.

If the Zionists on the local level could be made to feel a bit less comfortable with their ideology, and they were robbed of the freedom that comes with privacy and non-discussion, things could change very fast.

Most people in Israel who want peace say it's the American Jews and other Diaspora lobbies raising the money for the hate propaganda and the campaigns to elect war criminals in Israel and so on. Getting rid of Israel would not solve the problem of this Jewish international crime network. If they lost Israel they would just find something else to mess up. The American Jews are arming the rebels in Darfur now.

Something has to be done to break the spell of hypnosis that these Israel advocacy organizations have put on the local Jews and their intellectually deficient so-called friends. Discrediting the people who are spreading Israeli propaganda to the American public is absolutely paramount.

Part 2

I can't express how much more at peace I feel since I decided not to engage Zionists as friends anymore, but to treat them like people treat any other member of a racist criminal organization like the KKK. I consider a Zionist anyone who believes that Israel must exist as a Jewish State, especially if they are emotional about the issue, because that means they believe Jews have a right to steal from non-Jews, and they believe Jews have more rights than others, which is an indefensible position to maintain.

In the past it was always the other way around. I mention Palestinians, and they would act like I did something bad and not talk to me for some months or years. I used to feel very hurt because I was not trying to offend them. I had actually spoken politely to them. From now on I'm just ignoring them.

Many people deal with Zionists by making light talk and never discuss politics, but I think we should stop doing that since it normalizes their support for racist genocide.

Many Zionists don't call themselves Zionists but to me, a Zionist is someone who would deny Palestinians equal rights in order for the Jews to keep what they stole and call it Israel. They are very brainwashed so it's usually not useful arguing with them. Jewish organizations and synagogues teach classes in linguistic martial arts tactics (how to confuse your opponent etc.) to deflect blame from Jews and Israel. It's extremely dishonest and manipulative. According to the David Project, an organization which teaches these Israel Advocacy techniques and also disseminates Islamophobic misinformation to the public, states that their goal is to diminish the impact of Israel's detractors.

Obviously, those Zionists who are simply ignorant, if they are willing to hear my point of view and to ask questions in a polite way, that's different. But normally they act manipulative and do everything to prevent a normal discussion on Jews/Israel. I once reduced a 50 year old man to hysterical sobbing tears because I told him gently and lovingly that Jews were not that unique. I just told him the Jews, like everyone else, have had good times and bad times. Times when they were slaughtered and other times when they slaughtered others. Just like everyone else. Guess what he did next. He emotionally abused me in an insulting way and then cut off all further communication. Jewish behavior is so predictable that it's truly scary.

Most of the Zionists claim to want a Palestinian State side by side an Israeli state, but as Israel Shamir points out in his book, Flowers of Galilee, it's a political maneuver: a bluff. They are simply taking advantage of your good faith to keep you engaged, to give Israel more time to steal more land. What I tell them is, even if the Jews just stole half of Palestine instead of the whole thing, it's still stealing and they need to give it back and let the refugees come home, according to legal and ethical norms. The UN definition of "genocide" says destroying a people "in whole or in part" so even if they just took part of the land, it's still considered genocide.

The two-state Zionists show their true colors when the issue is cutting off US funding to Israel. They are very attached to the idea of a racist apartheid state for Jews paid for by non-Jews. If you mention cutting off the money or if you mention the possible compromise of living with Palestinians as equals in one state they become very angry and start using bullying tactics, unless they have some reason to fear you, in which case they shun you and complain about you to the authorities, try to get you arrested or try and destroy your career or social status through character assassination.

Rabbi Michael Lerner is a good example of this type of racist. He believes that Jews need to take care of the Palestinians and teach them how to become civilized. He considers stealing Palestinian land as "affirmative action for Jews."

Zionists all believe in the myth of "1000 years of Jewish suffering" and feel that the world owes them compensation for their ancestors' "unique" suffering. It's a criminally insane viewpoint. They cope with the contradictions between their belief that they are the good guys and what Jews are actually doing to their neighbors, both in the Middle East and in the US, by developing mental health issues. Most Zionists are functional schizophrenics.

A few Zionists are not schizophrenic. If you say, "You stole their country," they just say, "Yeah, so? And what are you going to do about it?" I'm actually more willing to deal with those kind of Zionists because at least they are honest, and this does leave some room for discussion. But why. Just as Americans are not required to support Israel, we are not obliged to interact with racists.