On Friday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a final rule under Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to bolster protections against discrimination in health care. “Today’s rule is a giant step forward for this country toward a more equitable and inclusive health care system…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
In the name of protecting Canadian Jews many are promoting the cultural and physical erasure of a faraway people.
Recently there’s been a push to suppress a traditional Palestinian garment. To the delight of many, the speaker of the Ontario legislature banned kaffiyehs from the provincial assembly. In a sign of support for this racist policy, prominent ‘progressive’ doctor and Ottawa-Carleton District School Board trustee, Nili Kaplan-Myrth, recently bemoaned a fellow trustee who “put on a keffiyeh”, making it “not safe for Jews”. Similarly, author Dahlia Kurtz posted about a friend who panicked when a worker at her child’s daycare had on a kaffiyeh and a similar thing happened when the president of a Canadian Union of Public Employees local wore the garment while addressing members. In a particularly odious expression of this thinking, right-wing X account Love My 7 Wood quote tweeted a picture of a member of the Alberta legislature wearing a kaffiyeh noting, “She and her NDP colleagues wear that for one reason and one reason only. To intimidate Jews.” (To which I replied “All Palestinian culture exists for one reason and one reason only. To intimidate Jews.”)
Others have sought to erase Palestinian poetry. B’nai Brith recently gloated that they got a Toronto library branch to remove prominent poet Refaat Alareer’s “If I Must Die” from a display. Four months ago Alareer and five family members were wiped out by the Israeli military and on Friday they killed his daugher, her husband and their infant child.
Not content with suppressing Palestinian poetry and garments, many express their ethnicity/religion by seeking to suppress Palestinian history. Recently, there was a push to stop the Peel District School Board from marking the Palestinian catastrophe, which saw over 700,000 ethnically cleansed from their homeland in 1947/48. To the chagrin of some, the suburban Toronto school board adopted Nakba Remembrance Day’ as one of over 20 similar historic or cultural days. A Canadian Jewish News headline explained “Peel school board’s move to add ‘Nakba Remembrance Day’ to its calendar spurs objections from Jewish parents—and the Ontario education ministry”. The story reported that the Jewish Educators and Family Association of Canada “launched an online campaign from within the Jewish community, encouraging people to write to [education minister Stephen] Lecce protesting the addition of Naqba (or Nakba) Remembrance Day.”
A similar campaign was instigated after the British Columbia Teachers Federation called for education on the Nakba last month. The founder of Nonviolent Opposition Against Hate, Masha Kleiner, instigated a petition to oppose it.
Alongside the push to erase Palestinian history and art, there’s a bid to starve Palestinians. The advocacy agent of Canada’s Jewish Federations, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), is boasting that they filed suit against Ottawa for funding the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. They want the Federal Court to order the government to block assistance to refugees in Gaza even though the International Court of Justice has twice ruled that humanitarian assistance must be delivered to Gaza.
The federations, CIJA, B’nai Brith, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Honest Reporting Canada and other organizations have supported the slaughter of 40,000 Palestinians over the past six months. CIJA’s director in Israel David M. Weinberg calls Palestinians in Gaza “the enemy population” and pushed “to reduce Gaza neighborhoods from which Hamas operated to rubble (as a matter of principle and not just for military advantage – and no, this is not a war crime).” In December the mayor of Hampstead, who boasts about leading “one of the most concentrated Jewish populations outside of Israel”, expressed his support for wiping out all Palestinian children. Jeremy Levi told me he would continue supporting Israel even if they killed 100,000 or more Palestinian kids since “good needs to prevail over evil”.
Many within the Jewish community are, of course, appalled by this supremacist, genocidal thinking. Jews Say No to Genocide has become an important organizing force in Toronto and in Montreal a contingent of Hasidic Jews have participated in many anti-genocide demonstrations in recent months. Independent Jewish Voices has also organized a slew of events against genocide.
Still, it’s remarkable how many Canadians’ religious/ethnic identity is expressed by seeking to erase a people 8,000 kilometers away. As I’ve detailed, the political forces at play are multifaceted, but part of it is a network of Jewish Zionist organizations that actively promote this type of thinking. There are numerous private schools, summer camps, community centres, synagogues and other organizations that push people into worshiping a violent faraway state that oppresses millions.
This elaborate genocidal network is rarely scrutinized. But, for those of us who believe in human rights for all it’s necessary to disrupt the institutions seeking to erase Palestinians.
The post Canadians Promoting Genocide first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
While working as a physician at our local county hospital at San Francisco General recently, I cared for a patient I will call Jack. He stuck out to me because he had been in the hospital for two months, an exceptionally long time for a hospital admission, as most people are only admitted for three to five days. He’d been hospitalized for a stroke and needed post-acute rehabilitation in a skilled…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
While working as a physician at our local county hospital at San Francisco General recently, I cared for a patient I will call Jack. He stuck out to me because he had been in the hospital for two months, an exceptionally long time for a hospital admission, as most people are only admitted for three to five days. He’d been hospitalized for a stroke and needed post-acute rehabilitation in a skilled…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
On Friday, the Biden administration released its final Title IX rules, which include protections for LGBTQ+ students by clarifying that Title IX forbids discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The rule change could have a significant impact as it would supersede bathroom bans and other discriminatory policies that have become increasingly common in Republican states within…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
A rich, exclusionary municipality is claiming persecution because Parliament passed a motion to lessen Canada’s role in a genocide. Hampstead highlights the moral abyss of large swaths of Canada’s Jewish community.
Last Monday the Montreal area municipality unanimously passed a motion demanding “the Council of Hampstead, hereby expresses its non-confidence in the Government of Canada for its distancing from the longstanding policy of support for Israel, which has resulted in a major spike in antisemitism across Canada; THAT the Town council calls upon the Government of Canada to reaffirm its commitment to supporting Israel and to take concrete actions to combat antisemitism in all its forms within our nation.”
Hampstead is fervently anti-Palestinian. An Israeli flag hangs outside City Hall and in November the municipality passed a law giving $1,000 tickets — with money raised sent to Israel — to anyone tearing down posters of the hostages Hamas took to Gaza on October 7. They’ve instigated multiple fundraising projects for Israel and in December Hampstead mayor Jeremy Levi told me he would continue supporting Israel even if they killed 100,000 Palestinian children since “good needs to prevail over evil”.
Despite promoting genocide, Hampstead claims egalitarian values and its statement calls for “solidarity with communities facing discrimination and persecution”. The first whereas in the recent motion claims “the Town of Hampstead, has historically upheld values of inclusivity, tolerance, and Support for communities facing discrimination.” But Hampstead is a wealthy, ethnically segregated, enclave. It traces its roots to Britain’s late-1800s Garden City movement, which was a move by London’s elite to move out of the city centre. Just west of Montréal, Hampstead was established by some of the wealthiest Canadians in 1914. The municipality doesn’t allow retail shops or industrial land in its boundaries and is one of the wealthiest municipalities in Québec. Until after the Second World War, it was almost entirely WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant). Today over three-quarters of Hampstead’s 7,500 residents are Jewish and it is one be the most ethnically homogeneous areas in greater Montreal. The median income of the 2,500 households was $150,000 per year in 2021 (almost twice the Montreal wide median). Over half of the homes have four bedrooms or more. The average home value in 2021 was $1,766,000 (three times the region’s average).
To live in the exclusive municipality, residents pay large sums in property taxes. With only residential properties covering the city’s costs, the average Hampstead house pays $15,393 annually in property tax.
To ensure a Zionist and Jewish centric outlook many residents put their kids in private Jewish schools and summer camps. The current ethnic segregation is stunning for a community that comprised seven per cent of Montreal’s population a century ago. (The larger adjacent municipality of Côte Saint-Luc is two-thirds Jewish.)
Hampstead is an exclusionary well-to-do community that promotes slaughtering and starving Palestinians because they aren’t Jewish. It is a bastion of Jewish supremacy that bemoans “antisemitism”.
It is beyond absurd for this wealthy, exclusionary, genocide promoting municipality to decry “discrimination” and “persecution”.
The post Pro-Israel Municipality Claims “Discrimination” first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
The government wants to play god.
It wants the power to decide who lives or dies and whose rights are worthy of protection.
Abortion may still be front and center in the power struggle between the Left and the Right over who has the right to decide—the government or the individual—when it comes to bodily autonomy, the right to privacy, sexual freedom, the rights of the unborn, and property interests in one’s body, but there’s so much more at play.
In the 50-plus years since the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling in Roe v. Wade, the government has come to believe that it not only has the power to determine who is deserving of constitutional rights in the eyes of the law but it also has the authority to deny those rights to an American citizen.
This is how the abortion debate has played into the police state’s hands: by laying the groundwork for discussions about who else may or may not be deserving of rights.
Despite the Supreme Court having overturned its earlier rulings recognizing abortion as a constitutional right under the Fourteenth Amendment, the government continues to play fast and loose with the lives of the citizenry all along the spectrum of life.
Take a good, hard look at the many ways in which Americans are being denied their rights under the Constitution.
American families killed by errant SWAT team raids in the middle of the night are being denied their rights under the Constitution.
Disabled individuals who are being strip searched, handcuffed, arrested and “diagnosed” by police as dangerous or mentally unstable merely because they stutter and walk unevenly are being denied their rights under the Constitution.
Unarmed citizens who are tasered or shot by police for daring to hesitate, stutter, move a muscle, flee or disagree in any way with a police order are being denied their rights under the Constitution.
American citizens subjected to government surveillance whereby their phone calls are being listened in on, their mail and text messages read, their movements tracked and their transactions monitored are being denied their rights under the Constitution.
Individuals whose DNA has been forcibly collected and entered into federal and state law enforcement databases whether or not they have been convicted of any crime are being denied their rights under the Constitution.
Drivers whose license plates are being scanned, uploaded to a police database and used to map their movements, whether or not they are suspected of any crime, are being denied their rights under the Constitution.
Protesters and activists who are being labeled domestic terrorists and extremists and accused of hate crimes for speaking freely are being denied their rights under the Constitution.
Hard-working Americans whose bank accounts, homes, cars electronics and cash are seized by police (operating according to asset forfeiture schemes that provide profit incentives for highway robbery) are being denied their rights under the Constitution.
So, what is the common denominator here?
These are all American citizens—endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, rights that no person or government can take away from them, among these the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—and they are all being oppressed in one way or another by a government that has grown drunk on power, money and its own authority.
If the government—be it the President, Congress, the courts or any federal, state or local agent or agency—can decide that any person has no rights, then that person becomes less than a citizen, less than human, less than deserving of respect, dignity, civility and bodily integrity. He or she becomes an “it,” a faceless number that can be tallied and tracked, a quantifiable mass of cells that can be discarded without conscience, an expendable cost that can be written off without a second thought, or an animal that can be bought, sold, branded, chained, caged, bred, neutered and euthanized at will.
It’s a slippery slope that justifies all manner of violations in the name of national security, the interest of the state and the so-called greater good.
Yet those who founded this country believed that what we conceive of as our rights were given to us by God—we are created equal, according to the nation’s founding document, the Declaration of Independence—and that government cannot create, nor can it extinguish our God-given rights. To do so would be to anoint the government with god-like powers and elevate it above the citizenry.
Unfortunately, we have been dancing with this particular devil for quite some time now.
If we continue to wait for the government to restore our freedoms, respect our rights, rein in its abuses and restrain its agents from riding roughshod over our lives, our liberty and our happiness, then we will be waiting forever.
The highly politicized tug-of-war over abortion will not resolve the problem of a culture that values life based on a sliding scale. Nor will it help us navigate the moral, ethical and scientific minefields that await us as technology and humanity move ever closer to a point of singularity.
Humanity is being propelled at warp speed into a whole new frontier when it comes to privacy, bodily autonomy, and what it means to be a human being. As such, we haven’t even begun to wrap our heads around how present-day legal debates over bodily autonomy, privacy, vaccine mandates, the death penalty, and abortion play into future discussions about singularity, artificial intelligence, cloning, and the privacy rights of the individual in the face of increasingly invasive, intrusive and unavoidable government technologies.
Yet here is what I know.
Life is an inalienable right.
By allowing the government to decide who or what is deserving of rights, it shifts the entire discussion from one in which we are “endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights” (that of life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness) to one in which only those favored by the government get to enjoy such rights.
If all people are created equal, then all lives should be equally worthy of protection.
Likewise, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, all freedoms hang together.
Freedom cannot be a piece-meal venture.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Haroon Siddiqui’s 2023 memoir, My Name is Not Harry, is a dazzling journey through Indian Sufism, pre-partition Muslim-Hindu harmony, the horrors of partition, a leap across the ocean to the middle of nowhere (sorry, Brandon Manitoba), finally finding his home at the Toronto Star, from whence, back to central Asia (Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India during the tumultuous 1979+), hobnobbing with media and political stars, stopping for heart surgery, all the time building and defending his new multicultural faith, adding his own distinct, Muslim flavour to what it means to be a Canadian. A whirlwind tour of the 20th-21st centuries, as if by a latter day Muslim Christopher Columbus, one meant to try to undo the five centuries of imperialist horror that Columbus unleashed.
He relishes slaying the dragons of bigotry he encounters, starting with
*Winston Churchill, the racist. He who had labelled Indians ‘a barbarous people’, ‘a beastly people with a beastly religion’, ‘the beastliest people in the world next to Germans’. Who exacerbated the 1943 Bengal famine that had killed millions by insisting that Indian rice exports for the allied war effort not be interrupted. He who had called Gandhi ‘a naked fakir’ whom he wanted ‘bound hand and foot at the gates of Delhi and then trampled by an enormous elephant with a new viceroy seated on its back.’
*Even the Toronto Star‘s iconic Gordon Sinclair, who won fame in the 1930s with his dispatches form India – ‘the pagan peninsula’ with its ‘wild and woolly Hindus’, Brahmins, the supreme high hooper-doopers of this impossible land’, ‘scrawny, underfed untouchables’, impossible-looking beggars’ and ‘yowling idiots’. In tune with those times, [the Star] still going ga-ga over Sinclair well into my own time.
*On Iran, the only Muslim ‘experts’ and commentators on TV and in print were anti-revolution or anti-Khomeini, authenticating the worst of western prejudices. Anything different, such as mine, must have been a welcome novelty, brought to them by Canada’s largest newspaper.
*On 9//11, Rushdie see below.
One of those should-haves of his life as dragonslayer was at the annual press gallery dinner in Ottawa, where he hosted Solicitor General Robert Kaplan. When they were walking to dinner, Kaplan started waxing eloquently about his love for India and yoga but his dislike of Muslims! He assumed that being from India I could only be a Hindu. What a testament to power the Zionist Jewish mindset had/has over even a proud Muslim like Siddiqui. But bravo, Harry (sorry, Haroon) for owning up. That’s the great thing about him. He lives his multiculturalism, which means meeting the other on his/her grounds, looking for the middle ground, not stoking enmity.
Iranian Ayatollahs, Afghan communists
He shines on the thorniest issue, one of which confronted him soon after arriving at the Star, when he was sent off to Iran in 1979. Speaking Urdu (close to Persian) and fully versed in Sunni and Shia Islam, he was able to make sense of the chaos, making his way to Qom to visit Ayatollah Madari, Khomeini’s rival, who lived just down the maze of alleys from Khomeini, who was already commanding the revolution from his modest home there, rather than Tehran.
He was told it was impossible to meet with Madari, even for a Canadian Muslim, but when he revealed that he’d just come from Tabriz, where Madari’s People’s Republican Party followers had risen up against Khomeini, rejecting the Islamic state constitution, Madari relented. Madari wanted a secular state and ‘the sovereignty of the people’ not a person. He answered every question patiently for nearly two hours. That was his only interview in the wake of the revolt. It would be his last. He was placed under house arrest until his death six years later.
He also met with Morteza Pasandideh, 82, Khomeini’s older brother, who was quite jovial. Siddiqui admired them all for their stress-free lives, their inner peace all, living productive lives into their 80s or 90s. Qom is famous for sohan halwa (sweet sweet) made with pistachios, almonds and butter. Back in Toronto, he asked John Ralston Saul to taste and guess which enemy country it was from. Whatever it is, it could only have been made by a great civilization.
He toured the now-occupied US embassy and chatted amiably (sympathetically?) with the students about how they had pulled off the siege, overpowering the bulky Marines. They said their resolve got strengthened after seeing a large-size picture of Khomeini on a dartboard and several crude cartoons of Khomeini from American and British newspapers in the embassy. At Christmas they made cookies for their captives. An American priest who had come to perform the Christmas Mass said: We should be grateful that we are in a Muslim country and there are not drunk guards. Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor told him: There are no anti-Canadian feelings here. No one has indicated any inclination to leave Tehran. There’s no panic. When he met Taylor later, he said: Mr Taylor, you’re a great liar. Taylor: That’s what I got paid for.
After an exhausting year in Tehran, the Soviets invaded (came to the assistance of) secular revolutionary Kabul and he was ordered to get there asap. But first he flew to the Iranian border and crossed into Afghanistan to meet a local tribal chieftain, who told him, ‘We’ll kick the bastards out.’ How to get there legitimately? Pakistan? Better India, which had good relations with the communists in Moscow and Kabul, so off to New Delhi and the Afghan embassy. Indira Gandhi never condemned the Soviet invasion. (How wise in retrospect.) In Kabul he was told not to go anywhere and only communicate through an official guide. Ha, ha! He snuck out the back door of his hotel, spoke to a soldier in Urdu, said ‘Canada’ and quickly found a local driver.
He credits Canada’s reputation for peaceful relations, a well-known eye clinic in Kabul. Off to (Shia) Herat where he heard Long live Islam, Long live Iran! He bought a Russian fur cap but was told never to wear it in public or he might be shot. He left via Pushtunistan to Jalalabad, Pakistan, where he met the legendary 91-year-old frontier Gandhi Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, who like the Siddiquis had protested the division of India. He was ailing but contemptuous of Soviet attempts to appease religious Afghans. Everything in Afghanistan is done in the name of religion. But this is a political religion, not the religion of Islam and Allah and Muhammad. Communism has nothing to do with religion. It has to do with the stomach. The Russians knew this and tried to convince the Afghans that they could keep their religion, but it was too little, too late. The Russians refused to try to treat their Gandhi, fearing if he died, they would be accused of killing him.
He pressed on to the Khyber Pass, the route for a stream of invaders – Cyrus, Darius, Genghis Khan, Alexander, the Mughals. Tribal chief Mohammed Gul told him: if the Iranians can knock off the Shah and the Americans, we certainly can kick out the Russians. He saw that resistance was beginning to jell within weeks of the Soviet occupation. It took a decade for the Soviets to depart, the US and allies, including Canada, taking double the time to conclude that Afghans have both the courage and patience to bleed any occupier dry.
This being the days before internet, getting copy out required ingenuity. Siddiqui would go to the airport on the days Indian Airlines came to Kabul, meet the crew and cajole/tip them into taking copy and dropping it off at the Reuters news agency in Delhi for forwarding to Toronto. He also went on the day Pakistan International Airlines came just in case. Later he was told everything came, sometimes twice. He met Brzezinski in Peshawar (!) but he wouldn’t give Siddiqui the time of day.
Following the Iraq-Iran war, he was disgusted that western media ignored the poison gas supplied to Iraq by American, German, French, Dutch, Swiss and Belgian companies. On the Iranian front line he hid from Iraqi snipers and marveled at how soldiers dying from gassing were rushed from the front to Tehran hospitals. He was appalled by Khomeini’s hitman, a sadistic prosecutor Ayatollah Sadegh Khalkhali, the hanging judge. Later in Paris, he met Bani Sadr, the first president, who had been impeached and fled the country disguised as a woman in a chador, in an Iran Air Force jet piloted by a sympathizer. He laments that US hostility prompted Khomeini to restart the nuclear program begun under the Shah, after ending it as unIslamic.
Siddiqui’s credo
I must admit, I’ve become jaded about multiculturalism. Toronto is now mostly first or second generation immigrants. Our culture feels shallow and American now. I find the turban-wearing Uber electric scooters grazing me unawares on bike paths frightening, and pointless, as they ferry onion rings to lazy people with too much money. I bemoan the lack of interest in Canadian history, our struggle to define an identity that’s not American. Most immigrants really would prefer big, rich, warm America to Canada and would have no problem if the US decided to invade. What has happened to Canadian culture?
But then I’ve become equally jaded about our heroic history. We are all immigrants, in the case of the paleface, mostly riff-raff, having decimated our poor brown natives. The post-WWII immigrants from brown countries like Siddiqui’s India/ Pakistan are mostly university-educated, the elites of their countries, so they really are a step up from my Irish-English-Swedish peasant ancestors.
But then, I find that equally disturbing. We stole the land from the real Canadians. Now we steal the intellectual wealth from poor countries. Sure we’re richer; the imperialist ‘centre’ is always richer. Our Canadianism was and is still a fraud. So, white flag, hello multiculturalism, for better or worse. But one that should give first place to our natives as the real owners, spiritually, of the land. And no more stealing, whether it be minds from ‘over there’, or land here or ‘over there’. That means Israel, our ‘best friend’, according to PM Harper in 2013 and PM Trudeau in 2015.
Siddiqui is unapologetically for mass immigration and has no time for the ecological problems that mass migration entails. He boasts having visited India 50 times in 40 years, not to mention his other peregrinations. That grates. Yes, brown/black is just as good as white, but what’s holding us together anymore? I don’t know, but I’m happy for Siddiqui, who at least has helped Canada transform from a country of bigotry and chauvinism to … a nice, tame, bland cosmopolis.
His journey through the swinging ’60s into the terrible ’20s is an upbeat panorama of not only Canada at its peak of popularity and feel-goodness, but, reading between the lines, also the decline of Canada, its loss of feel-good innocence transformation into an unapologetic toady of US empire. He took pride in being Canadian when Ambassador Taylor helped US hostages escape Tehran in 1980, when Chretien refused to go along with the invasion of Iraq in 2003, but it’s been downhill since then, with Harper’s disastrous commitment of Canadian troops to Afghanistan, his open Islamo- and Russophobia, his worship of Israel. While Trudeau has welcomed Syrian refugees (and now Afghans, fall out from Harper’s war), he did not fulfill his pledge to renew relations with Iran, despite the Iranian exile community’s pleas. His Russophobia is pathetic. Multiculturalism is looking mighty threadbare.
Yes, following Trudeau senior, Siddiqui’s credo is that all cultural communities have ‘the right to preserve and develop their own cultures within Canadian society’, which he notes is the ethos of India, best articulated by Indian novelist Shivaram Karanth: There’s no such thing as Indian culture. Indian culture is so varied as to be called cultures. But what has happened to India’s multiculturalism under arch-Hindu nationalist Modi?
Star Foreign Editor Jimmy Atkins (R) with Star chair John Honderich, South African President Nelson Mandela & first lady Graca Machel, Star editorial board editor Haroon Siddiqui.
Free trade, Sikhs, Laïcité
Siddiqui gets along with everyone, doesn’t drink or smoke (anymore), a model Muslim in the House of War.1 He traces his ancestors to the first caliph Abu-bakr Siddiq, and second caliph Umar al-Khattab al-Faruq. A worthy disciple of the Prophet Muhammad, the multiculturalist par excellence.2 The fearsome Bee (Star editor-in-chief Beland Honderich) famously got along with Haroon. Siddiqui started from scratch in Brandon (no halal, no yogurt in 1968), then the Star, rising quickly through the ranks to foreign correspondent, front page editor, editorial page editor, and finally columnist, all the time the only Muslim in mainstream Canadian media.
He and the Star were against Mulroney’s ‘free’ trade pact with the yankee devil, realizing it was only good for fat cats. He has acted as a public spokesman explaining the problems of all immigrants and BIPOC,3 an acronym he promotes. He highlights the racism which feeds on the changing demographics from white to nonwhite, recountiing a Tanzanian immigrant pushed onto Toronto’s subway tracks, crippling him, and the existence of a KKK chapter operating openly in Toronto.
The case of Sikhs is thorny. Sikh Canadians were mostly quietist, but when Sikh separatists were ejected from the Golden Temple by Indira Gandhi in 1984, she was assassinated, and Sikh separatists blew up an Indian Airlines plane full of Hindu Canadians in 1985. This still ranks as Canada’s worst such tragedy, but was downplayed by the Canadian government with the investigation bungled by the RCMP, as anti-Sikh/ Hindu racism grew. And it continues, the latest being a hit job on a (Sikh separatist) Canadian, openly, by India’s militant Hindu nationalist government. Multiculturalism is easily abused and hard to defend.
To their credit, the Sikhs in Canada have bounced back, entering politics (Justin Trudeau boasted more Sikhs in his cabinet than Modi), joining the RCMP, police, army, working hard, being good citizens. The bad apples didn’t spoil the whole barrel, though Sikhs have no use for India, and they really did capture the lackluster leadership convention of the NDP out of nowhere in 2017. The unlikely NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has been earnest, if not inspiring.
How does this multiculturalism pan out? Quebec separatists don’t like immigrants much, as they are not interested in living in a parochial, xenophobic province, and have enough trouble learning passable English, let alone Quebecois. They voted en masse against independence, and the pesky Muslim women want to wear hijab or worse, niqab. Vive la laïcité. Quebec has chosen to copy France’s punitive banning hijab and other restrictions. Still, English and French get along.
Tribalism, French vs English, Sikhs vs Hindus, Buddhists remains strong. That contrasts with Muslims, who quickly drop their ethnic identity for universal Islam and Canadianism (84% cite being Muslim and 81% cite being Canadian as their primary identity),4 as I’ve noticed at Muslim conferences, where a truly united nations reigns. That brings us to Jewish Canadians vs Muslim Canadians, the most tragic stand-off of the past century. Siddiqui doesn’t go to this forbidding territory. On the contrary, (wisely) he has spoken to Bnai Brith and Canadian Jewish Congress gatherings and kept a low profile as a Muslim Canadian. As the sole prominent Muslim journalist here, he was operating in enemy territory, as his encounter with Kaplan confirmed.
Enlightening Canadians on things Islamic
More important, he wrote engagingly about Muslims in Toronto, which hosts the largest Iranian emigre community after the US, mostly in ‘Tehronto’, a mix of pro- and anti-Khomeini, but able to live peacefully, all agreeing that the Canadian government nonrecognition of Iran and boycott is bad politics for everyone. His appreciation for this ‘great civilization’ contrasts with the negative press that Iran uniformly gets here.
Siddiqui realized quickly that Canadian media coverage and commentary ‘smelled of American propaganda’ and the US and allies were inflicting too many horrors on Muslims and Muslims lands. In 1988, the US warship Vincennes shot down an Iranian civilian airliner killing 290, prompting Bush I to boast: I will never apologize for the US. I don’t care what the facts are. Instead, Washington awarded medals to the captain and crew of the Vincennes. Did any other mainstream journalist note this then or now? He refused to blacken Islam after 9/11. Now a columnist he wrote his third post-9/11 column ‘It’s the US foreign policy, stupid,’ causing a storm of letters to the editor, a majority ‘thank you for saying it’.
Ismailis came in 1972, expelled by Idi Amin of Uganda, joined later by Ismailis from Kenya and Tanzania. Self-reliant, educated, entrepreneurial, they inspired the Aga Khan to build a museum of Islamic culture in Toronto in 2014, the only such museum in the West. Ironically it was officially opened by arch-Islamophobe PM Harper. We celebrate today not only the harmonious meeting of green gardens and glass galleries. We rejoice above all in the special spirit which fills this place and gives it its soul. But then, to Islamophobe Harper, Ismailis are Islam-lite, not considered real Muslims by most.
There are two chapters dealing with the ummah: Cultural Warfare on Muslims, and Harper and Muslims (In his ugliness, he was well ahead of Trump – and more effective). Some particularly painful episodes he covered:
*Harper invited (till then terrorist) Modi to Canada in 2014 when first elected, accompanying him to Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver,
*He established an office of religious freedom, which he unveiled at a Mississauga Coptic church. He announced the position of a new ambassador of religious freedom at the Ahmadiyya mosque in Vaughan, defending Christian and other minorities in Muslim nations, doing nothing for Uighurs, Rohingyas, Shia in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
I could go on – I haven’t even got to the Rushdie circus – but I urge all Muslim Canadians, no, all Canadians, to read for yourselves. Siddiqui provides an excellent survey of all the post-9/11 Islamophobic nonsense, especially in Euroland.
The West has discredited democracy by allowing anti-Islam and anti-Muslim discourse to be one of our last acceptable forms of racism and bigotry. It’s in this milieu that Rushdie and the Rushdie affair have thrived. Has Rushdie been exploiting western prejudices or has the West been using him as a shield for its own prejudices? Or is this a case of mutual convenience?
Having rid ourselves of Harper, how quickly we forget the pain when it stops. As it has under Trudeau Jr. For all his silliness and US-Israel fawning, Justin Trudeau is true to his father’s legacy, and undid much of Harper’s bigotry, especially relating to Muslims.
We should be wary of letting the unrepentant Conservatives take back Parliament Hill. However, I don’t think it’s possible to relaunch the Harper take-no-hostages Crusade. 9/11 (whoever did it) is what motivated me and many more to become a Muslim, and October 7 is now rapidly expanding the Muslim ummah, especially in the West, the heart of the beast. The trouble for the Harpers is that the more Islam and Muslims are reviled, the more Muslims (re)turn to their religion. But then that’s the way of imperialism, creating its enemies, stoking them, as Israel did with Hamas, thinking they can then pick off the ‘terrorists’, ‘mow the grass’.
Siddiqui draws from his experience surviving partition in India, adhering to Shaykh Madani’s view that ‘there is too much diversity within Islam for democracy to work, that an Islamic state would inevitably be authoritarian.’ Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran are the leading examples. The best protection for peoples of faith was a democratic state that stayed neutral between faiths and advanced mutual respect.5
The Harpers accuse Muslims of being unwilling to integrate. Canada, Britain and the US are shining examples of the opposite.
*In the 2021 federal election 12 Muslims won seats. Two hold senior Cabinet portfolios: Omar Alghabra and Ahmed Hussen.
*In Britain, in 2019, 19 were elected. Sadiq Khan has been mayor of London since 2016.
*Humza Yousaf became first minister in Scotland in 2023, the first Muslim to lead a western nation. When Khan was sworn in as a member of the Privy Council at Bukhingham Palace in 2009, it was discovered there was no Quran in the palace, so he brought his own and left it as a present to the Queen.
*In the US 57 Muslims were elected in 2020. Keith Ellison, the first member of the House was sworn in on a copy of the Quran owned by President Jefferson, who had bought an English translation out of the ‘desire to understand Islam on its own terms.’
*Arab and Muslim entertainers, stand-up comedians, writers, actors, Little Mosque on the Prairie …
*To welcome Syrian refugees arriving in Canada, Ottawa French public schools joined to sing Talaʽ al-Badru ʽAlaynā,6 which went viral on YouTube.
Siddiqui’s openmindedness and lack of prejudice are his not-so-secret weapon, able to find common humanity where western propaganda serves up bile. To no small degree, thanks to Haroon and other new (brown) Canadians, Marshall McLuhan’s global village is a reality at home, the most successful heterogeneous experiment in human history.
ENDNOTES
The post Haroon Siddiqui’s My Name is NOT Harry first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Married business partners Theslet Benoir and Clemene Bastien immigrated from Haiti and settled in Parksley, Virginia, in 2005. They followed the law when they opened a brick-and-mortar store and expanded with the town’s first food truck in June 2023. Local officials should have celebrated the couple’s entrepreneurial spirit. Instead, they punished it: A Town Council member came to the restaurant…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
A Joint Statement by the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD), Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA), International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Maayer Daak, and Odhikar on International Women’s Day 2024
In Bangladesh, the prevalence of violence and discrimination against women and girls is alarmingly widespread. Domestic violence, dowry-related abuse, rape, and sexual harassment still persist. Women and girls face discrimination and hardship. The families left behind by victims of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings endure significant financial hardships due to disappearances of the breadwinners and face threats from law enforcement agencies and government agents.
The country’s judicial system remains hostile towards women. Women and girls often encounter obstacles in seeking justice, including intimidation from perpetrators and corrupt judicial officers. Lengthy legal procedures that are often subjected to political interference commonly dissuade women from going to the courts.
This post was originally published on News – Odhikar.
A Joint Statement by the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD), Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA), International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Maayer Daak, and Odhikar on International Women’s Day 2024
In Bangladesh, the prevalence of violence and discrimination against women and girls is alarmingly widespread. Domestic violence, dowry-related abuse, rape, and sexual harassment still persist. Women and girls face discrimination and hardship. The families left behind by victims of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings endure significant financial hardships due to disappearances of the breadwinners and face threats from law enforcement agencies and government agents.
The country’s judicial system remains hostile towards women. Women and girls often encounter obstacles in seeking justice, including intimidation from perpetrators and corrupt judicial officers. Lengthy legal procedures that are often subjected to political interference commonly dissuade women from going to the courts.
This post was originally published on News – Odhikar.
The Women Reservation Bill is a substantial piece of legislation aimed at bolstering gender equality in Indian politics. It has undergone a long and intricate journey to reach its current state. While acknowledging the bill’s intent to promote gender equality, Gurmeet Kaur expresses concern about its timing and lack of provisions for OBC women.
A survey by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) reports that the OBC population in India is 40.94%.
Reading multiple perspectives in the news articles and Op-Eds on the Women Reservation Bill, my thoughts take me back to a lecture delivered by Dr Ameer Sultana on Women and Politics at the Department Cum Centre for Women’s Studies & Development, Panjab University, in 2016. During this lecture, fellow students, both men and women, engaged in a debate on the necessity of such legislation. This legislative initiative was initially introduced in the Lok Sabha by HD Deve Gowda nearly three decades ago (81st Amendment Bill). It was later re-introduced by PM Manmohan Singh’s government through the 108th Amendment Bill in the upper chamber of Parliament, the Rajya Sabha. Now, under the rule of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Women Reservation Bill has finally transformed from an aspiration into a legal enactment through the 128th Amendment Bill in the Lok Sabha.
Feminists all over India have a deep appreciation for the bill’s intent. However, as an engaged citizen and fervent advocate for gender equality, my appreciation is tinged with concern about the timing of its reintroduction and subsequent passage. The promise to foster the well-being of ‘Behen and Beti’ (sisters and daughters) from minority communities has regrettably remained unfulfilled over the past nine years whether it is Hathras Gang Rape and Murder or recent atrocities in Manipur. More concerning is the no particular provision for OBC (Other Backward Classes) women from the bill’s provisions. It is imperative to clarify that this concern transcends the boundaries of any particular government; it is instead indicative of a collective disregard exhibited by those in power, as well as within opposition parties, spanning several decades. This apprehension is compounded by the possible formulation of a sub-quota once the constitution is amended to provide political reservation to OBCs.
A closer look at the past reveals recommendations made by joint parliamentary committees led by Geeta Mukherjee in 1996 and Jayanthi Natarajan in 2009. These reports strongly recommended that the government should contemplate the possibility of extending reservation benefits to OBCs in due course, thereby ensuring that women from OBC backgrounds can also avail of these reservation benefits.
This prompts an inquiry into the rationale behind the omission of these recommendations in the legislative process leading to the bill’s passage. Was it driven by haste or a selective exclusion of certain groups? What awaits OBC women in the realm of Indian politics? These questions, I contend, are pivotal to comprehending the multifaceted implications of the Women’s Reservation Bill and the critical mass it may or may not usher into the political landscape.
It is essential to recognise that this concern is not specific to any single government but represents a more pervasive problem of oversight and inaction that has persisted for decades. The suggestions made by parliamentary committees led by Geeta Mukherjee and Jayanthi Natarajan emphasise the necessity of expanding reservation benefits to include women from OBCs. Unfortunately, these recommendations were disregarded during the legislative process, resulting in a situation where OBC women find themselves in a state of political uncertainty. If the present government continues to foster divisive inclinations, it may undermine the progress achieved by feminists working towards gender equality.
The Women Reservation Bill’s journey in India has been protracted, marked by promises, delays, and a significant oversight regarding the inclusion of OBC women. To address this issue, the Women Reservation Bill must be amended to explicitly include provisions for the representation of OBC women. This should involve consultations with OBC communities to ensure that their specific needs and challenges are adequately addressed in the legislation. The amendment should aim to provide equitable political representation for women from all backgrounds. Further, to understand the far-reaching implications, the government should conduct a nationwide, inclusive consultative process involving representatives from OBC communities, women’s organisations, and civil society. This process must gather feedback on the Women’s Reservation Bill, especially about the inclusion of OBC women. Engaging in a participatory and democratic dialogue ensures that the legislation reflects the diverse voices and concerns of the population it aims to serve.
Inclusive Action: A Necessity
In summary, the Women’s Reservation Bill represents a commendable effort to advance gender equality within the realm of Indian politics. However, its effectiveness in achieving these goals, as mandated by Article 15 of the Constitution of India, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 5 (SDG 5), hinges on addressing inclusivity. Furthermore, the potential emergence of a sub-quota necessitates thorough examination and proactive measures by policymakers. This holistic approach is imperative to ensure that the legislative agenda aligns with the broader objectives of fostering gender parity and uplifting marginalised groups, particularly OBC women, within the political landscape.
Note
*The term “Other Backward Classes” (OBCs) constitutes an official classification within India, encompassing social groups distinct from the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. Typically, the population encompass Hindu lower castes positioned above the “untouchable” scheduled castes, and may also include analogous lower-caste groups within other religious communities like Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, and Buddhists.
This post was originally published on LSE Human Rights.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
A federal court in Washington, D.C., heard arguments Thursday in a lawsuit accusing the Biden administration of racial discrimination and rights violations of Haitian asylum seekers. The suit was brought on behalf of 11 Haitian asylum seekers who were abused by U.S. border agents as more than 15,000 people, mostly from Haiti, were forced to stay in a makeshift border encampment on the banks of the Rio Grande near the Acuña-Del Rio International Bridge in Texas. One of the plaintiffs is Mirard Joseph, the asylum seeker whose image went viral after being photographed while a Border Patrol agent on horseback lashed him with split reins, grabbed his neck and gripped Joseph by the shirt collar. “This is a critical junction in our country here in the United States as we make sure to uphold human rights and understanding seeking asylum is a human right,” says Guerline Jozef, executive director of immigrant advocacy organization Haitian Bridge Alliance, which helped bring the case on behalf of asylum seekers. “We will continue to push forward and make sure that accountability is served but also we have systematic change in the way that we receive people in the United States.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This story was originally published at Prism. To some disability advocates and disabled people themselves, it feels like disabled people have been abandoned to fend for themselves. And in places like Utah — where major legislation that would increase disabled people’s quality of life continues to be struck down — that’s palpable. During Utah’s legislative session in January, House Bill 205…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Finding work can be difficult for anyone, but Fernando Herrera faces an extra challenge. California has banned him for life from his dream job as a firefighter because of two felonies he committed as a teenager. Herrera went to prison for assaults he committed at ages 14 and 15. But he took responsibility for his actions and turned his life around. He worked as an unpaid firefighter while in…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The practice of manual scavenging is a violation of human rights that needs to be addressed in health and sanitation policy reform. Caste-based discrimination and lack of technological innovation is at the root of the issue. Arunbalaji Selvaraj, explores how law enforcement, economic empowerment, increasing awareness and upgrading sanitary infrastructure are essential to upholding human rights.
Manual scavenging, a practice distinct and far more perilous than regular janitorial work, involves the hazardous and inhumane task of manually handling human waste from dry latrines and sewers. Still shockingly prevalent in various regions of India, this practice starkly contrasts with the role of janitors, who typically engage in the cleaning and maintenance of buildings and spaces, using tools and equipment that minimise direct contact with waste. Despite the enactment of the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act in 2013, aimed at abolishing this degrading practice, significant implementation gaps and societal bias have allowed it to persist. Addressing the plight of manual scavengers transcends legal enforcement; it is a pressing humanitarian issue that demands immediate action to protect human dignity, uphold human rights, and foster profound social reform. The persistence of manual scavenging is not just a failure of policy but a reflection of deep-seated social inequities, emphasising the need for a collective societal effort towards empathy, understanding, and tangible change.
The Humanitarian Crisis of Manual Scavenging
Manual scavenging represents a grotesque violation of basic human rights and dignity. Those involved in manual scavenging are exposed to numerous health risks, including harmful gases and pathogens that can lead to diseases like leptospirosis, hepatitis, and helicobacter. Tragically, many manual scavengers lose their lives each year due to accidents in septic tanks and sewers, incidents that could have been largely preventable with proper safety measures and equipment.
The distressing reality of this situation is further amplified considering the role of manual scavengers in maintaining some of India’s busiest public spaces. In a country with a population exceeding 1.3 billion, the scale of public facilities and their usage is immense. For instance, India’s railway stations, an extensive network that handles over 23 million passengers daily, and bus stands bustling with activity round the clock, often rely on manual scavenging for sanitation maintenance. Furthermore, the toilets on Indian trains, which form arguably the longest toilet line globally, are manually cleaned after their journeys. In 2019 alone, Indian Railways, the world’s fourth-largest rail network, carried over 8 billion passengers. These statistics are not just numbers; they represent the immense scale of public usage and the consequent burden placed on manual scavengers, underlining the urgent need for comprehensive reforms in sanitation management and social attitudes. These figures starkly illustrate the intense demand placed on public sanitation facilities in India and the dire need for sustainable and humane waste management practices. This scenario underscores a deep-rooted societal indifference towards the wellbeing and dignity of manual scavengers, and highlights an urgent need for systemic change.
The Intersection with Caste Discrimination
To address the issue of caste-based discrimination in the context of manual scavenging in India, it’s important to look at the available data. According to government data, an overwhelming 97% of manual scavengers in India are Dalits, highlighting the strong link between caste and this practice. Specifically, about 42,594 manual scavengers belong to Scheduled Castes (SCs), 421 to Scheduled Tribes (STs), and 431 to Other Backward Classes (OBCs). This data starkly illustrates the caste-based nature of manual scavenging and underscores the need to recognise and address this issue as a form of caste-based violence and discrimination.
However, it’s also noteworthy that there is often a lack of comprehensive data or an underreporting of figures related to manual scavenging, partly due to its illegal status and the associated stigma. This absence of detailed national records can be seen as an element of societal indifference towards lower-caste workers, further marginalising them and perpetuating the cycle of discrimination and exclusion.
Therefore, when discussing manual scavenging in the context of caste-based discrimination in India, it is crucial to not only consider the available statistics but also to acknowledge the gaps in data which may reflect a broader issue of societal indifference and neglect towards marginalised communities.
The disparity in technological innovation raises a critical question: why haven’t we seen similar advancements in sanitation technology, especially for manual scavenging? In 2023, the kitchen appliance industry witnessed remarkable innovations such as smart ovens with internal cameras, high-tech microwaves with voice control, and water-saving dishwashers. Yet, there seems to be a glaring absence of similar progress in developing machinery for sanitation purposes. This contrast not only highlights a societal and industrial bias towards convenience over essential public health needs but also reflects a deeper assumption that the manual handling of waste is an unalterable status quo. The lack of progress in this area is not just a technological oversight; it represents a societal indifference towards the plight of manual scavengers and the urgency to innovate in ways that uphold their dignity and safety.
In India, a nation known for its democratic values and cultural diversity, the persistence of manual scavenging in the 21st century is vehemently criticised by numerous campaigners and activists, who label it a ‘national shame.’ This practice not only contravenes the tenets of social, economic, and political justice enshrined in the Indian Constitution but also mirrors a modern form of slavery. A significant reference in this context is a 2014 report by Human Rights Watch, an internationally recognised non-profit organisation. This report highlights the severe implications of manual scavenging and includes a poignant statement from a campaigner: “The manual carrying of human faeces is not a form of employment, but an injustice akin to slavery.” Such powerful advocacy underscores the urgent need for systemic change to eradicate this practice and uphold the dignity and rights of all citizens in India.
The onus of mechanising sanitation work is upon us. But who will take up this responsibility? The government, while the most obvious answer, has numerous other issues to tackle. Despite laws prohibiting manual scavenging, only a handful of cases are ever filed against violators, highlighting a societal indifference to the plight of manual scavengers.
Have you recently used a public toilet? While these facilities are essential for public hygiene, their upkeep often reflects broader social and environmental challenges. Despite varying conditions, these spaces require regular maintenance, a task undertaken by dedicated workers whose efforts are seldom recognised. To truly appreciate the challenges faced by those tasked with cleaning public toilets, one need not perform their job; a mere reflection on their daily experiences offers profound insights into the complexities of manual scavenging. It’s not just about the physical act of cleaning but also about understanding the societal indifference and lack of adequate resources that these workers often encounter. This context brings to light the significant impact of manual scavenging on both individual dignity and broader social dynamics.
Increasing awareness about the plight of manual scavengers can inspire us to act. We all need to lend our voices to the cause of ending manual scavenging and seek ways to eliminate human involvement in this demeaning task. It’s time for a collective societal effort to replace manual scavenging with more dignified, safer, and mechanised methods of sanitation. This issue transcends technological innovation or policy change – it’s about human dignity and social justice. Below are five ways in which the issue can be tackled.
Eradicating manual scavenging: a multifaceted approach
1.Technological intervention: Modern sanitation technologies such as automated sewer cleaning machines and robots can significantly reduce the dependence on human labour for cleaning sewers and septic tanks.
2.Enforcing the law: Enforcement of the law prohibiting manual scavenging remains weak. We need stricter punitive measures, more frequent inspections, and strong political resolve for real change.
3.Rehabilitation and economic empowerment: Comprehensive rehabilitation for manual scavengers is essential, encompassing education, skill development training, financial aid, and access to dignified employment opportunities.
4.Increasing public awareness: Wide-ranging awareness campaigns about the human rights abuses and health risks associated with manual scavenging can foster empathy, build public support for the abolition of the practice, and put pressure on authorities to act.
5.Upgrading sanitation infrastructure: Investments in improved sanitation infrastructure, including sewage and sewage treatment systems, and providing universal access to safe and hygienic toilets, can eliminate the need for manual scavenging.
In a country that has achieved technological milestones like launching rockets into space and inventing machines to automate complex tasks, the lack of technological solutions to eliminate manual scavenging is an irony. Surely, a country capable of exploring distant planets can devise a solution to end this inhuman practice.
The eradication of manual scavenging in India is not merely a task of implementing laws or introducing new technologies; it’s deeply intertwined with addressing the systemic caste and class divisions that perpetuate this practice. It requires strategic investments in impoverished urban and rural areas where this practice is most prevalent. The government and civil society organisations have been working on several fronts to combat this issue. There are ongoing social campaigns within India, such as the Safai Karmachari Andolan, which advocate for the rights and rehabilitation of manual scavengers. The government, on its part, has enacted legislation like the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013, and has initiated various projects and innovative solutions, such as the introduction of mechanised sewer cleaning systems, to phase out manual scavenging. However, the challenge lies in effective implementation and ensuring these measures reach the grassroots level.
It’s imperative to understand that manual scavenging is both an urban and rural issue in India, affecting the marginalised sections of society. Therefore, the approach to eradicating manual scavenging must be holistic, encompassing legal enforcement, economic empowerment, technological solutions, and, most importantly, societal change to dismantle caste-based discrimination. As India progresses toward becoming a modern nation, the elimination of manual scavenging becomes a critical step in this journey, embodying the ethos of social justice and equality. The true measure of a nation’s progress lies in how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. It is time for India to rise to this challenge and ensure a life of dignity and respect for all its people. India’s journey towards modernity and progress will be judged by its ability to eradicate this inhumane practice and uplift its most marginalised communities.
All articles posted on this blog give the views of the author(s), and not the position of LSE Human Rights, the Department of Sociology, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image credit: Wandering Indian
This post was originally published on LSE Human Rights.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
In a fundraising email to supporters on Thursday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis bashed President Joe Biden for saluting the gay Pride flag and falsely accused “radical liberal parents” of child abuse in his latest attempt to revive a floundering presidential campaign by trafficking in anti-LGBTQ stigma and conspiracy theories. A donation to his campaign, DeSantis suggested, would help him “save” queer…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Each year, in preparation for Hanukkah, many Jews across the United States purchase candles to light their menorahs. For those in areas where Walmart has squeezed out competitors, the limited options of Hanukkah candles to choose from will include Rite Lite, which the superstore stocks from New York to California and sells online. These candles are advertised as benefiting the Jewish National Fund…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Cyrine Hammemi is a human rights defender and a project manager at the Association for the Promotion of the Right to Difference (ADD) in Tunisia. Her work focuses on the human rights of persons belonging to minority groups, through alerts on discriminatory situations and the violence they suffered.
Speaking to ISHR, Cyrine discussed her journey into activism and her vision for an inclusive future. She shared the personal triggers that led her to become an activist and emphasised her hopes for a world where every individual can fully enjoy their rights without discrimination based on identity, gender, religion, or sexual orientation.
https://ishr.ch/defender-stories/human-rights-defenders-story-cyrine-hammemi-from-tunisia/
This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.
Peace. It’s a word that we’ve heard a lot lately.
With the recent outbreak of conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and Russia, the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, along with the continued conflict in Syria and Yemen, it’s clear that peace – or the lack of – is a global issue on many people’s minds.
According to research by Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP), the global picture is not looking good.
In their latest global peace report (2023) – in which they provide a review of 163 countries – we saw the “ninth consecutive year that global peacefulness has deteriorated”.
Over the last year, peace decreased by an average of 0.42% per country, with 84 countries marked as more peaceful than in 2022, and 79 countries recording a deterioration of peace.
So, what lies behind the statistics?
Well, improvements and deteriorations were driven by changes a range of overlapping factors, including:
In this research, Iceland remained the most peaceful nation (a ranking held since 2008), followed by Denmark and Ireland.
Likewise, Afghanistan remained the “least peaceful nation” for the eighth year in a row, followed by Yemen and Syria.
These are countries that have found themselves in both groupings repeatedly. And with the outbreak of conflict, it’s no surprise.
According to IEP, there have been no changes in the level of global terrorism in the last three years.
Whilst terrorism-related deaths in the MENA region continue to decline (down by 23% in 2023), the largest increase of deaths has been in sub-Saharan Africa, with a rise of 8%.
In fact, the Sahel region of Africa has become the “epicentre of terrorism”.
In this region, 43% of deaths related to global terrorism occur.
Moreover, we’re also seeing the rise in ecological threats and the cyclical relationship to violence, including terrorism and conflict.
Whilst populations are increasing, alongside climate-related disasters and the displacement of people, natural resources are decreasing.
This is and will continue to have a monumental impact on populations, and the level of conflict:
“…without concerted international action, current levels of ecological degradation will substantially worsen, thereby intensifying a range of social issues, such as malnutrition and forced migration.
Current conflicts will escalate and multiply as a result, creating further global insecurity.
IEP estimates that by 2050, 2.8 billion people will reside in countries facing severe ecological threats, compared to 1.8 billion in 2023, with 1.1 billion of these people living in countries with low societal resilience.”
IEP, Ecological Threat Report (2023)
As communities are becoming increasingly displaced and lacking in critical resources, conflict and instability will inevitability increase.
The reality is this: if we want peace, we need to focus on more than ending conflict and violence (what’s known as “negative peace”).
Instead, we need a local, national and international effort towards “positive peace” – a holistic sustainable effort to prevent (rather than respond to) conflict.
For positive peace, we need:
Source: IEP, Pillars of Peace Report (2015)
To do this, we must build egalitarian resilient communities and transparent, accountable nations to collaborate on a global scale.
In short, if we want peace, we need to help communities thrive.
We have to tackle the rise of global terrorism, address the rise in climate change, promote intercommunal dialogue, address poverty and inequality – including gender inequality – and work on all levels.
This includes engaging at grassroots (community) level, with civil societies (expert organisations) and governmental and intragovernmental powers, to drive critical change.
Of course, this requires holistic change globally. And change starts with us!
Whatever our background, we can all make a difference.
How? Read on to find out!
Inter-communal dialogue based on common shared values (our shared humanity!) is critical in building stronger relationships in our communities, regions, nations and globally.
Working across religious and cultural divides by communicating with each other and carving shared spaces, we build a common sense of citizenship to come together and prevent conflict when disagreements and tensions rise.
By understanding individuals and communities’ diverse needs, we can better understand different lived experiences and carve more equitable spaces.
Promoting diversity and inclusion, and ensuring a broader sense of identity and citizenship, we can fight exclusion and develop the tools and understanding to prevent and respond to disagreements and larger-scale conflict:
“For decades the fields of conflict resolution, mediation and peace studies had been overlooking the positive political role that religion could play in all stages of peacebuilding.
Today there is growing attention to the contribution that religious peacebuilding can make to the stability, security, and justice of many divided societies around the world… through political application of religious ideals like reconciliation, forgiveness and mercy.”
Italian Institute for International Political Studies (2023)
We therefore need to amplify the role of intercommunal dialogue – including interfaith and intercultural dialogue – to unite among shared values, against (perceived) notions of difference.
These values however must lie within a framework of human rights (shared dignity and humanity).
In this way, we can build a mutual foundation of common values and unite to promote diversity (amongst all faiths and none).
We can therefore critically understand and promote the mutual rights of each and every one of us when building initiatives, policies and projects.
We can also confidently in collaboration reject harm, respecting and promoting cultural and religious diversity.
In this way, we can confidentially counteract religious extremism and harmful socio-cultural norms together, ensuring that we do not excuse harm under extreme variations of cultural relativism.
Take action:
Develop dialogue:
Start your own interfaith/intercultural dialogue journey today, with some key tips here.
Local, regional, national or international, the sky’s your limit!
Plus, if you’re already a keen dialogue practitioner, why not apply for the KAICIID fellowship programme in intercultural and interreligious dialogue to expand your networks, resources and knowledge?
Keep an eye out on their website for submission deadlines.
Promote anti-radicalisation:
Challenge hatred and extremism where you encounter it (when safe to do so).
Spread a counternarrative by promoting dialogue and humanism in religion, challenging dogmatism and extremism.
Create positive communities, talk with others inside and outside of the community, and speak out against hate.
Critically: report hate to relevant organisations and authorities (find out more here)
Support dialogue in peacebuilding:
Check out these great organisations working for peace in Israel-Palestine and support their crucial work through advocacy and fundraising.
Wherever your interest lies, we part of a positive solution!
Share positive stories, meet new people and promote peace not division
Promote human rights and peace education:
Promote the importance of human rights in practice, not just theory!
Expand your knowledge in human rights (perhaps by taking a course) and incorporate human rights into your work (implementing policies based on equity, inclusivity and no harm).
Why not also consider becoming and IEP ambassador?
Dialogue is a key step to preventing conflict, with human rights building a key common framework of equality, justice and human dignity.
Bribery, nepotism, corruption are the anthesis to sound business, equity and well-functioning governments – and to peace:
“Corruption harms the poor and vulnerable the most, increasing costs and reducing access to basic services, such as health, education, social programs, and even justice.
It exacerbates inequality and reduces private sector investment to the detriment of markets, job opportunities, and economies.
Corruption can also undermine a country’s response to emergencies, leading to unnecessary suffering and, at worst, death.
Over time, corruption can undermine the trust and confidence that citizens have for their leaders and institutions, creating social friction and in some contexts increasing the risk of fragility, conflict, and violence.”
Ousmane Diagana and Mouhamadou Diagne, World Bank (2023)
So, to tackle the issue of global poverty, inequity of systems and to drive real change, we need accountancy, transparency, development and growth.
This requires action across society, on all levels.
We need to call businesses to account for how they treat their employees.
We need to ensure that governments are investing money where they should be, that justice systems are fit for purpose and that grassroots communities are able to protect the most vulnerable people in our societies.
This includes people at increasing risk of modern slavery and displacement (see point #3) and gender-based violence (see points #3 and #4) as poverty and inequality meet the increasing drivers of climate change (see point #3) – amongst various other phenomenon.
It’s a task of monumental scale, but we can’t just sit back and do nothing.
Here’s how we can start.
Take action:
Call for accountability:
Report corruption wherever you see it. Call for investigations amid the misuse of power and the abuse of systems – be it locally, nationally or internationally.
Call people and systems to account. Report, fight and expose
Model the change:
Be the change in your own networks.
Whatever your work, position or line of work, ensure your systems are fair, transparent and open to feedback (as well as legally compliant!)
Support workers’ rights:
Promote responsible business and workers rights.
Spot the signs and report modern slavery.
Call businesses to account, join and support vital trade unions and lobby governments to promote equality and transparency
Get politically engaged:
Use your voice! Vote, stand for power, challenge leaders and volunteer at polling stations
Key drivers of conflict are poverty and inequality which thrive in corrupt environments.
Change – and the scale of the problem – is of course contextual (as is the level of risk).
We can all start with ourselves, modelling the change we can see.
Locally, regionally, nationally, internationally, there is a lot of work to be done! But please, keep safe.
The impact of increasing climate change is devastating to both people and planet.
As the planet’s temperature is rising, so too is the frequency of climate induced disasters such as floods and droughts.
And this is having a monumental impact on communities worldwide – in particular the world’s most vulnerable.
In 2022 alone, a staggering 32.6 million people were displaced as a result of disasters.
98% of these were weather-related, such as floods, storms, wildfires and droughts.
And these are increasing the impact of poverty and risk of conflict.
As crops fail, livestock perish and people lose their livelihoods and homes, families and communities are left displaced – in search of food, shelter and work.
Such disasters/climatic changes aren’t a one off, they act as a “threat multiplier”:
“Not only did climate-related disasters trigger more than half of new reported displacements in 2022, but nearly 60 per cent of refugees and internally displaced people now live in countries that are among the most vulnerable to climate change.”
UNHCR (2023)
Communities already affected by poverty are facing greater vulnerability to abuse and harm such as:
With tensions around dwindling resources rising, conflict and displacement are increasingly occurring.
That’s why we need to tackle climate change to not only protect the planet, but to also promote peace.
Take action:
Make personal changes:
Cut your impact on the planet by changing in your consumption habits, for example:
Switch to using a reusable (metal) water bottle, plastic-free food containers and toiletries.
Re-use any plastic containers you do have for food or toiletries, rather than throwing them away
Swap your car for public transport, walk more (and get a work out) and limit your air miles where possible by choosing trains and ferries
Consume less meat and dairy, recycle rubbish at home and work and compost organic waste and try thrifting.
Why not also try vintage shops and apps when you want to have a clear out or add something to your wardrobe?
Discover more top tips here and here!
Call on leaders to take action:
COP 29 is taking place in November 2024.
Get ready to increase the pressure.
Add your name to petitions, join a campaigning group and get your voice out there on social media.
Demand to see what action global leaders are taking to stem the rise of climate change and to support those most affected/at risk.
Support climate action projects:
Check out specialist organisations, such as Climate-Network International, to find out how you can make a critical difference.
Fund climate-resilient projects:
Support community-resilience programmes which help individuals and families to:
This will help communities to fight the effects of climate change, decreasing the rate of displacement, scarcity of resources, and ultimately conflict.
Climate change is about both the planet and people – and stemming the effects are critical to building and maintaining peace.
Where poverty thrives and crisis hits, women are worst affected.
In any crisis (be it climate-related and/or conflict-related) – women and girls are always disproportionately affected.
At increasing risk of sexual violence, human trafficking and forced marriage (including child marriage), in times of conflict:
This however, simple falls in line with overall trends on gender inequality across the board.
How?
Well, women and girls worldwide are already more likely than their male counterparts to:
We also know that when women are involved in peacekeeping efforts, peace is more likely to be sustainable:
“Female participation in both conflict prevention and conflict resolution enhances security interests.
Studies have found that a significant inclusion of women and civil society groups in a peace negotiation makes the resulting agreement 64% less likely to fail and 35% more likely to last at least fifteen years.
…full and meaningful participation of women in peace operations broadens the perspective on conflict management, allows for more inclusive political resolutions, and, in the end, improves international peacebuilding strategies…”
Eric Rudberg, Women in International Security (2023)
So, when it comes to positive peace (preventing conflict) – we need to dismantle the political, social, cultural, religious and economic barriers that discriminate women and harm society as a whole.
These are barriers that both limit women’s participation in conflict prevention/resolution and also result in a disproportionate impact on conflict on women and girls in crisis situations (pre-, mid and post-conflict).
Take action:
Support education for women and girls:
Education is crucial for fighting the duality of poverty and gender inequality.
Women with an education are less likely to fight poverty (see point #5), and have greater means to leave abusive relationships.
When girls go to school, they’re building their future and fighting illiteracy, poverty and harmful practice such as child marriage.
Differently abled girls, menstruating girls and girls in rural communities all need access to quality education – which requires not just a change in attitudes, but the right resources.
Pledge your support here
Challenge harmful norms and practices:
Stand up against the social, cultural, religious and cultural norms that stigmatise and exclude women and girls from education, income-generation, community building and decision making.
From period shaming, victim-blaming of survivors of assault, exclusion of women from religious spaces and unfair burden of caring/household responsibilities, women and girls are denied the right to participate and contribute equally to build safer more equal societies.
Find out more and speak out today!
Support projects against gender-based violence:
Abusive practices such as child/forced marriage and Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) deny women and girls the right to education, health (even life), sexual pleasure, bodily autonomy and freedom of choice.
They perpetuate misogynistic attitudes harmful to women and girls and to society as a whole.
Speak out, stand up and support crucial projects, such as Grandmother Project who are critically fighting FGM and promoting girls’ education
Empower women financially:
Help women to empower themselves financially by supporting microfinance projects, enabling them to fight the effects of gender-based inequality, challenge gender-based discrimination/harmful norms and stand up in their communities and societies.
This will ultimately help develop more inclusive peaceful societies for all.
Find out more here.
Finally, call on your MP to ensure that the UK government puts gender at the heart of crisis-responsive policies.
As we’ve already seen, if we want to build peace and prevent conflict, we need to fight corruption, to work to ensure the mutual respect of human rights and to fight gender inequality and the increasing impact of climate change.
And so, a huge factor is also: fighting poverty.
Why?
Because poverty is a major driving factor behind the prevalence of harmful gender-based norms (see point #4), ill health and the exclusion of people in decision making and civil society.
Individuals and communities living in poverty are also further disproportionally affected by the increasing effects of climate change and risk of displacement (see point #3).
Taking also these factors into account, we’re left seeing the increased risk of conflict .
And of course, the further exclusion of women (see point #4) (remembering that women are also in fact key to building inclusive sustainably peaceful environments in pre and post-conflict rebuilding processes).
Poverty is complex, yet key part of the solution:
“…extreme poverty is … increasing in countries affected by fragility, conflict and violence (FCV)…by 2030, up to two thirds of the world’s extreme poor will live in these situations.
These challenges threaten to reverse efforts to end extreme poverty, and they affect both low- and middle-income countries…
Violent conflict has spiked dramatically since 2010 — conflicts now drive 80% of all humanitarian needs and reduce gross domestic product (GDP) growth by two percentage points per year…
Social and economic exclusion, climate change, gender and other inequalities, demographic challenges, illicit financial flows and other global trends contribute to this complexity.”
World Bank, People, Peace, Prosperity (2020)
It’s fundamentally clear that if we want to prevent conflict, we need to fight poverty.
And if we want to fight poverty, we need to fight conflict.
Communities need equitable, inclusive, safe and thriving societies to build and promote dialogue, stem the effects of climate change, fight corruption and ultimately prevent conflict.
Take action:
Challenge discrimination:
Speak out against the discrimination which traps people in poverty, makes them vulnerable to radicalisation and/or recruitment in armed groups, and builds tension in communities (see sections #1 and #2).
Keep refugee children in education:
Nearly half of school-aged refugee children are not in school.
Donate towards, volunteer with or share information at projects supporting refugee children’s education to help these children get the critical education every child needs and help break the cycle of poverty.
Prevent the recruitment of child soldiers:
Poverty and lack of opportunities are major drivers behind the recruitment of child soldiers.
Help end this abuse by supporting dedicated work to prevent the recruitment of child soldiers by strengthening child protection systems, promoting peacebuilding and increasing access to education and work opportunities.
Fight food poverty:
In times of crisis, food insecurity increases the risk of violence towards those who produce food.
When communities don’t have adequate access to food, they face ill health and will struggle with accessing work and education.
Fighting food poverty is therefore one step to creating more participatory societies.
Donate to food projects, set up your own and speak to political leaders about food poverty in your locality
We also need to:
In this way, we can tackle the cycle and roots causes of poverty and inequality which make individuals and communities vulnerable to conflict.
Peacebuilding is an ongoing process. A process that we need to be active in building and sustaining.
As a planet, we need to look beyond non-violence, towards wider building positive peace globally.
This means going beyond the idea of simply a “lack of violence” (known as “negative peace”).
Instead, real sustainable peace (“positive peace“) means developing and strengthening societies based on mutual dialogue, equity, diversity and inclusion.
Higher levels of peace have been proven to lead to:
(Source: IEP, 2023)
Most critically however, positive peace exists in societies that are more just and are fairer.
These are societies which should have the critical tools, resources and systems in place to embrace pluralism, promote equity and therefore de-escalate potential conflict.
From breaking the gender bias, supporting displaced communities and fighting for people and planet, we can all make a difference on many levels.
Whether locally, nationally or internationally, through your work, volunteering or simply in your day-to-day life, the time is now!
Plus, don’t forget we’ve got the world at our digital fingertips!
Be part of the change. Today.
Credits:
This blog was produced inline with participation requirements on the IEP Ambassador Programme (2023).
The Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP) is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit think tank dedicated to shifting the world’s focus to peace as a positive, achievable, and tangible measure of human well-being and progress. We aim to create a paradigm shift in the way the world thinks about peace.
This post was originally published on Voice of Salam.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Before the genocide, Palestinians in Gaza struggled to access clean water, with 97% of Gaza’s freshwater resources contaminated due to the Israeli blockade and repeated bombardments. Many families in poverty were forced to spend a third or more of their income to purchase water from unregulated sources, with the hopes that it is safe. Now, this already dire situation is exponentially worse.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
A United Nations body has issued a damning report blasting the United States for its rampant violations of a major human rights treaty that it ratified in 1992. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) enshrines the rights to life, to vote, and to freedom of expression and assembly; and the prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
A United Nations body has issued a damning report blasting the United States for its rampant violations of a major human rights treaty that it ratified in 1992. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) enshrines the rights to life, to vote, and to freedom of expression and assembly; and the prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
If there’s blood on anyone’s hands it’s on those who say: “Israel has a right to defend itself.”
David Hearst is editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Israel’s dilemma has been how to construct a racially pure state and extinguish the Palestinian presence in the country without the world noticing the genocide. It has found the solution and the world takes no notice. The world can entertain another solution and the world takes no notice.
Want to rid the world of Hamas, rid the world of apartheid Israel. If apartheid Israel goes away assuredly Hamas will go away; after all, Israel says that Hamas’s only reason for existence is to eradicate apartheid Israel.
Want to stop the oppression and save the Palestinians from genocide, get rid of apartheid Israel; without the destroyer, there are no destroyed.
The Western world has shown it regards apartheid Israel as worth more than five million Palestinian lives, echoing former Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, who informed us “We think the price of having 500,000 Iraqi children die is worth saving the world from Saddam Hussein.”
Two clarifications:
(1) Doing away with apartheid Israel does not mean doing away with Israel; it means transforming apartheid Israel from an oppressive killing machine into a genuinely democratic government that operates with obedience to international law and respects human rights.
(2) Israel oppressed and killed Palestinians long before Hamas. Israel has been killing and oppressing Palestinians throughout the existence of Hamas. Noting Israel’s continuous oppressive tactics in the West Bank, Israel will oppress and kill Palestinians regardless of Hamas. Prime Minister Netanyahu said the Palestinians will suffer for generations. Capture that remark ─ making innocent generations responsible for incidents that occurred long before they were born. Is that a remark from a responsible leader or a statement from a genocidal maniac?
Demolishing Hamas is an excuse for Israel’s excessive bombings of innocent civilians. Driving the Palestinians into psychological defeat with traumas that cause the children to lose a sense of security and a will to live ─ equivalent to the smallpox blankets that hastened the destruction of the Native Americans ─ is the significant reason for the carnage. The other reasons are to conveniently change the dialogue from oppression of the Palestinians to defense of Israel and to reboot the conflict so that it starts from now. The 75 last years and its tears no longer have any role in analyzing the conflict; that conflict ended and a new conflict started when Hamas attacked Israeli civilians.
These are the reasons for the Israeli attacks on innocent civilians and these reasons are leading to one of the most diabolical genocides conceived by mortals — break their bones and break their will to live. Hamas is a problem but annihilating Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya (Islamic Resistance Movement) cannot be used as an excuse for the devastation visited upon the innocent Palestinians.
This burst of angst was generated by watching discussion programs where “talking heads” offer solutions to the mayhem with unique suggestions such as, “The two peoples should learn to get along with each other,” and “Israel has a right to defend itself but should be careful and not cause too many civilian casualties.”
It was reinforced by the conventional U.S. media reports that continued to highlight previous killings of Israeli civilians and captive Israelis and broadcast prepared references to Jewish victimhood and the 80-year-old World War II Holocaust, programs ready to be aired when Israel needs some prepping, just as obituaries are ready to be printed when a known personality dies. It reached a crescendo upon constantly hearing, that this was the worst loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust, words passed on from person to person, each repeating the same script.
Watching David Rubenstein’s program, History, resurrecta December 14, 2021 show that aired Jia Lynn Yang, a deputy national editor at The New York Times, discussing the American immigration system, and observing how Rubenstein steered Ms. Yang to indicate the falsehood that the 1924 Immigration laws were written expressly against Jews, which kept them locked up in Europe to await their Nazi executioners, made me want to kick the first dog I saw.
Wall Street banker Rubenstein went on to solicit the spurious story of how people pleaded with President Roosevelt to help German Jews, which then led to the ill-fated St. Louis cruise ship that had 900 Jews on board who tried to enter Cuba and were not allowed. Also refused docking by U.S. authorities, the St. Louis returned to Europe. Contrary to Rubenstein’s low-voiced mention of 700 passengers sent to concentration camps and eventually killed, the ship docked in Antwerp, all passengers departed for other nations, and almost all of them survived the war. Would like to know how an editor at renowned PBS permitted this discrepancy to be spoken and why, after two years, it has not been corrected. PBS is regarded as one of the more accurate media.
To relieve my emotional distress, I’ll mention two more corrupt media episodes out of the hundreds I witnessed during the last week.
NBC showed an Israeli birthday Party for a missing 9-year-old Israeli boy, a captive of Hamas. Plenty of abducted and missing children in America. Never saw a birthday party for any of them. I gather NBC camera operators always wander through Israel and film birthday parties for American audiences. Maybe they should wander through Gaza and film posthumous birthday parties for missing Gazan children who will never return and never have another birthday party. By October 23, more than 2,000 Palestinian children are confirmed killed during the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip and 800 are missing. How many are traumatized for the rest of their lives?
In another episode, PBS interviewed students involved in the campus demonstrations, A pro-Israeli student talked of Hamas rapes, undressing women, and parading captives through the streets of Gaza. I’m sure PBS interviewed several students. Because none of the mentioned incidents have been proven to have occurred, why couldn’t PBS present a credible commentator?
The interview with the pro-Palestinian student was less shocking; she wanted to obtain a truce and end the violence on both sides. Why didn’t PBS interview a student alarmed at Israel’s deliberate escalation of the violence?
Israel’s efforts to make Hamas’ violent incursion into Israel the momentous event of the last 75 years and reboot the crisis so it starts on October 7 are succeeding. Israel has determined it has the solution to cleanse Gaza and the West Bank of all Palestinians and, at the same time, cripple Hezbollah and Iran so they can never be a threat, pernicious activities that receive no consideration from the “talking heads”.
Arrival at this “moment of truth’ occurred because the Zionist adventure has not been capably treated; too few of the world’s leaders have placed the key elements of the story and even when explained, don’t seem to have absorbed the significance.
The 1947 UN Resolution 181 used arm-twisting bribes and economic threats to obtain votes and, with these illegal acts, was barely passed. Is that mafia-type of performance acceptable? Without authority to enforce its provisions, the Resolution became a suggestion by a world body. Why would the Palestinians agree to surrender part of their land to foreigners who had just been washed ashore and why would they follow orders from Europeans who lived on the other side of the Mediterranean?
When UN Resolution 181 partitioned Palestine on 29 November 1947, the population statistics, described in the Table below and referenced to 1945, showed about 500,000 Jews and 1.1 million Arabs in the partitioned area. The Arab population was indigenous to the area with almost its entire population born to parents who had resided in the Levant. The Arab population also owned and occupied a major part of the territory with one area, the Negev, mainly inhabited by Bedouin tribes.
Data from the Report of UNSCOP: 3 September 1947: CHAPTER 4: A COMMENTARY ON PARTITION
Because neither state had official names at that time, Arab and Jewish states were used to map out contours of land where the major portions of the ethnicities would live. The Jewish state, which hastily became Israel just before President Truman recognized the state, failed at that moment of origin. Although the state was bi-national, a small Zionist group took control of all apparatus of the new state, and did that without consulting any Palestinian leadership. What leadership, well, no defined leadership, but place it all in proper context.
A census will have shown about 500,000 people described as Jews in the new state (another 100,000 in Jerusalem), but only a small portion of that group lived in the area for a long period of time and only a minor portion had much investment in its past, present, or future. Except for 40,000 earlier 20th-century Zionists, practically all of them had arrived within the previous 30 years and not necessarily to stay — some to work in the British Mandate, many fleeing Nazi Germany, many from refugee camps after World War II, and some adventurers. Relatively few Jews were native to the region and almost all were from foreign nations. The UN did not create two states; it divided one Palestinian state into two states -─ a Palestinian state composed of almost 100 percent Palestinians, and a state composed of about 70 percent who were native to the area (400,000 Palestinians), a small contingent of foreign Jews that had come as Zionists to live permanently in Palestine (200,000), and another larger contingent of foreign Jews (300,000) that arrived for expediency and not with original intentions of remaining in the British Mandate. The Mandate was only a way station for Jews caught in the horrendous tragedies during the 1930s and World War II. If neither cataclysm occurred, would these Jews have gone to the Mandate? Without them, how many Jews would have been there in 1947? These refugees deserved protection, but should those who had been in the area for only two to twenty years, have counted equally in a population census with Palestinians who had centuries of generations in the same area? Did these Jews have a right to expel those who had provided them a measure of succulence? Didn’t they have a moral obligation to protect those who had been upset by their presence? Maybe the measures of refuge came unwillingly, but they were there and the refugee Jews survived. The normal response is to say, “Thank you, I will now leave and not bother you anymore,” and not repeat a crime by forcing exile on others, and, after doing that, grinding the true owners of the land into non-existence.
From that perspective, David Ben-Gurion and a small clique of opportunists took advantage of an ill-advised UN, an ill-led and ill-equipped Palestinian community, and a confused world to declare their state. With seasoned militia forces — Haganah, Irgun, Lehi, and Palmach — the Zionists cleansed the area of Palestinians and established Israel. Just one example, which I have substantiated ─ Irgun troops after entering a Palestinian village were told to seize 10 Palestinians and shoot them; a plan intended to frighten other Palestinian villagers to flee.
Assuredly, if there had been no ethnic cleansing and the UN-planned bi-national state had come into existence, many Jews would have left. Within a decade, the Palestinians would have had an overwhelming majority, and, when they looked across the border, would have exclaimed, “Why are we in two states, let’s make one state.”
During World War II, a few eyewitnesses relayed their findings to British authorities of an impending genocide of European Jews. During the 1940s, communication and transportation were not nearly as advanced as today — no spies in the skies and no surveillance drones. Closed borders and battlefields prevented people from moving around and surveying conditions. Unable to validate the information from only a few persons, occupied with their own problems, and not knowing any means to rescue those trapped in the catastrophe, the Holocaust ran its course. One phrase guided the activities of the World War II people ─ kill the other before they kill you. Saving anyone else was not on people’s minds.
In 2023, when everyone, billions, even those living in a remote part of Tasmania, daily witness the destruction of the Palestinian people and its genocidal conclusion, none of the world’s leaders, all of whom are fully aware of the impending genocide, and those who criticized the helpless World War II leaders for not stopping an unstoppable genocide, are readily permitting and abetting the ultimate genocide of the Palestinian people. A PBS program, The U.S. and the Holocaust, accused the United States, who rescued European civilization, of not doing enough to save European Jews. The program could not resurrect the dead and seemed to serve no purpose. Now, it has a purpose. PBS, where is your follow-up program on the United States abetting the genocide of the Palestinians and urging the U.S. to save Palestinian lives? What and who has caused this incomprehensible condition?
Israel’s dilemma has been how to construct a racially pure state and extinguish the Palestinian presence in the country without the world noticing the genocide. It has found the solution and the world takes no notice.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
law firms Davis Polk & Wardwell and Winston & Strawn are retaliating against law students who signed on to or drafted public statements in support of Palestine by rescinding letters of employment. “Shame on [Davis Polk & Wardwell] for penalizing students for exercising their rights of free speech and to oppose genocide in violation of International law,” Chaumtoli Huq…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.