Asa Winstanley, The Electronic Intifada, 26 July 2010

The small volume The Punishment of Gaza is a selection from Gideon Levy’s columns on Gaza in Israeli daily Haaretz since 2006. The dissident Israeli journalist reminds us that the brutal Israeli assault on Gaza has not been a matter of isolated wars of aggression, but an ongoing, long-term policy directed at the population of that small, refugee-packed fraction of Palestine.

Despite his ideological limits, Levy is a searing critic of Israeli brutality, as anyone who has read him will know. Right from the beginning, he named the last major Israeli massacre of Gaza “a war crime” — in his 27 December 2008 article “The Neighborhood Bully Strikes Again.” And he criticized it on moral grounds, not merely as the “mistake” or “blunder” that hypocritical Israeli pundits, masquerading as critics, would label it much later on.

At his best, Levy has a way with words that leads him to some brilliant indictments of Israel. He speaks of “the basic, twofold Israeli sentiment that has been with us forever: to commit any wrong, but to feel pure in our own eyes. To kill, demolish, starve, imprison and humiliate — and to still be right, not to mention righteous.” He describes how the 2008 feature film Waltz With Bashir, Ari Folman’s apologia for the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, “outraged” him on a second viewing: “Art has been recruited here for an operation of deceit” and, “this is not an antiwar film.” He also seems to implicitly support the movement to boycott Israel with statements such as “Israelis don’t pay any price for the injustice of the occupation, so the occupation will never end” and the piece “A Just Boycott.”

Yet reading Levy can be a frustrating experience. In a July 2006 piece about an attack on Gaza after the capture by Palestinian fighters of a soldier involved in shelling the Strip, Levy writes: “The legitimate basis for the [Israeli army's] operation was stripped away the moment it began.” This is an odd and convoluted phrase. Why not just say it was illegitimate to begin with? But there is worse than that. In an article arguing for negotiations with Hamas, he describes the first Palestinian intifada as “unnecessary and cursed.” Palestinians would beg to differ — the popular uprising is widely regarded as a high point of legitimate and mostly unarmed resistance.

Even in “The Neighborhood Bully Strikes Again” Levy says of the winter 2008-09 massacre of Gaza that “Hamas brought this on itself and its people, but this does not excuse Israel’s overreaction.” As is the conventional Israeli-Western line, the Palestinians always “attack,” and the Israelis only ever “respond.” After Haaretz published Breaking the Silence’s interviews with soldiers testifying to Israel’s deliberate war crimes against civilians waving white flags in Gaza, Levy wrote that the army “has long ceased to be the most moral army in the world.” And yet he says nothing of the fact that this army he implicitly alleges was once “the most moral in the world” ethnically cleansed hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians in 1947-48.

There are other such criticisms to be made, as fundamentally, Levy’s perspective is an Israeli one — even a “patriotic” Israeli one, as he explicitly argues in one essay. I highlight these ideological limits, to make a wider point as my argument is not really with Gideon Levy (whose writing is probably the most critical of Israel that we can ever expect to appear in the Israeli media): there still seems to not be enough books on Palestine-Israel by Palestinians or other Arabs published in English.

Are British and American publishers still so afraid of false accusations of anti-Semitism when putting out works critical of Israel that they have to put up the ideological shield of the Jewish critic? Or is there still an undertone of racism — the colonial conviction that the Arabs are notorious liars so cannot be trusted as journalists or historians?

Perhaps things are changing. Ramzy Baroud recently had his My Father Was a Freedom Fighter published, and an English translation of Shafiq al-Hout’s memoir of his Palestine Liberation Organization years is forthcoming — both from Pluto Press. But if so, things are not changing quickly enough. Since Edward Said’s death, London Review of Books for example, seems to publish articles on Palestine-Israel almost exclusively by Israeli and/or Western writers, instead of Palestinians themselves.

Until the Western media can allow the voice of the oppressed to speak directly, without being constantly filtered through members of the oppressor society (even if they are allies such as Gideon Levy) then the chances of us getting a real picture of the history and current reality of Palestine are limited, to say the least.

As to whether or not you should buy this book: in all honesty, £8.99 or $15.95 is pretty expensive for a 148-page collection of essays that can be read for free on the Haaretz website. However, it is quite a good overview of Levy’s op-eds on Gaza from this period. A wider selection that included his writings on the second Lebanon war would perhaps have justified the price somewhat more.

Asa Winstanley is a freelance journalist based in London who has lived in and reported from occupied Ramallah. His website is www.winstanleys.org.

Asa Winstanley, The Electronic Intifada, 22 June 2010

A document sent to Ibrahim Khraishi, Palestinian Authority representative at the UN in Geneva, proves that the PA attempted to undermine Turkey’s push for a UN Human Rights Council investigation in to Israel’s attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla (Patrick Bertschmann/UN Photo)

The Palestinian Authority attempted to neutralize a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution condemning Israel’s deadly attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, leaked UN and Palestinian Authority documents obtained by The Electronic Intifada show. Israel’s 31 May attack killed nine Turkish citizens, including a dual US-Turkish citizen, and injured dozens of others aboard the Mavi Marmara in international waters.

Download the document leaked to EI [PDF]

The Electronic Intifada (EI) today publishes one of the documents it obtained, containing proposed amendments to a draft Human Rights Council (HRC) resolution. Annotations to the resolution indicate the Palestinian Authority (PA) stood with European Union (EU) countries against Turkey’s calls for robust action to hold Israel accountable.

The PA’s apparent collusion to shield Israel will recall for many its efforts to undermine UN action on the Goldstone report last October.

Apparently written by a European delegate, the document’s amendments would have seriously diluted Turkey’s original wording. The most damaging change would have removed the call for an independent UN investigation under HRC auspices. The document was provided to EI by a source who described how it was obtained inside the UN Office at Geneva, and asked to remain anonymous.

Turkey rejected the EU-PA amendments, and the final resolution on 2 June declared that the council “Decides to dispatch an independent international fact-finding mission to investigate violations of international humanitarian and human rights law resulting from the Israeli attacks” (“The Grave Attacks by Israeli Forces against the Humanitarian Boat Convoy,” United Nations Human Rights Council, Fourteenth session, A/HRC/14/L.1, Adopted on 2 June 2010).

The language in the final resolution was very similar to the January 2009 HRC resolution which led to the Goldstone report, the independent investigation that detailed war crimes committed during Israel’s 2008-09 invasion of Gaza.

Yet annotations apparently made by a European diplomat on the draft resolution obtained by EI make it clear that the PA consented to removal of this wording. A PA-backed alternative paragraph instead proposed that the HRC: “Requests the UN Secretary-General to ensure a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation conforming to the [sic] international standards.”

This difference is key because the Turkish wording specifically calls for an investigation under the authority of the HRC. Yet the weaker EU-PA version would have allowed the UN secretary-general to merely endorse an Israeli-led inquiry provided he considered it “credible.”

One of the document’s annotations explains that “TK [Turkey] has checked with their capital and they are still under high-level instruction to insist on language as originally proposed.” The note adds that “PA and PAK [Pakistan] can agree to both proposals” — i.e to replace the independent HRC investigation with one merely approved by either the UN Security Council or the secretary-general.

Similarly, while Turkey had — according to the annotations — insisted that the resolution specifically condemn the Israeli attack, the “PA and PAK is [sic] OK with the EU proposal” to replace reference to “the outrageous attack by the Israeli forces against the humanitarian flotilla” with the more ambiguous “use of violence during the Israeli military operation.” The EU alternative could be interpreted as including condemnation of “violence” by passengers attempting to defend themselves with water hoses or sticks against the unprovoked Israeli military attack in international waters.

Public statements by both French and UK diplomats support EI’s interpretation of the document. After Turkey succeeded in getting its wording into the 2 June resolution, the UK and France abstained, and the Netherlands, Italy and the US voted against.

Explaining his country’s abstention, French representative Jean-Baptiste Mattei expressed a wish for a “unanimous stand” and said his government “regret that proposals for amendments to the text made by the EU” were not accepted. Peter Gooderham for the United Kingdom concurred with this wish “to reach consensus” and even mentioned he was “grateful for the efforts of the co-sponsors in this regard” (“UN Human Rights Council, Archived Video“, Fourteenth session, 2 June 2010).

The Palestinian Authority was one of the resolution’s co-sponsors.

Imad Zuhairi, the Deputy Permanent Observer of the PA to the UN in Geneva, said in a phone interview that the position of his delegation was that “no matter if it’s Geneva, the Human Rights Council, or the Security Council, there should be a transparent and international independent investigation committee in accordance with international standards.”

Zuhairi claimed his delegation had been “not against or with” the EU effort to scupper the HRC investigation. He criticized the Security Council resolution wording as “ambiguous” and said the PA would “reject by all means any internal investigation” by Israel. He added: “what we care for is our [Palestinian] people in the occupied Gaza Strip.”

When questioned specifically on the comment in the document that the PA can “agree” to removal of the HRC investigation, Zuhairi said the comment was inaccurate, and said that whoever had written it was mistaken.

However, the annotations in the draft HRC resolution leaked to EI are corroborated by a second leaked document which reveals an earlier attempt to dilute the HRC resolution, but this time directly by the PA itself.

The second document, and the email to which it was attached, were leaked by a source unconnected to the first document. EI was given access to the second document on condition it not be published.

The second document is in the widely-used Microsoft Word format and the “Track Changes” feature has been used, so the exact changes made to it are unambiguous. An examination of the Word document’s metadata reveals that it was initially created by the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (“Disisleri Bakanligi”) before the PA added its changes.

The email to which it was attached was written by Feda Abdelhady Nasser, a diplomat at the PA’s UN mission in New York, and sent to Dr. Ibrahim Khraishi, the PA representative at the UN in Geneva where the HRC is based. It is copied to Riyad Mansour, the head of the PA mission at the UN in New York.

Abdelhady Nasser explains that the attached document contains the PA mission in New York’s edits to the draft resolution being proposed for adoption by the HRC.

The document itself proves that the PA representatives replaced the proposed Turkish wording in which the HRC “Decides to dispatch an independent international fact finding mission …” with much vaguer and more indirect language that: “Calls upon the High Commissioner for Human Rights, in cooperation with the Secretary-General, to dispatch a fact finding mission …”

This language would have removed the entire issue from the auspices of the HRC. Taken together, the evidence indicates that the PA was directly involved in trying to dilute and undermine Turkey’s robust position and to protect Israel from accountability.

Recent reports suggest that the “investigation conforming to international standards” approved by the Security Council and the US administration will be conducted by Israel itself, observed by Northern Ireland politician David Trimble who recently co-founded an organization called Friends of Israel, and Canadian Brigadier-General Ken Watkin.

A separate investigation by the HRC, as stipulated in the 2 June resolution that passed with 32 votes in favor (three against, nine abstentions) would represent a challenge to the authority of the Israeli investigation. If the Goldstone report is a precedent, an HRC investigation is far more likely to be critical of Israeli actions.

In October 2009, the Goldstone report was finally adopted by the HRC. Despite the PA initially withdrawing support for the South African jurist’s investigation into Israel’s 2008-09 onslaught against the Gaza Strip, Mahmoud Abbas, who extended his expired term as PA president under contested “emergency laws,” was forced into a humiliating U-turn after an outpouring of disgust and protest from Palestinians around the world.

Asa Winstanley is a freelance journalist based in London who has lived in and reported from occupied Ramallah. His website is www.winstanleys.org.

By Asa Winstanley

The global boycott divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel’s apartheid system in Palestine has achieved many victories since it was launched by a broad coalition of Palestinian civil society in 2005. BDS victories seem to have flowed thick and fast in recent times, particularly since Israel’s vicious 2008-2009 assault on the civilian population of Gaza. A small sample: in September 2009 Norway’s pension fund divested from Elbit Systems, an Israeli arms systems company. In May of this year, hip-hop pioneer Gil Scott-Heron cancelled a prospective Tel Aviv gig after pressure to boycott from fans in London who also happened to be pro-Palestine BDS activists.

In what may yet turn out to be the biggest long-term BDS victory in Britain, the TUC voted in September to pass a motion calling for a boycott of goods from Israeli colonies in the West Bank. Although the initial motion put forward by the Fire Brigades Union called for a general boycott of Israeli goods, a General Council statement also passed at the September congress altered this to restrict the TUC campaign to settlement goods.

Despite this dilution, the motion was a clear sign of historical sea change in the British trade union movement – large parts of which tended to support Israel before 1967 because of their illusions about Zionist “socialism” (a “socialism” that happened to exclude Arabs). By now it is clear that the union grassroots overwhelmingly supports the BDS movement.

Since then, the TUC’s implementation of the motion has been limited to a press release and two new leaflets issued in April with the slogan “Don’t buy settlement goods”. This may well represent little more than a bone thrown from the TUC bureaucracy and leadership to the grassroots. However, it does mean that BDS activists can now draw on the mainstream credibility of the TUC.

BDS activists in the UK are fast gaining a global reputation for effective organising. In January of last year, students at dozens of university campuses occupied classrooms and lecture theatres in solidarity with the Palestinian people. The movement started at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London and spread across the whole country. The demands varied, but often included aspects of BDS, especially calls for universities to divest from arms companies doing business with Israel. Most of the occupations managed to achieve at least some of their aims. In Cardiff, among the results was divestment from BAe Systems and the arms division of General Electric.

But possibly the biggest achievements of this movement were long-term educational ones. Many of the students involved in the 2009 wave of occupations have subsequently thrown themselves into BDS activism. London students have been at the forefront of such campaigns as the fortnightly Covent Garden pickets of Ahava, an Israeli cosmetics company based in the West Bank colony of Mitzpe Shalem.

SOAS has a reputation as a world centre of pro-Palestine activism. A conference organised by its Palestine Society in February was a veritable Who’s Who of the anti-Zionist left. Renowned historian Ilan Pappe prefaced his talk with a light-hearted remark about the average ages of attendees at the conference: “I feared I was going to an old people’s home to drink tea with the veterans of the communist revolution… [but it] looks a very even distribution of ages. [This is] a very good sign for the future”.

Also in February, an Israeli think tank called the Reut Institute issued a series of publications targeted at the BDS movement. Reut dubbed the movement “the delegitmisation network”, and describes it at one of the two primary forces behind the “increasingly harsh criticism around the world” that “Israel has been subjected to” for the past few years – the second being what they call “the Resistance Network” of Hizballah, Hamas and Iran.

Putting aside the childish inference that the BDS movement is part of some dastardly terrorist plot, the Reut Insitute’s analysis was quite realistic (although of course limited to option of how best to defend Israel’s actions with no suggestion that the actions themselves could ever be immoral). Reut identified London as one of the global “hubs of delegitimisation” against Israel. This is a good sign that BDS activists in the UK are doing something right—as is the almost constant hysteria in the Israeli press over even the most mild BDS achievement.

Omar Barghouti, one of the founders of the BDS campaign, said in a Democracy Now! debate in March that “BDS is not a one size that fits all. It’s context-sensitive. In every situation, we target companies that are complicit in Israel’s apartheid and occupation that we can win our battle against.” This is probably the key to the movement’s successes so far: the BDS movement is a broad church, with room for different focuses and tactics. Those uncomfortable with the idea of boycotting “Israel proper” (aka pre-1967 Israel), such as Israeli group Gush Shalom, are free to focus on the boycott of settlement goods instead.

Diverse politics within broad movements are to be expected. The BNC platform itself is broad, and does not take any position on specific political plans to resolve the conflict (rendering the one-state vs. two-state debate irrelevant in this context). Considering the current internal division in the Palestinian body politic, such a broad coalition of civil society could not have otherwise reached the consensus on BDS that it has. Instead, the BNC’s 2005 United Call document took a rights-based approach, agreeing on: an end to the occupation, full rights for Palestinian citizens of Israeli, and protecting the refugees’ right to return as per UN General Assembly Resolution 194.

Britain is gaining a global reputation for BDS action, perhaps because of the more high-profile protests, such as the recent one in Manchester against a speech by the Israeli deputy ambassador (there is an excellent video online of the disruptions of her speech, edited in with students explaining their protest).

Only one of many such disruptions on campuses around the world, the Manchester University protest seems to have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. Hebrew tabloid Maariv recently reported that the Israeli foreign ministry is considering scrapping such talks because they are becoming “ineffective in terms of PR” as the headlines are always about the protesters “and not the message that the lecturer wanted to convey”.

Despite such headlines, the BDS campaign is still very much in it’s early stages. In another reminder that European governments are still largely sympathetic to Israel, the country was last week admitted to the OECD, despite the objections of the BDS National Committee (BNC—the umbrella group of civil society organizations in Palestine that initiated the BDS movement in 2005). Many activists are now speculating that some of the victories won in Britain—such as Defra advice on correctly labeling settlement goods—are now in danger of being reversed by the new Tory-led government.

Policy makers in Europe will not take even minimal action against Israeli apartheid unless pressured to do so by organized popular opinion. The BDS movement has many challenges ahead of it, but there are also many victories to be proud of. These will continue as long as activists stay in it for the long haul.

Asa Winstanley is a freelance journalist who has lived in and reported from occupied Ramallah, working for the Palestine Times and the Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre. His website is www.winstanleys.org.

Asa Winstanley, The Electronic Intifada, 4 January 2010

A scene from To Gaza with Love.

To Gaza with Love is a documentary by Aki Nawaz for Iran’s English-language channel Press TV. It is an account of the first boats that successfully broke the siege of Gaza in August 2008. The filmmakers traveled to the Gaza Strip with the Free Gaza Movement, which organized the trip. The subjective format of the film works well — presenter Yvonne Ridley speaks to the camera in an amiable video diary style, while Nawaz narrates to add context.

The Free Gaza Movement is a group of activists from around the world who decided to sail to Gaza from Cyprus to break the Israeli-enforced siege. The idea came about in response to Israel’s claim that, since the 2005 “disengagement,” it no longer occupies the coastal strip. Despite withdrawing its settlers, Israel still remains in control of all the borders, airspace and coast. The Free Gaza Movement is an effort to call Israel’s bluff. If Israel no longer occupies Gaza, it could surely have no objection to civilian boats sailing in — or so the argument went.

Although it is independent of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), many in the Free Gaza Movement are or have been ISM members, including ISM founder Huwaida Arraf. Israel has banned some of the members from entering Palestine/Israel.

The small group purchased two second-hand boats in Cyprus, and the film recounts the trials and tribulations they went through in the course of preparing to embark on the sea journey.

At the time, many in the global Palestine solidarity movement were skeptical of the chances of success — but were happy to be proven wrong when the two small vessels eventually landed in Gaza. After watching this film, it becomes apparent this success was a near miracle.

It took about a week of false starts before the crew could even embark on the 30-hour sea journey. Beset by a number of logistical problems, the boats very nearly stayed in Cyprus. One of the vessels needed so many replacement parts that it would probably have been cheaper to buy a new boat. There were several changes of captain. And, as Ridley puts it, “consensus raised its ugly head” — referring to the often long-winded consensus decision making process used by the activist group.

Clashing egos, cabin fever and seasickness at times led to tensions within the group. Personalities like Ken O’Keefe (he of the 2002 human shields to Iraq group), Paul Larudee and Jeff Halper certainly make for an interesting cast of characters familiar within the Palestine solidarity movement. Nawaz does not shy away from showing the tensions and disagreements onboard. Ridley also criticizes the “anarchists and communists” (an oversimplified characterization of the group) for their indecision.

Media context is missing from this film. As narrator, Nawaz says the boats had been “a battle for world public opinion” — yet we see none of the coverage itself. Analysis of the media and some TV news clips would have added a lot to this film. At the very least the filmmakers could have shown screen-grabs from newspaper websites.

The narrator incorrectly includes James Miller in a list of “global activists” murdered by Israel along with ISMers Tom Hurndall and Rachel Corrie. Miller was in fact a cameraman, and was not part of any activist group. Death in Gaza, the film Miller was making when he was shot to death by an Israeli tank, ended up reserving most of its criticism for the Palestinians rather than Israel (it was finished after Miller’s death).

This first successful trip set a precedent, and four additional boat trips between October and December 2008 succeeded in landing on the shores of Gaza. It seemed for a while that Israel did not quite know what to do with the activists. Some who arrived on these boats stayed on in Gaza as ISM activists or worked with other organizations. Many stayed through the whole of Israel’s invasion of Gaza last winter. They did important work including documenting Israel’s war crimes against the civilian population of Gaza and medical and emergency workers and personnel.

Israeli ships took advantage of the fog of war and rammed the sixth Free Gaza boat on 29 December (only two days into the invasion). Since then it seems the siege-breaking tactic has itself been broken. Each subsequent boat trip has either been forced back, or, in the case of the last trip in June, had their crews kidnapped and forced into Israel (later expelled to their countries of origin). The narrative of this film ends after the first trip, but a brief summation of these later events would have been useful.

Despite these quibbles, this film is a unique account of an important and historic achievement. It is a useful resource for solidarity activists thinking about strategies on how to break the siege of Gaza, and how to express practical solidarity with Palestine.

Asa Winstanley is a freelance journalist who has lived in and reported from occupied Ramallah, working for the Palestine Times and the Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre. His website is www.winstanleys.org.

Related Links

• Purchase To Gaza with Love on Palestine Online Store

Update: letter to EI in response

See also this letter to EI from Free Gaza Movement co-founder Greta Berlin criticising my review for gender bias. It was of course not my conscious intention to tell a “boys own” story, but in hindsight, I will say she has a point. Greta kindly emailed me her criticism in private first and I encouraged her to email her letter to EI for publication — Asa

Asa Winstanley, The Electronic Intifada, 13 October 2009

In his new book The Making of a Human Bomb: An Ethnography of Palestinian Resistance, Nasser Abufarha examines the phenomena of Palestinian suicide operations. It is based on extensive fieldwork conducted in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, mostly in and around the northern town of Jenin. A native of the city, Abufarha interviewed families of suicide bombers, observed demonstrations and studied Palestinian cultural products that addressed suicide attacks. He also conducted interviews with activists from three different armed factions to explain suicide bombings, or “martyrdom operations” as they are more commonly known in the Arab world.

Abufarha traces the development of the concept of self-sacrifice in Palestinian society from the 1960s to the first Palestinian intifada (1987-1992). During the 1960s, Palestinian resistance fighters were known as the fedayeen or those who sacrifice for a cause. Contrary to common portrayal in the Western media, anyone fallen in the course of resistance to the Israeli occupation is honored in Palestinian society as a shahid, or a martyr, whether armed guerrilla or unarmed protestor.

Following the signing of the Oslo accords in the mid-1990s, the bombings by Hamas and Islamic Jihad were not supported by the majority of Palestinians, who mostly still hoped the “peace process” would lead to a Palestinian state. The two Islamic groups had to actively recruit for such operations.

By the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada in 2000, the stone-throwing children of the first intifada had grown up. Having watching their friends fall as martyrs to Israeli brutality, volunteers began to offer themselves to the armed factions: if they were to be killed anyway, it was surely better to choose the manner of their death. In the words of one of Abufarha’s interview subjects: “we are all martyrs with execution on hold.” The new concept of istishhad arose: actively seeking martyrdom as an act of resistance.

During the first three weeks of the second intifada, when popular demonstrations had been in full flow, Israeli army records state that its forces fired a million bullets — before the first Palestinian bombing. By November, Palestinian armed factions began to strike back. The more brutal Israeli repression got, the more the intifada militarized in response.

Abufarha says the aim of Palestinian martyrdom bombings was to cause “mimetic terror and fear” in Israeli society. He explains that the long years of Israeli terrorism in the West Bank and Gaza began, finally, to be mimicked by the victim.

Abufarha does not focus on international law or the morality of armed resistance. As an anthropologist, he instead studies cultural meaning and perception. He argues that martyrdom operations were primarily a “cultural performance” and that they “cannot be entirely understood without expanding the analysis to social and cultural realms.” He argues that “we have to give equal attention to victims and perpetrators” of violence.

Abufarha emphasizes that suicide attacks are not perpetrated by mad bombers but are a product of the violent environment of the Israeli occupation, arguing that they are an example of “how violence may become a logical, meaningful and intelligible practice.” Moreover, Abufarha makes a compelling case that the notion of the martyr’s life after death is mostly not religious in nature. He offers evidence that more emphasis tends to be put on the secular notion of living on in memory and reputation. This “explains why both Islamic and secular groups organize martyrdom operations.” He cites examples from popular Palestinian demonstration slogans, graffiti, literature and art in which a shahid is considered to have made a willing sacrifice to the land of Palestine itself. He or she will thus live on in the cultural memory of the people.

It is undeniable that the wave of Palestinian bombings against both Israeli military and civilian targets during the second intifada developed a certain degree of support among the Palestinian population. As Abufarha explains, after Palestinian hopes for international support for their unarmed popular uprising came to nothing during the first intifada, “no longer did the Palestinians rely on the international community as a supporter that would be swayed” during the second intifada. Indeed, during the bloodiest days of the second intifada the armed wings had more volunteers than they knew what to do with. “We started to tell people to look after their kids,” recounts Kamal, a local leader of the al-Aqsa Brigades in Jenin. This counters conventional wisdom claiming suicide bombers are coerced into the attacks.

Abufarha does not take a moral position either for or against suicide bombings. He calls them both “legitimate” and “illegitimate” in different contexts, depending on which population is perceiving them. At times, he is in danger of cultural relativism, as such dichotomies ignore Palestinian arguments against attacks on Israeli civilians. However, he does note the illegality of targeting civilians under international law. Abufarha concludes the book with the assessment that martyrdom operations did not defeat the occupation, but they did prevent Israel from “settling the conflict on its own terms” (i.e., incorporating the occupied territories, without Palestinians, into Israel).

The Making of a Human Bomb does have some shortcomings. There are several minor errors that closer editing should have identified, such as references in the text to books missing from the bibliography. There are also minor factual errors. For example, Abufarha claims that the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) was one of the Palestinian groups “engaged in organizing martyrdom missions” during the second intifada. However, unlike the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the DFLP has never performed a suicide bombing, and is not on the State Department’s list of US Government Designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Abufarha could have been referring to a handful of DFLP “no escape” attacks against Israeli military targets, but this should have been clarified in the text. Moreover, as an ethnography published by an academic press, it is not necessarily written for a general readership and the narrative suffers at times from excessive jargon.

Abufarha’s focus on cultural perception sometimes leads to a neglect of history and facts. For example, he does not give an account of the outbreak of the second intifada, so it may not be clear to some readers that, until the first Palestinian bombing on 2 November 2000, the first month of the intifada had been mostly unarmed on the Palestinian side (fully armed on the Israeli side, of course). For those unfamiliar with the chronology of events, the book should be read alongside another work, for example Tanya Reinhart’s Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948. It also could have benefited from a wider account of the tactical and strategic goals of suicide bombings. However, these factors are addressed in other studies that Abufarha critiques, such as Robert Pape’s Dying to Win and Mia Bloom’s Dying to Kill.

One could be forgiven for wishing that the book had focused on critical reassessment of suicide bombings as a well as a greater discussion of cause and effect. In addition, a mention of Hamas’s various offers (rejected by Israel) of a moratorium on targeting civilians, would also have been instructive. Ultimately, however, this is not a general history of Palestinian resistance. It is certainly an important contribution to the understanding of this bloody chapter in the history of Palestinian resistance, as it addresses the issue from the perspective of the Palestinians themselves. As the author concludes, understanding this perspective is vital if we are to “develop an effective response to violence.”

Asa Winstanley is a freelance journalist who has lived in and reported from occupied Ramallah, working for the Palestine Times and the Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre. His website is www.winstanleys.org.

I’ve built my own DVR using the excellent Linux-based MythTV software. I’ve written a detailed guide about how I did it here.

I mostly wrote it for my own benefit, but hopefully it will be of use to others too. If you’re into this kind of thing, please do take a look and let me know what you think in the comments secion.

This was a very fun project for me and in the end it turned out better than I expected, if anything. There is also plenty of potential for future expansion. My next step is probably getting a proper router so I can control the system via the remote web-based interface.

By Asa Winstanley, The Electronic Intifada, 14 August 2009

The international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel has won several important victories in recent months. At this summer’s trade union conferences in Britain, BDS activists have made significant progress.

While the campaign has been building momentum in unions globally since the 2005 Palestinian call for BDS, Israel’s winter invasion of Gaza has spurred several trade unions and union federations in Britain and Ireland to pass motions more explicitly in favor of BDS. Several are calling for BDS for the first time.

Tom Hickey, a member of the University and College Union’s (UCU) national executive committee, said, “The question of the moral rightness or wrongness [of BDS against Israel] has effectively already been decided.”

Although the Trade Union Congress (the British union federation) has not yet passed a BDS motion, affiliated unions have begun taking up the Palestinian call themselves. So far this summer, the public sector union PCS, the UCU and the Fire Brigades Union have all passed strong motions explicitly calling for a general policy of boycott of Israeli goods, divestment from Israeli companies and government sanctions against the state.

Unions such as public sector union UNISON, the National Union of Teachers, USDAW and the Communication Workers Union (CWU) have this summer passed softer motions calling for elements of BDS. These are usually calls for a boycott of settlement goods, or for the government to suspend arms sales to Israel. The CWU and others have condemned the infamous 13 January 2008 statement of the Israeli trade union federation in support of Israel’s invasion of Gaza, which read: “The Histadrut recognizes the urgent need for the State of Israel to operate against the command and control centers of the organizational terror network …”

In addition, a report has been circulating on the Internet that the rail workers’ union, the RMT, has reversed an earlier policy of “solidarity not boycott” and passed a motion in favor of some sort of BDS policy at their July Annual General Meeting. The official AGM report has yet to be released to the general public, but the RMT’s media office confirmed the report was probably accurate. However, they did not return calls for official confirmation in time for publication.

In April, the independent Scottish Trade Union Congress (STUC) for the first time voted to endorse a report recommending “boycott and disinvest from Israeli companies” and a “call for sanctions against Israel” at their annual delegates’ congress.

This decision was not arrived at overnight. STUC Assistant Secretary Mary Senior said, “it was very important we carefully considered the issue.” A motion passed at the 2007 congress called on the leadership to “explore the merits of the calls” for BDS. In February-March of this year, Senior participated in an official STUC delegation to Palestine. It was this visit that formed the basis of the report recommending BDS.

The delegation met with Israeli and Palestinian officials, trade unionists and civil society groups in the occupied West Bank and in Israel. Almost all of the representatives were asked their opinion on BDS.

The report criticized the Israeli trade union federation, stating “At no time did Histadrut acknowledge that the West Bank is occupied” — an occupation that delegation members witnessed first hand.

The report ultimately concluded “there was strong support for BDS amongst Palestinian trade unions and civic society.”

Senior believes this report was vital, and that if the vote had been held two years earlier, it might not have passed. “It was important to have … the consultation and the delegation. That helped to bring all of our affiliates on board,” she said.

At their May congress, the UCU’s most recent motion demanding support “for the Palestinian call for a boycott, disinvestment and sanctions campaign” was passed. This victory occurred despite the general secretary’s statement that on legal advice this amendment would be “void and of no effect.”

News reports at the time focused on the leadership’s negation of the vote. However, most reports failed to mention that several other Palestine motions were carried at the congress. This included a motion that urged “branches to discuss prior to Congress 2010 the Palestinian call for a boycott, disinvestment and sanctions campaign.” The specific wording was used to accommodate the legal advice, and prevent the motion from being voided.

UCU activist Sue Blackwell explained that in previous congresses, “people thought the union could be taken to court.” But this year, lawyers advised the union leadership to say the new BDS motion “would not be binding” in advance. Yet, it was “very clear there was an overwhelming majority for the principle of boycott and it is only the legal threats preventing the union from implementing it,” she explained. “It gave the lie to all the Zionists who say that only a minority in UCU support this.” Judging from the tactical wording of similar motions passed by other unions this summer, it seems trade unionists are learning the lessons of the UCU’s BDS experience.

This success has certainly not gone unchallenged. In late June, after several unions had passed BDS motions, opposition was voiced from the highest levels of government. In an unprecedented statement, Foreign Secretary David Miliband issued a press release on 23 June that stated “The Government is dismayed that motions calling for boycotts of Israel are being discussed at trade union congresses and conferences this summer.” The staunchly pro-Israel Jewish Chronicle offered this headline on the statement: “Stop boycotting, Miliband tells unions.”

Miliband said he would dispatch Ivan Lewis to dissuade union leaders from the boycott. Lewis is the new foreign office minister for the Middle East, and is also a member and former vice-chair of the lobbying group, Labor Friends of Israel. According to The Independent, his appointment “raised eyebrows in the Foreign Office” as he had been one “one of the most outspoken political supporters of Israel’s military assault on Gaza. Critics can’t help but wonder how objective Lewis is likely to be in his new post.”

Union activists have been less than impressed. UCU’s Blackwell stated that the British government “should do more to enforce human rights and to put pressure on Israel to comply with international law.” The STUC replied the following day with its own statement, rejecting Miliband’s remarks: “The UK Government is out of step with the views of workers on this matter.” STUC’s Senior added that the organization was “very surprised he would say that.”

Martial Kurtz, Campaigns and Events Officer of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said, “We are not all that worried about Lewis or Miliband going around trying to stop this … BDS is well on its way and their response smacks of desperation.”

STUC representatives, including Senior, met with Lewis in early July. “This was the first time we’ve met with a foreign office minister for a good number of years,” she recalled.

“Ivan Lewis is fairly new but he was very well briefed,” Senior said. “He didn’t agree with the boycott … He indicated a desire to maintain contact with us, [but] he was regretting the position we have.”

Senior recounted that during the meeting, Lewis argued that “when President Bush was at the helm in the US, he could understand how the BDS movement had sort of grown at frustration” with Bush’s foreign policies but now “he was positive about recent developments in Palestine and Israel” since Barack Obama took office.

A spokesperson for the minister at the Foreign Office confirmed Senior’s account that he regretted the STUC’s position on boycott, as well as the point about frustration over Bush’s polices.

Lewis’s implication was apparently that BDS needs to stop so Obama can work his magic. However, the delegation was not convinced and stated that “We’ve got our position at the STUC, and it’s a very strong position because it’s debated and considered and voted upon: a unanimous decision taken at our congress. For us it was important to convey that to the minister.”

The British TUC’s negative policy on BDS could be reversed at this September’s congress. There, the Fire Brigades Union is planning to put forward a motion that calls for “trade unionists to boycott Israeli goods, especially agricultural products that have been produced in the illegal settlements.”

Whether or not the motion passes at this year’s TUC, something does seem to have changed in the unions and the discussion is now moving on to more practical questions. In the fall and winter, the UCU and STUC will be hosting BDS conferences. According to the STUC’s Senior, the conference will be for trade unionists “to discuss practical questions and learn lessons from apartheid South Africa.”

Asa Winstanley is a freelance journalist who has lived in and reported from occupied Ramallah, working for the Palestine Times and the Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre. His website is www.winstanleys.org.

It is not a history book per say, but it is a highly readable journalistic summary of the main events in the history of the occupation, with a big emphasis on the Nakba (the ethnic cleansing of half the population of the Palestinians from their homeland in 1947-48 by Zionist militias and terrorist gangs). The second half of the book is about the reality on the ground right now. It combines interesting (and often shocking) facts and figures with anecdotes from individual Palestinians on the ground: many of whom were recorded in conversations with White himself.

It is all highly readable and only about 120 pages long. It includes an excellent “Frequently Asked Questions” section, a solid bibliography recommending further reading, and a huge list of action, news and information websites.

The book also avoids the infernal BBC curse of “balance”. It is not balanced: it is against occupation, against ethnic cleansing and against apartheid. But at the same time, it is not polemical, and never less than factual and humane.

The book fills a perfect gap. I’ve lost count of the times people have asked me “can you recommend one book to start learning about Palestine-Israel?” For the first time, I now have a definitive answer.

White defends his book from Hasbara attacks on his blog here.

Originally published in Electronic Intifada.

Asa Winstanley writing from the United Kingdom, Live from Palestine, 12 June 2009

Taking the first bus of the day, my wife and I arrived on the Israeli side of the King Hussein bridge crossing into the West Bank from Jordan. We explained that we were heading to Ramallah to visit my wife’s mother and brothers for three weeks. We performed the exact same procedure last year without incident. However, this year I was told to wait.

My wife is a Palestinian from Ramallah, where we met a few years ago. We got married there, and her closest family still live in Ramallah. We have moved to live and work in London, but try to return once a year. As Israel still controls all the border crossings into the West Bank, a trip intended as a May holiday to visit family quickly ran afoul of the continuing occupation.

Four hours after my passport was taken away, I had heard absolutely nothing. I started to make a fuss and was told that my passport was “with security.” Several hours later, I was taken in to a back room and questioned by a burly “security” agent. He asked several questions about the purpose of my trip while typing into a computer.

He wanted to know if I belong to any “groups that help the Palestinians,” and asked if, since I am a journalist I was going to work during this visit. I replied that, although I had worked with the Palestine Times in the past, this trip I was just to visit family. It tells you a lot about the nature of the Israeli occupation that they try to make it seem that “helping the Palestinians” is some sort of crime.

After the questions were finished, he told me to wait in the next room “for five minutes.” Two hours later I was still waiting.

By now we were the last remaining people in the terminal. I was finally approached by a police woman with my passport. After waiting a total of nine hours since the morning, I was told to come back the next day. Apparently I would not be allowed in without signing some sort of document, but the people from the Ministry of the Interior were not available, so I would have to come back when they were. After being assured by the policewoman that I would “definitely” be allowed in the next day, I returned to Amman at my own expense, while my wife went on to Ramallah.

I returned in the morning to find out that even though the policewoman was not there her colleague was familiar with my case. Eventually, I was called into an office marked “Ministry of the Interior” and presented with a one-page document to sign. Written in Hebrew, with English translation underneath each paragraph it had three clauses:

1. My visit was to be “within Israel only” and I was not allowed to enter “the areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority without advance authorization from the Territory Actions Coordinator.”

2. If I was to enter “any area under the control of the Palestinian Authority” I could be deported and issued with a ban from “Israel … of up to 10 years.”

3. My visit to “Israel” was only allowed for two days, and if I wished to apply for an extension on this, I would have to deposit 20,000 shekels (about $5,000), returnable on exit.

After waiting for two days just for this, I was extremely angry. I kept asking them why they couldn’t have just told me just told me all this the previous day; they gave no answer of substance.

I asked, “who is the Territory Actions Coordinator?”

Reply: “That’s us.”

“Can I have permission to see my family in Ramallah?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Security reasons.”

“Which are what?”

“We can’t tell you that.”

And that was basically that. I stayed in Jerusalem catching up with some friends for two days before heading back. I had no real problems on the way out. I then reunited with my wife and her mother and brothers in Amman, Jordan where we spent a couple of weeks on holiday.

So basically the “State of Israel” considers a skinny Welsh guy from London a security threat, simply because he wants to visit his family in Ramallah? I would like to flatter myself that I worry the occupation authorities, but no: this is simply how they treat everyone visiting Palestine.

Examples abound, and are documented by the Right to Enter campaign. Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir was denied entry when traveling from Jordan to attend the premiere of her acclaimed film Salt of this Sea in Ramallah. The film was an official selection at the 2008 Cannes Film festival and stars acclaimed Palestinian-American poet and actress Suheir Hammad. The reason they gave for denying Jacir entry to her homeland was simply: “You spend too much time here.”

As poorly as we were treated by the Israelis, I saw or met many Palestinians over the two days I spent at the border crossing who were treated much worse. Their number one target for abuse was Palestinians of the Diaspora: either Palestinians born overseas on their way to visit, or Palestinians who now have a different passport through marriage. There was one Palestinian-Australian woman who had come thousands of miles, presumably to visit family, yet the Israelis sent her back. I will never forget the tears in her eyes as they sent her back to Jordan; neither will I forget her defiance as she refused to give them the satisfaction of seeing her weep openly.

I talked with a Palestinian woman on her way back to Jerusalem. “I wish they would just give me an answer one way or another,” I said. “At least then I could get this waiting over with.”

“For me it’s not an option,” she replied. “I have to go back for work.”

The way they treated her was disgusting. It was not enough for them to keep her waiting for hours without information: when she dared to politely ask what was happening with her passport the reply was screamed, “Go and sit down!” This is standard behavior.

If my wife had been from Gaza things would be even worse for us. At least my mother-in-law can come to Amman where we can reunite. For someone from the Gaza Strip to visit Egypt, even for emergency medical treatment, is next to impossible (and here we must lay blame at the door of the Western-backed Egyptian dictatorship, as well as the Israelis).

On the second day, I also saw the BBC’s Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen pass through the terminal. He was not detained for more than 15 minutes, at most. But then, he has power and influence. I wish they would have detained him: I’m sure he would have done a story about it, and of course that is precisely why he wasn’t.

The Israelis want to do everything in their power to pressure the Palestinians into leaving. At the moment, they cannot get away with a repeat performance of the mass ethnic cleansing of 1948 — that might prove politically problematic. So instead they “encourage” indirect, slow, removal of the Palestinian population — “transfer” in the longstanding Zionist jargon. Such treatment at borders, making travel difficult or impossible, is another aspect of this policy.

If you doubt any of this, consider this simple fact: they would not have given me these problems if I was married to a Jew and was going to visit her family in Tel Aviv. Similar policies in South Africa were called “apartheid” and the whole world boycotted and isolated the apartheid regime until, because of the struggle of the African National Congress, supported by the international solidarity campaign, the state was cornered into accepting democracy.

Yet, the world lets Israel get away with seemingly everything. Israel killed more than 1,400 Palestinians in the latest round of massacres that its army initiated in Gaza in December-January. But the European Union is still moving to upgrade trade relations with Israel. The US under President Barack Obama is still intending to bankroll Israeli apartheid to the tune of some $3 billion in military aid this year alone. It’s time to wake up and respond to the call of Palestinian civil society to boycott Israel.

Of course I want to go back to Palestine, and going on what the Ministry of the Interior officials said, the door is not totally shut for me. I may still have legal avenues to explore. On the 61st anniversary of the 1948 Nakba, when half the population of Palestine was ethnically cleansed from their homeland by Zionist militias — it’s important to remember that, relatively speaking, I and my family are among the lucky ones.

Asa Winstanley is a freelance journalist and sub-editor who has lived in and reported from occupied Ramallah, working for the Palestine Times and the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center.

Self-satisfied liberals ask this from time to time. From Michael Moore in “Stupid White Men” to occasional Haaretz editorials. It seems every liberal who asks this thinks they are the first to ever do so. Apparently, the Palestinians are supposed to thank them for bringing them the enlightenment of non-violence resistance.

The answer to the question is: “actually, they do all the time: idiot. But you’re too busy kissing Barack Obama’s behind to notice. Too busy to report on the Palestinian victims of Israeli soldiers’ frequent attacks against unarmed demonstrations.” Hell: an American was shot in the head by Israeli soldiers last month just after such a demonstration (he was not even protesting at the time). Did you even report on that Tomasky? That says a lot: you won’t even report on unarmed victims in Palestine when they are the privileged White Man.

Here is a list of 17 names (10 of whom minors). It is a list of unarmed Palestinians murdered by Israeli terrorist soldiers during popular demonstrations against Israel’s apartheid wall in the West Bank in the last 5 years.

Take note that this list does not even include the hundred of civilians (926 according to Palestinian hospital sources) murdered by Israel during their latest massacre in Gaza — they were mostly sitting at home, in hospitals or UN schools acting as makeshift shelters or trying to flee the Israeli onslaught. It does not include other unarmed Palestinian demonstrators murdered by Israeli terrorist soldiers during the second intifada, those who were demonstrating about things other than the wall. It does not include the victims of the ruthless Israeli repression of the first intifada: which on the Palestinian side was almost entirely a popular non-violent struggle. It does not include the 3000 victims of Sabra and Shatila, murdered by Israel’s sectarian rightist death squad allies in Lebanon, brought into the Palestinian refugee camps by Israeli soldiers in 1982. It does not include the many returning Palestinian farmers shot dead by Israeli soldiers for checking on their farms between 1948 and 1967. It does not include many many thousands of Palestinian and other Arab civilians murdered by Israel for far less than demonstrating non-violently over the last 100 years of Zionist colonialism in Palestine.

Nevertheless, here is the list. Remember these names before you start preaching to the Palestinians, Tomasky. They know far more about non-violent resistance than you ever will.

February 26th, 2004
Muhammad Fadel Hashem Rian, age 25 and Zakaria Mahmoud ‘Eid Salem, age 28
Shot dead during a demonstration against the wall in Biddu.

Abdal Rahman Abu ‘Eid, age 17
Died of a heart attack after teargas projectiles were shot into his home during a demonstration against the wall in Biddu.

Muhammad Da’ud Saleh Badwan, age 21
Shot during a demonstration against the wall in Biddu. Muhammad died of his wounds on March 3rd 2004.

April 16th, 2004
Hussein Mahmoud ‘Awad ‘Alian, age 17
Shot dead during a demonstration against the wall in Betunya.

April 18th, 2004
Diaa’ A-Din ‘Abd al-Karim Ibrahim Abu ‘Eid, age 23
Shot dead during a demonstration against the wall in Biddu.

Islam Hashem Rizik Zhahran, age 14
Shot during a demonstration against the wall in Deir Abu Mash’al. Islam died of his wounds April 28th.

February 15th, 2005
‘Alaa’ Muhammad ‘Abd a-Rahman Khalil, age 14
Shot dead while throwing stones at an Israeli vehicle driven by private security guards near the wall in Betunya.

May 4th, 2005
Jamal Jaber Ibrahim ‘Asi, age 15 and U’dai Mufid Mahmoud ‘Asi, age 14
Shot dead during a demonstration against the wall in Beit Liqya.

February 2nd, 2007
Taha Muhammad Subhi al-Quljawi, age 16
Shot dead when he and two friends tried to cut the razor wire portion of the wall in the Qalandiya Refugee Camp. He was wounded in the thigh and died from loss of blood after remaining a long time in the field without being treated.

March 28th, 2007
Muhammad Elias Mahmoud ‘Aweideh, age 15
Shot dead during a demonstration against the wall in Um a-Sharayet – Samiramis.

March 2nd, 2008
Mahmoud Muhammad Ahmad Masalmeh, age 15
Shot when trying to cut the razor wire portion of the wall in Beit Awwa.

July 29th, 2008
Ahmed Husan Youssef Mousa, age 10
Killed while he and several friends tried to remove coils of razor wire from land belonging to the village.

July 30th, 2008
Youssef Ahmed Younes Amirah, age 17
Shot in the head with rubber coated bullets during a demonstration against the wall in Ni’lin. Youssef died of his wounds August 4th 2008.

December 28th, 2008
Arafat Khawaja, age 22
Shot in the back with live ammunition in Ni lin during a demonstration against Israel’s assault on Gaza.

Mohammad Khawaja, age 20
Shot in the head with live ammunition during a demonstration in Ni lin against Israel’s assault on Gaza. Mohammad died in the hospital on December 31st 2008.

This list, based on eyewitness accounts, is maintained in English by the ISM and the AATW. A slightly older version has been published on the ISM website, since when there have been two more murdered.

UPDATE: On 17th April 2009, this grily list became 18 when Basem Abu Rahme was murdered by a Israeli terrorist soldier in Bil’in.

However, all is not what it seems. The book was written before be became a politician, and he mentions in the new forward to the 2004 edition that there were a few things he would not have written now, but that he decided to leave the book basically as it was, even though they are politically inconvenient (p. ix — incidentally it would be interesting to get hold of an original 1995 edition of the book to see what changes were made). This is presumably a reference to things that Republican opponents could theoretically use for campaign ammunition, like his college drug use and his Black Nationalist acquaintances (horror of all horrors, he even admits while in Chicago to buying Louis Farrakhan’s newspaper “occasionally” (p. 201)). Look at things from another perspective though, and it seems pretty obvious that Obama decided to “come clean” about these things early on so as to sidestep such attacks. This was a smart move, as it mostly seems to have worked — for example, past drug use was never an issue in the presidential election.

He gives little indication that he wanted to be become a politician. He says he wanted to bring a new legal expertise from Harvard “like Promethean fire” (p. 276) back to the South Side to continue to fight on behalf of local communities. To be fair, he did return to Chicago after law school.

Evidence abounds, though, that Obama was thinking of becoming a politician as early on as the late 1980s, and certainly before Dreams From My Father was published. Writing in the New Yorker, Ryan Lizza says “Obama was writing ‘Dreams’ at the moment that he was preparing for a life in politics, and he launched his book and his first political campaign simultaneously, in the summer of 1995″ (2). This seems credible, and for all its honesty, Dreams should still be read with a proverbial pinch of salt, perhaps not so much in what it claims as what it omits. For example in recounting the part of his childhood spent in Indonesia, he mentions the huge massacres orchestrated by the dictator Suharto as he came to power in a military coup in 1965-66 (pp. 43-44:”The death toll was anybody’s guess: a few hundred thousand, maybe; half a million. Even the smart guys at the Agency had lost count” ). But he underplays the extent of CIA involvement: and more glaringly fails to mention that Suharto was supported by every US president from Nixon to Clinton (3).

The more I read this book, the more it became clear it is empty of conclusions. A memoir need not take political positions, but he poses so many questions and offers no answers. By the end of the book, you just find yourself wishing he would take a stand on something. Obama was clearly thinking more like a politician than a lawyer and wanted to avoid offending the wrong people. This fits well with his later “Change” and “Hope” slogans, which proved so popular precisely because they can pretty much mean what you want them to mean.

In summary then: a good read, and in fairness it raises some good points about about Black consciousness, Black Nationalism and race. But I can’t help but feel it is ultimately hollow, a politician building up his “narrative”.

(1) For example, his alleged past support for the Palestinians. While it does seem that he previously took a more balanced approach than his more recent conversion to the church of AIPAC, willing to hear from both Israelis and Palestinians, it is also true that he never made any concrete promises. See Ali Abunimah, “How Barack Obama learned to love Israel“, Electronic Intifada, 4 March 2007.

(2) Ryan Lizza, “Making It: How Chicago shaped Obama“, The New Yorker, 21 July 2008.

(3) See, for example, John Pilger, “Our model dictator“, The Guardian, 28 January 2008.

Reviewed 7 December 2008.

Keeping to what is revealed by the account of the documentary record, this is a pretty useful summary. One of the most interesting points that comes out is the fact that Israel’s supposed wish for peace with it’s neighbors was always clearly a lie. Something I learned was that Jordan and Egypt offered full recognition of Israel (in return for withdrawal the the 1949 ceasefire lines) as early as November 1967 (p 95) — with nothing for the Palestinians. Also Israel demanded control of Gaza and possibly the West Bank before it would even negotiate over withdrawal. There are other interesting such facts that come out.

But it is a bit of a missed opportunity in that it does not discuss how the Israeli aggression of 1967 led the US to start a massive military aid program to Israel. However it does quote the NSC Planning Board from August 1958: “if we choose to combat radical Arab nationalism and to hold Persian Gulf oil by force if necessary, a logical corollary would be to support Israel as the only strong pro-West power left in the Near East” (p 57). Beyond delusions, this is the key to understanding the last 40 years plus of extreme pro-Israel US foreign policy.

Reviewed 1 July 2008.

Reviewed 22 May 2008.

This book is extremely over-rated and was critically acclaimed at the time, probably because it was seen as something “new” and “gritty”. Spare me. You could forgive the ideology if the book worked as art unto itself. But once you remove that, little remains.

Compare this to the work of Alan Moore at the time. “V For Vendetta” stars a protagonist who is essentially sympathetic to the writer’s political views, but Moore wisely makes him a genuinely ambiguous figure, whose actions are often morally questionable. Compare this to Miller’s two-dimensional Batman. To the original dimension of the Batman character (“heroic”), Miller’s oh so great achievement was to add a second dimension: “gritty”. Oh, well done.

You get the feeling this book wishes it were Moore’s “Watchmen”. A masterful work, “Watchmen” is a complete and successful deconstruction of the superhero genre. “The Dark Knight Returns” on the other hand, is another desperate attempt to shock life into the long-since rotted corpse of yet another ridiculous superhero character.

Reviewed 4 April 2008.