Author: Jim Rissman

It was closer than anyone could have expected, but Madison failed to do “something no other city has had the guts to do…form an official sister city relationship with a Palestinian city.” A city council member was reduced to tears by “how ‘cruel’ and ‘hateful’ some of the statements aimed at supporters of the proposal have been.” Even if the proposal had passed, the mayor planned to veto it.

The mayor felt that “adopting the sister city resolution would be in essence a criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government. He said he did not believe that Madison should take a position on Middle East policy.” As a candidate, before the Iraq invasion, he had “passed a test pf courage and conscience” by “participating in the reading of the pledge to resist a wrong-minded war” at a gala “Not In Our Name” event attended by 2000 people.

Performing at the antiwar gala was Ben Sidran. “This is what history feels like,” the jazz great said. Now Sidran puts tribal loyalty first. Now apparently a smear campaign is what history feels like.

For far too many in the antiwar camp, it’s as if Iraq and Palestine/Israel are on different planets. Far too many who have found intolerable Bush’s exploitation of “terrorism” to invade and occupy Iraq don’t seem to mind Sharon’s exploitation of “terrorism” to wreak destruction in the West Bank and Gaza. From both a moral and pragmatic point of view, toleration of Israel’s aggression undercuts opposition to America’s. Unless the Palestinians are treated with justice and dignity, there will always be “terrorism” for the U.S. war party to exploit.

In the case of antiwar, antiBush stalwart John Nichols, columnist for The Nation and associate editor of The Capital Times, the disconnect can be quantified. Of the 200 columns he’s written for TCT since January 1, 2003, 87 contain the word “Iraq” while only two contain “Israel.” One of the two was a fleeting reference and neither was this year. He’s had nothing to say about Madison/Rafah and, in over a year and a half, he’s said nothing about Israel’s “network of cages.”

Nichols’ astonishing record is a reflection of the fact that there is no liberal politician of any stature in this country who has the knowledge and decency to speak out on the Palestine issue. The easier path is to just avoid offending the Jewish sensibility, never mind that when it comes to Israel, by and large American Jews are in the grip of neurosis.

Well, I’m kidding, Madison wasn’t really considering asking for a National Guard presence at the city council meeting which will decide the fate of the Rafah Sister City proposal. And it has decided not to deploy the police, even though the emotion will be “intense,” the debate “vicious.” The Israel/Palestine issue is so “contentious,” so “divisive” that the “deep wounds could take a long time to heal.” “‘Very little of any good can come of this,'” says mayor Dave Cieslewicz. (Sparks fly over idea of sister city)

As the vote looms, Madison Capital Times editor Dave Zweifel informs us that “Bush’s Iraq invasion hurt war on terror.”
He cites a Mother Jones cover story by Peter Bergen. “A former FBI counterterrorism official, Harry ‘Skip’ Brandon, told Bergen that the Iraq war has served as ‘a real rallying point, not only for the region, but also in Asia. We’ve seen very solid examples of them using the war for recruiting,’ Brandon commented. . . ‘The Iraq war is a public relations bonanza for al-Qaida.'”

Bergen is the author of “Holy War, Inc.,” which came out shortly after 9/11. “This is the only book you need to read about Osama bin Laden, at least for now,” concludes its Washington Post reviewer. “‘What [bin Laden] condemns the United States for is simple: Its policies in the Middle East,’ Bergen insists. ‘These are . . . the continued U.S. military presence in Arabia; U.S. support for Israel; its continued bombing of Iraq; and its support for regimes such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia . . .”

Whereas US support for Israel is second on Bergen’s list, it tops CIA analyst Anonymous’ more recent one: “It’s not hatred of us as a society, it’s hatred of our policies,” Mike insisted. He gave pride of place to the neuralgic issue of Israel. With candor not often heard on American television, he emphasized “It’s very hard in this country to debate policy regarding Israel,” adding that bin Laden’s “genius” is his ability to exploit those U.S. policies most offensive to Muslims—“Our support for Israel, our presence on the Arabian peninsula, in Afghanistan and Iraq, our support for governments that Muslims believe oppress Muslims.”

Capital Times associate editor John Nichols found Tony Blair’s speech to Congress “nauseating.” Particularly “stomach-churning” was the spectacle of “America’s elected representatives applauding the lies they wanted to hear.” While this assessment resonated with the antiwar movement, it wasn’t totally true. At one point, Blair aspired to wax ‘plain’:

“There is one cause terrorism rides upon, a cause they have no belief in but can manipulate. I want to be very plain: This terrorism will not be defeated without peace in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine.

“Here it is that the poison is incubated. . .

“And why has a resolution of Palestine such a powerful appeal across the world? Because it embodies an even-handed approach to justice. . .”

As Congress is notorius for taking a one-sided approach to the conflict, Blair in effect told it it offends the world’s sense of justice and serves as an impediment to defeating terrorism.

Many people in liberal Madison are horrified by the prospect of an unending “war against terror” that renders the world less safe and Americans less rich and free. Yet still, as Madison/Rafah shows, “the fateful triangle”–the US, Israel and the Palestinians–can’t be discussed because it’s deemed too “divisive.”

A letter writer to Madison’s Capital Times finds herself “troubled by the hostility and even hysteria of those opposed to the Madison Rafah sister city proposal.”

“Hysterical” is certainly a good word to describe Madison Jewish Community Council board member Lester Pines’ charge that the proposal is “linked to larger efforts to label Israel as racist and destroy it.” Wittlingly or not, Pines is employing an old Stalinist trick–when you’re caught with your hand in someone else’s pocket, yell “Thief! Thief!” That is, it is Israel which is carrying out “what is clearly a systematic campaign to destroy the Palestinian people.”

Meanwhile, the Toronto Star reports that “Bush is Sowing Fear for Votes: Critics.” Not mentioned, but certainly among the critics, is The (ultra liberal) Capital Times.

To its credit, The Capital Times has rebuked the MJCC. In the process, however, it equivocated on the proposal itself and has never noted that the MJCC is sowing fear for city council votes in much the same deplorable way as the Bush Administration sows fear for presidential votes. And it continues to equivocate and equivocate.

The associate editor of The Capital Times is John Nichols, well-known to readers of The Nation and Commondreams.org as a relentless critic of Bush’s policies and tactics. He has yet to weigh in on Madison/Rafah in his twice a week Capital Times column.

Another relentless Bush critic is Matthew Rothschild, editor of The (Madison-based) Progressive. Apparently, Rothschild also has yet to voice an opinion on Madison/Rafah. With the city council to vote on the proposal in four days, it will be interesting to see if any comments by Madison’s “progressive” media elites show up on the Sister City Project’s debate page. And remember, think globally, act locally.

Well, someone from the Sister City Project just let me know that I’m being unfair to Rothschild, he was one of about a hundred who signed a petition saying “I’m Jewish and support the project.”

Senator Edward Kennedy has called the Iraqi prison scandal “the steepest and deepest fall from grace in the history of our country,” “Saddam’s torture chambers reopened under new management.” As a result, “America is being vilified throughtout the Middle East and in other parts of the world.”

“Now, the image of America the liberator has been replaced by the image of America the occupier and America the torturer,” writes Michael Lind in the Financial Times. “It will take a generation or more to rehabilitate America’s image.”

Thomas Friedman starts a piece “I have never known a time when America and its president were more hated around the world than today.” Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a columnist in London, ends one “I have never had so much correspondence from readers openly expressing their loathing for America, for Bush and now, as violently, for Tony Blair, and increasingly for the American people” (The Independent, May 31, 2004).

“To hold on to the essential and humanising distinctions” between people and “their brutish leaders and cruel orthodoxies” can be difficult. “Don’t blame all Americans,” she implores.

Keeping in mind the prospect of “all Americans” being “vilified” for at least “a generation,” consider the assessment of one Michael Mylrea in The Capital Times: “Madisonians have little in common with the people or the city they hope to adopt in the controversial Madison-Rafah sister-city proposal.”

He is reporting from Rafah, “where the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) is conducting an incursion to root out terrorists…Operation Rainbow began May 18th after Palestinian terrorists killed 13 Israeli soldiers.”

Say what? How does he know that the Palestinians who killed the Israeli soldiers are “terrorists?”

He doesn’t, of course, if he was ever aware that “terrorist” is a word with a dictionary meaning, he’s forgotten. As a letter to the editor points out, an article written by a supposed peacenik, while “purporting to discuss the hardships of Rafah…serves as a vehicle to juxtapose the words ‘terror’ or ‘terrorism’ with ‘Palestinian’ 13 times.” Whatever the intentions, the result is “the usual subliminal propaganda.”

Yep, I checked, counting Mylrea’s own usage, his quoting of the Madison Jewish Community Council and a Rafah resident denying he’s one, there are 13 “terrorists.”

The letter reminds me of one I had written in 1993 after Israel had deported 400 Palestinians from Gaza to Lebanon. At a hearing before Israel’s High Court, “the government’s advocate explained that membership in a ‘terrorist organization’ can be grounds for deportation. ‘How many people in Gaza are members of such organizations?’ asked the court. The advocate answered, ‘I think they all are.'”

The point of the letter was that Palestinians “over the years” have been “dehumanised.” The Capital Times titled it “Not all Palestinians are terrorists.”

So, if for at least a generation Palestinians have been “dehumanised” as “terrorists” and for at least a generation Americans are to be “vilified” and “dehumanised” as “occupiers” and “torturers” (not to mention as sex perverts), then it appears that Mylrea is wrong, Madisonians and Rafahites do have something in common. It appears that the people of Madison have something to learn from the experience of the people of Rafah.

Information Clearing House has a link to a Der Spiegel report
“More Than 100 Children Imprisoned, Report Of Abuse By U.S. Soldiers.”

When I first tried the link, it didn’t work, so I did a search on “100 children imprisoned.”
It kicked out a story from April 8, 2003, “Iraqi child prisoners freed” and associated
crowing and peacenik-bashing .

Meanwhile, Iran wants to know why, when Saddam faced the judge, no mention was
made of the 1980-1988 war, why the list of charges filed doesn’t include Iraq’s use of
chemical weapons in that war.

An obvious answer was provided by one of the ex-Iraqi generals interviewed by
Newsweek in March, 2002:

“One general interviewed by NEWSWEEK made no bones about his use of
chemical weapons. General al-Shamari commanded nine divisions in the
Iran-Iraq War before he defected in 1986. (Now 56, he runs a small
restaurant in northern Virginia.) He says he carried out Saddam’s
orders to gas the Iranians, firing chemical weapons from howitzers.
The impact was devastating. ‘It created a state of chaos,’ said
al-Shamari. Given that he was miles from the target, how did he know
that? From U.S. intelligence. ‘We got information from American
satellites,’ said al-Shamari. (A former CIA official confirmed that
the United States, which was backing Iraq against Iran, provided
intelligence to the Iraqis. ‘Included in that, I’m sure, would have
been some feedback, intended or unintended, to the Iraqis on their
use of chemical warfare,’ said the official.)

The Erez Industrial Zone in Gaza is notorious as a borderline industrial slave labor camp (on occupied land), though of course its creation has long been touted as a supreme act of benevolence by Israel, which of course wishes only to show how much it wants friendship and
cooperation with the Palestinians. Erez is one of the last places where Gazans can earn a few shekels so that they don’t starve to death, though it is not by choice that they work there. Now its factories are closing and moving to Israel, AP and AFP report.

Anyone who has bothered to read the 4-stage “disengagement” plan by Sharon will also note that Israel hopes to phase out having any workers from Gaza enter Israel in the future – another act of benevolence, no doubt, though I haven’t heard how this is going to be presented to the media to highlight Israel’s desire for peace.

Meanwhile, with a Rafah Sister City Project proposal before the Madison city council, Kavanna — “the progressive Jewish voice” on the UW Campus — has suggested in its oozingly liberal way that a better choice for a sister city than Rafah (a terrorists’ nest) would be the Erez Industrial Zone, since it displays such cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis.

Now that the Erez “island of sanity” option has been precluded, maybe the “progressive Jewish voice” on campus will break ranks with the fear exploiters (e.g., the Madison Jewish Community Council, Bush, Sharon) and join the many Jews who are supporting the Rafah project.