Israel's Legacy of Hijacking

Israel's piracy of the Free Gaza boat this week reminds me of past, similar actions. Here's a letter of mine the New York Times published on March 3, 1992:

To the Editor:

Contrary to your report on the brouhaha in France stirred by medical aid for George Habash (news article, Jan. 31), Mr. Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was not "the first group to hijack aircraft in the late 1960's." Israel originated the practice in 1954.

On Dec. 8 of that year, five Israeli soldiers were captured in Syria, apparently retrieving eavesdropping equipment. On Dec. 12, Israeli jet fighters intercepted a Syrian civilian aircraft flying from Damascus to Egypt, claiming that the plane had violated Israeli airspace.

The following day you reported that this "development appears to have given Israel an unexpected position of strength for negotiating the release of Syria's prisoners."

Gen. Moshe Dayan was then Israeli Chief of Staff. The Israeli Prime Minister, Moshe Sharett, wrote in his diary, "It is clear that Dayan's intention . . . is to get hostages in order to obtain the release of our prisoners in Damascus."

Contrary to General Dayan's hopes, no exchange took place. Prime Minister Sharett added that the United States State Department complained that "our action was without precedent in the history of international practice."

SAM HUSSEINI
Associate, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
New York, Feb. 18, 1992

(People keep talking about how unprecedented Israel's actions are. They're not -- Israel just keeps getting away with it. The funny part is I wrote the exact same post last year after Israel hijacked a boat with former Representative Cynthia McKinney and Nobel laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire.)

Noam Chomsky Was Not Prevented From Entering Israel

Many reported that Noam Chomsky was recently stopped from entering Israel. This is false. Totally false. He was prevented from going to the Palestinian city of Ramallah by Israeli forces. This important distinction highlights among other things that Israel controls the borders into occupied Palestinian areas, a large part of the problem.

AP stated: "An Israeli official says academic and polemicist Noam Chomsky, who is a fierce critic of Israel, has been denied entry to the country". Al Jazeera English had Chomsky on and introduced the segment by saying he was "stopped from entering Israel". ABC News ran the headline "Noam Chomsky Denied Entry to Israel". Matthew Rothschild wrote: "On Sunday, the Israeli government denied Noam Chomsky entry into the country".

Some got the facts right, noting that Chomsky was denied entry into the West Bank by Israel -- but didn't highlight why or how that might be. The typical reader is likely unaware that Israel controls access to Palestinian areas, among many other aspects of everyday life that most people take for granted.

Israel regularly prevents people from entering occupied Palestinian areas. It's turned Gaza into a virtual prison camp. Goods cannot go to Palestinians without Israel's say so. People cannot go to Palestinian towns without Israel's say so. I've had relatives who are U.S. citizens marry Palestinians in the West Bank -- they had to leave every three months because that was the duration of the visa Israel gives them. I've seen Israeli forces take little girls into a room to be strip searched at the border from Jordan into the occupied West Bank. Israel in many respects is trying to make life for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza difficult so they will simply leave.

Bob Naiman -- who like Chomsky is Jewish -- notes on my facebook page: "I would like to go to Ramallah too, but the last time I tried to enter the West Bank, I was blocked at the Sheikh Jarrah bridge, and my passport was stamped 'no entry' just like uncle Noam. That was in 1996. Then, a few months ago, the Egyptians stopped me from going to Gaza..." Bob's last sentence refers to the Gaza Freedom March, when over 1,300 people (including myself) from over 40 countries tried to get into Gaza from Egypt, but the Mubarak regime stopped us, doing Israel's dirty work and beating many of us up, to the silence of most major media.

Even Amira Hass, a noted Israeli journalist, wrote "Professor Noam Chomsky, an American linguist and left-wing activist, was denied entry into Israel and the West Bank on Sunday".

This too is wrong -- Chomsky didn't request to enter Israel, so such a request couldn't be denied. Actually, if you listen to Chomsky's interview carefully on Democracy Now, he indicates that if he had tried to enter Israel, he would likely have been able to enter the West Bank -- exactly the opposite of what so many are claiming:

I have spoken in Bir Zeit [University, near Ramallah] a number of times. ... The one difference in this case is that, on those occasions, I was visiting Israel and giving talks at Israeli universities and meetings and so on, and went to Bir Zeit on a side trip, and in this case, I was going to Bir Zeit and not speaking at Israeli universities. And in fact, the [Israeli] interrogator, who was reading questions that were coming from the [Interior] Ministry, repeatedly asked, "Well, why aren’t you also going to give talks in Israel?"

As Ali Abunimah observes: "It demonstrates that there is in fact one authority and it is not the 'Palestinian Authority.' It also shows that Israel is in fact effectively operating a political boycott while complaining about BDS!" [Referring to the Boycott Divestment Sanctions movement activists like Abunimah are organizing against Israel, modeled on the similar movement against apartheid South Africa.]

Ironically, Noam Chomsky has been critical of the Boycott Divestment Sanctions movement, listen to this debate earlier this year with him on KPFA.

I have had some qualms with the divestment sanctions movement myself, going back to South Africa. I don't want change to come by the economic power of people in the U.S. -- I want positive change to come because many people are better able to tell the truth or because people are better able to act in solidarity. But maybe we don't live in that world and the best we can expect is that one type of evil -- U.S. economic might -- can be used in part to fight Israeli colonialism (Lord knows U.S. economic might frequently helps Israeli colonialism.)

Perhaps the last irony is that the "Interior Ministry" of Israel is calling the shots. Chomsky -- and thousands, actually millions of others -- want to go from Jordan to Ramallah and Nablus and Hebron and Bethlehem and Gaza and elsewhere. What does Israel have to do with it? Palestinians should be allowed to control their own borders.


NPR knocks off Link TV's "Trails from the East" -- "That which I was looking for is at home."

NPR's programming from India seems to be a shallow knock off of "Trials from the East" -- a show on Link TV that interviews people throughout Asia on trains.

Here's a bit from one of my favorite segments: "I used to think living in the city would be wonderful. I've seen it on television. I've seen that everything is bright and colorful there. That's the modern city. A big world, full of challenges. And that's what I wanted too, and so I ended up in Bangkok.

"But I am from the countryside and I am very attached to my village. That's where you live like you like. I know the trees from when I was young. Now those trees are old their branches and barks have changed. Every tree is unique, every leaf is different. It is so fascinating to get to know all the trees.

"But in the town, every building is still, it is the same after 10 years. And the people are like pre-historic people. Everything is geared towards survival [sic?: possession?]. [You live?] from day to day. It's just like in the stone age, using everything and everyone in the fight for survival. And you have to have money, or you get nothing to eat.

"But what I really want is what I have left behind. That which I was looking for is at home. I was looking for modern life, for something new. But it meant that I left my real self behind."


"Kagan Approved Holocaust Revisionism At Harvard"

Great letter on Salon commenting on one of Glenn Greenwald's pieces:

Kagan Approved Holocaust Revisionism At Harvard

When Alan Dershowitz was exposed as a plagiarist in 2003, he launched a hysterical smear campaign against Norman Finkelstein, who exposed him in the most humiliating (and hilarious fashion).

One of the many slanders aimed at Finkelstein was the charge that his mother (a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps, whose family had been exterminated by the Nazis, and who was a government witness in war crimes trials against Nazi guards and deportation hearings for Nazi war criminals hiding in the US) was a Nazi collaborator, or that Finkelstein had accused his mother of being one.

Dershowitz put this disgusting libel on the official web page for Harvard Law School, with the support of Elena Kagan (click my name to read the details).

http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/who-was-maryla-husyt-finkelstein/

Although acknowledging that the Law School webpage had content limits, Kagan did not consider Dershowitz’s statements objectionable.

So according to Elena Kagan, Holocaust revisionism is fit for publication on the official website of the Law School where she was the dean.