While Syria’s doomed Assad teeters, “anti-imperialist” pretenders make their last stand

From Nureddin Sabir
Editor, Redress Information & Analysis

The UN General Assembly has overwhelmingly denounced the Syrian regime's crackdown on the people's revolution.

The resolution, passed today by 133 in favour, with 12 against and 31 abstentions, says "the first step in the cessation of violence has to be made by the Syrian authorities".

Before the vote, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon reminded the assembly of the fresh violence in the city of Aleppo and drew comparisons between the failure to act in Syria and past genocide in Srebrenica and Rwanda.

"The acts of brutality that are being reported may constitute crimes against humanity or war crimes," he said of the Aleppo fighting. "Such acts must be investigated and the perpetrators held to account."

Meanwhile, a tiny but vociferous group of ultra-reactionaries and racists masquerading as "leftists" and "anti-imperialists" continues to poison and disinform on behalf of the doomed sectarian regime of Bashar Assad.

Obsessed with imaginary conspiracies, ridden with empty slogans and determined to fight their armchair pseudo-ideological battles until the last drop of Syrian and other Arab blood, these pretenders are now completely at one with the sectarian Alawite clique that has sold the Syrian Golan Heights to its soulmates in Israel.

In 1967 Bashar Assad's father, Hafez – the butcher of Hama and Tal al-Zaatar – abandoned the Golan Heights to the Israelis without a fight. Now Bashar – the butcher of Homs, Hama, Aleppo and all of Syria – has told the Israelis they can keep the Golan in return for convincing the Americans that his regime is the best guarantor of Israel's security on the northern border.

But no more. The Assad regime is doomed. Just as the light of day is sure to follow the darkness of night, it will fall and with it the self-styled "leftist" and "anti-imperialist" pretenders will be exposed for the ultra-reactionary fascists that they are.

The Arab people has erupted and there is no rolling back of their intifada.

But freedom and justice have never been cheap. Along our path to liberation there will be many rivers of blood to cross and mountains of propaganda, disinformation and lies to demolish – the fossilized scum of the ultra-reactionay pretenders and their Russian, Chinese and regional sectarian godfathers.

Soon Aleppo, Homs, Hama and all of Syria will be liberated.

The Syrian people will be free – free to exrcise their inalienable civil and political rights and free at last to liberate the Golan Heights from the terrorists and colonists of the Zionist entity.

And beyond Syria, progressive forces all over the world will be free to build genuine grassroots movements with justice and democracy at their core, unshackled and cleansed from the Stalinists, reactionaries and fascists.

For more information, see:

• Henry Lowi, "Storming the Bastille in Syria"
• Phan Binh, "Libya and Syria: when anti-imperialism goes wrong"
• Nureddin Sabir, "Cynicism and black propaganda: the left's reactions to the Libyan and Syrian revolutions"

Living without your name

From Neve Gordon:

My friend’s wife was accepted to a PhD program at McGill University in Montreal. They decided to move to Canada with their two children at about the same time that I was offered a fellowship at Princeton and decided to move with my family to New Jersey for a year. Hoping to rent out our apartments while we’re away, we both posted ads on the most popular website in Israel. I received about five calls a day and found a tenant within a couple of weeks. My friend received only three calls in four weeks, and none of the people who called came to look at his flat.

A few days ago he removed his ad from the website and posted a new one, only this time he changed his name from Hussein to Rami. Rami is an ethnically indeterminate name – it can be either Jewish or Palestinian – but there are no Jews called Hussein. Within three days ‘Rami’ received about thirty phone calls, and six people came to look at the flat. He expects to sign a lease with one of them tomorrow. In Israel, if you are a Palestinian and want to rent a flat, at times, to misquote Arthur Miller, you have to live without your name.
First published in London Review of Books

Poster of Jewish settler who shoots Palestinian children

This criminal Jewish settler specializes in shooting Palestinian children. Please share the picture widely.

US academic Ali Abunimah on history and culture

From Gilad Atzmon:



In the above clip I elaborate on US academic Ali Abunimah’s attitude towards history and culture.

I contend that since Israel defines itself as the Jewish state and its tanks are decorated with Jewish symbols, we are entitled to ask ourselves who are the Jews and what is Judaism and Jewishness? In my work I try to understand the role and the impact of Jewish culture on Israeli and Jewish politics – something I believe is necessary to bring peace to the region and beyond.

But Ali Abunimah doesn’t agree. In reference to a talk I gave at the Stuttgart One State Conference in Decemebr 2010, he suggested that history and politics are detached from culture – an unusual approach which contradicts all recognized, intellectual and philosophical understandings of humanity, history, politics as well as culture.

Abunimah says “Talking about Jewish culture is wrong because such arguments can be made about anyone. We could blame German culture for the history of Germany...”

Someone should tell Abunimah that this is exactly what intellectuals, historian and political scientists do. They search for the origins of political thoughts in culture, ideology, religion and heritage. For instance, those who study the Nazi era try to comprehend the impact of Wagner, the German symphony, Protestant culture, German philosophy, Martin Luther’s The Jews and their lies, Hegel and the German spirit, German early romanticism, Lebensphilosophie, Heine, Athens versus Jerusalem, and so on. It is obvious to me that, Abunimah hasn’t thought it through. However, it is never too late to admit a mistake and put it right.

To view Atzmon’s Stuttgart presentation click here.

Palestinian children held in Israeli military detention

Bound, Blindfolded and Convicted: Children held in military detention
Source: Defence for Children International - Palestine Section

Israel’s criminal demolitions in the occupied Palestinian territories

By Graham Peebles

Unsettled, unlawful, unresolved: Israeli settlers in a foreign land

By Graham Peebles, Director, the Create Trust

The Palestine Nakba: Decolonising History, Narrating the Subaltern, Reclaiming Memory

New book by Nur Masalha: The Palestine Nakba: Decolonising History, Narrating the Subaltern, Reclaiming Memory (London: Zed Books, January 2012). 288 pp. Hardback. ISBN: 978-1848139718



2012 marks the 63rd anniversary of the Nakba - the most traumatic catastrophe that ever befell Palestinians. This book explores new ways of remembering and commemorating the Nakba. In the context of Palestinian oral history, it explores 'social history from below', subaltern narratives of memory and the formation of collective identity. Masalha argues that to write more truthfully about the Nakba is not just to practise a professional historiography but an ethical imperative. The struggles of ordinary refugees to recover and publicly assert the truth about the Nakba is a vital way of protecting their rights and keeping the hope for peace with justice alive.

This book is essential for understanding the place of the Palestine Nakba at the heart of the Israel-Palestine conflict and the vital role of memory in narratives of truth and reconciliation.

Reviews

'As a meticulous scholar, historian and above all Palestinian, Nur Masalha is eminently suited to write this excellent book. He has produced a marvellous history of the Nakba which should be essential reading for all those concerned with the origins of the conflict over Palestine.' (Ghada Karmi, author of 'Married to Another Man: Israel's Dilemma in Palestine')

'Nur Masalha has a distinguished and deserved reputation for scholarship on the Nakba and Palestinian refugees. Now, with his latest book, his searching analysis of past and present makes for a powerful combination of remembrance and resistance.'(Ben White, journalist and author of 'Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner's Guide')

'Nur Masalha's 'The Palestinian Nakba' is a tour de force examining the process of transformation of Palestine over the last century. One outstanding feature of this study is the systematic manner in which it investigates the accumulated scholarship on the erasure of Palestinian society and culture, including a critical assessment of the work of the new historians. In what he calls 'reclaiming the memory' he goes on to survey and build on an emergent narrative. Masalha's work is essential and crucial for any scholar seeking this alternate narrative.' (Salim Tamari, Visiting Professor of History, Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University)

'This book is the most comprehensive and penetrating analysis available of the catastrophe that befell Arab Palestine and its people in 1948, known as the nakba. It shows how the expulsion and physical obliteration of the material traces of a people was followed by what Masalha calls 'memoricide': the effacement of their history, their archives, and their place-names, and a denial that they had ever existed.' (Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies Department of History, Columbia University)

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Zionism and European Settler-Colonialism

2. The Memoricide of the Nakba: Zionist-Hebrew Toponymy and the De-Arabisation of Palestine

3. Fashioning a European Landscape, Erasure and Amnesia: The Jewish National Fund, Afforestation, and Green-washing the Nakba

4. Appropriating History: The Looting of Palestinian Records, Archives and Library Collections (1948-2011)

5. New History, Post-Zionism, the Liberal Coloniser and Hegemonic Narratives: A Critique of the Israeli 'New Historians'

6. Decolonising History and Narrating the Subaltern: Palestinian Oral History, Indigenous and Gendered Memories

7. Resisting Memoricide and Reclaiming Memory: The Politics of Nakba Commemoration among Palestinians inside Israel
Epilogue: The Continuity of Trauma 


About the Author
Nur Masalha is Professor of Religion and Politics and Director of the Centre for Religion and History at St. Mary's University College, London, and Professorial Research Associate, Department of History, SOAS. He is also Editor of 'Holy Land Studies: A Multidisciplinary Journal' (published by Edinburgh University Press).