No Guns for Negroes

Part I

Part II

‘Institutional Failures’ Led Military to Teach War on Islam

Wired
Spencer Ackerman
Noah Shachtman

A class urging senior US military officers to wage “total war” on Islam wasn’t just the work of one misguided teacher. According to an inquiry ordered by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, it was the result of “institutional failures in oversight and judgment” at one of the military’s top educational institutions.

Those are the results of a months-long, military-wide review into the US armed forces’ educational programs, prompted by a series of Danger Room articles on counter-terrorism training that sought to portray the world’s billion-plus Muslims as enemies of the United States.

The worst of those courses was taught at Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia. Titled “Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism,” the course began years ago as an inoffensive examination of the roots of violent extremism. But in later years, the class was “modified to adopt a teaching methodology that portrayed Islam almost entirely in a negative way,” said Col. Dave Lapan, a spokesman for Gen. Martin Dempsey, the nation’s top military officer.

The instructor of the course, Army Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley, spent weeks arguing that the US was at war with the Islamic faith. In planning for that war’s next phases, Dooley invited his students to use the lessons of “Hiroshima” to wipe out whole cities at once, and to target the “civilian population wherever necessary.”

Dooley has now been stripped of his teaching position at the college and formally reprimanded — but not cashiered from the Army. Two civilian officials at the college are being reviewed for possible “administrative or disciplinary action,” according to Lapan. “A second military officer will receive administrative counseling.”

With the exception of Dooley’s class, however, the Pentagon review “confirmed that adequate academic standards for approving course curricula, presentations and selecting qualified guest lecturers were in place” at the rest of the military’s teaching centers, Lapan added.
That brings the inquiry to a close — without resolving several questions about the course. Nor will the officers exposed to the anti-Islam message receive retraining to correct what the military itself considers an inappropriate and offensive instruction.

Private Prison Corporations Are Slave Traders

Black Agenda Report
Glen Ford

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

“The Corrections Corporation of America believes the economic crisis has created an historic opportunity to become the landlord, as well as the manager, of a big chunk of the American prison gulag.”

The nation’s largest private prison company, the Corrections Corporation of America, is on a buying spree. With a war chest of $250 million, the corporation, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, this month sent letters to 48 states, offering to buy their prisons outright. To ensure their profitability, the corporation insists that it be guaranteed that the prisons be kept at least 90 percent full. Plus, the corporate jailers demand a 20-year management contract, on top of the profits they expect to extract by spending less money per prisoner.

For the last two years, the number of inmates held in state prisons has declined slightly, largely because the states are short on money. Crime, of course, has declined dramatically in the last 20 years, but that has never dampened the states’ appetites for warehousing ever more Black and brown bodies, and the federal prison system is still growing. However, the Corrections Corporation of America believes the economic crisis has created an historic opportunity to become the landlord, as well as the manager, of a big chunk of the American prison gulag.

The attempted prison grab is also defensive in nature. If private companies can gain both ownership and management of enough prisons, they can set the prices without open-bid competition for prison services, creating a guaranteed cost-plus monopoly like that which exists between the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex.

“If private companies are allowed to own the deeds to prisons, they are a big step closer to owning the people inside them.”

But, for a better analogy, we must go back to the American slave system, a thoroughly capitalist enterprise that reduced human beings to units of labor and sale. The Corrections Corporation of America’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission read very much like the documents of a slave-trader. Investors are warned that profits would go down if the demand for prisoners declines. That is, if the world’s largest police state shrinks, so does the corporate bottom line. Dangers to profitability include “relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws." The corporation spells it out: “any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them." At the Corrections Corporation of America, human freedom is a dirty word.

But, there is something even more horrifying than the moral turpitude of the prison capitalists. If private companies are allowed to own the deeds to prisons, they are a big step closer to owning the people inside them. Many of the same politicians that created the system of mass Black incarceration over the past 40 years, would gladly hand over to private parties all responsibility for the human rights of inmates. The question of inmates' rights is hardly raised in the debate over prison privatization. This is a dialogue steeped in slavery and racial oppression. Just as the old slave markets were abolished, so must the Black American Gulag be dismantled – with no compensation to those who traffic in human beings.

For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

New plan criminalizes Palestinian citizens of Israel

Alternative Information Center

On the request of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Minister of Internal Security, Yitzhak Aharonovitch (Israel Beteinu), presented a plan to the government today that will essentially criminalize Palestinian citizens of Israel under the guise of “improving personal and community security within the Arab sector.”

According to the plan, which the Ministry of Public Security has already begun to implement, three special police units, including detective and investigation units, were created in Nazareth, Tayibe and the Bedouin communities in the south. Some 11 additional units will be established within the next two years. According to the plan, neighborhood watches will be strengthened in Arab areas and the Arab sector will be given special priority for programs like “City Without Violence” and the war on drugs.

While the Aharonovitch plan is presented as a service to the Arab-Palestinian community in Israel, it further criminalizes Palestinian citizens of the state without addressing the root causes of crime.

According to Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, the criminal justice system is regularly used as a means of delegitimizing Palestinian political acts. Police routinely use force against Arab demonstrators in order to silence voices of protest. Furthermore, Palestinian citizens encounter disproportionate and systematic mass arrests, primarily on the pretense of their mere presence at the scene.

In addition, more than 30 laws discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the current government coalition has proposed new racist and discriminatory bills which are at various stages in the legislative process. They include laws that will place restrictions on freedom of movement, freedom of speech, and access to the political system, including ideological limitations on the platforms of political parties. Such laws are used to curb the political freedom of Palestinian citizens and their elected representatives and are shrinking their already limited space for political action.

In addition to the legal restrictions imposed by the state, the Palestinian community within Israel is subject to constant racist attacks by law enforcement agencies and by Jewish citizens.

The Role of Jews in the Palestinian Solidarity Movement

Counterpunch
By HENRY HERSKOVITZ
and MICHELLE J. KINNUCAN

After Malcolm X returned from his epiphanic trip to Mecca, he was asked if White people could join his Organization of Afro-American Unity. He was very clear in his response:

“They can't join us. I have these very deep feelings that white people who want to join black organizations are really just taking the escapist way to salve their consciences. By visibly hovering near us, they are 'proving' that they are 'with us'. But the hard truth is this isn't helping to solve America's racist problem. The Negroes aren't the racists. Where the really sincere white people have got to do their 'proving' of themselves is not among the black victims, but out there on the battle lines of where America's racism really is – and that's in their own home communities.” The Autobiography of Malcolm X, pp 383-384, emphasis in original.

He added that by working separately, Whites and Blacks would form a successful collective. "Working separately, the sincere white people and the sincere black people actually will be working together."

The words of this fighter for justice are valid 46 years later in another context: Defining the role of Jews in the Palestine solidarity movement. The lesson is that sincere Jews should not play leading roles in the Palestinian solidarity movement, but should instead expose and challenge the racism that exists in their own Jewish communities. So what are Jewish-led and Jewish-identified groups and leaders doing? Certainly, they criticize atrocities committed by Israel in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, but are they clearly defining their positions? Do they oppose Jewish supremacism, as some opposed White supremacism in South Africa during the 1980s? Which of the higher profile Jewish-led and Jewish-identified groups are demanding an end to a Jewish state and full and immediate return for displaced Palestinians and their descendents?

With the possible exception of the Neturei Karta rabbis, they don't exist. Following Malcolm X, Jews have predictably ingratiated themselves into some Palestinian organizations, have created "dialogue" groups between Jews and Palestinians (where the elephant of who's oppressing whom is conveniently ignored), have spoken clearly against Christian Zionism, but where are their voices challenging Judaic Zionism? After all, it's "their own home community". 

Why is it that our group, Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends, standing in front of an avowedly Zionist synagogue in Ann Arbor, Michigan for over seven years, remains the only Jewish-founded and Jewish-led group that openly and explicitly challenges Jewish power, here and in Palestine? Why is there a list of over forty Jewish peace activists who refuse to stand with us and against the racism so deeply rooted in their own community? What are they in the game for? 

Proportionately and in dollars spent, votes coerced, degree of dedication and organization, no other community supports Israel more strongly than the Jewish community. Perhaps a case might be made that Christian Zionists are more numerous, but they follow the lead of Jewish Zionists; strong Jewish-led anti-Zionist campaigns focused on the Jewish community would help empower more Christians to challenge Christian Zionism. Also, Christian Zionists are dwarfed by the political footprint of the Jewish organizations comprising the "Israel Lobby". In short, the Jewish community's worthiness and appropriateness as a target for criticism and concerted anti-Zionist organizing is as clear as it is confounding that more Jews don't take on this vital task.

This writer joined the steering committee of a local peace group shortly after the attacks of 9/11 and was continuously frustrated that attempts to place Palestine on the table for discussion and action were swept off. This in spite of the fact that US support for Israel was one of three major reasons the attacks were purportedly launched. The Jewish leaders of this peace group could not countenance harsh criticisms of Israel, and when membership overwhelmingly (78 per cent in favor) supported a resolution calling for an end to military aid, the leadership eventually terminated the membership and reorganized Michigan Peaceworks as a Director-led 501(c)(3) organization.

Personal experiences like the above suggest a pattern: Jews become peace activists, but when the realization strikes that they must choose between the mutually exclusive constructs of a Jewish state and a just peace, these activists move into gate-keeper mode. Like Monty Python's Black Knight, they cry "None shall pass" to those of us who call for the peaceful dismantlement of the Jewish state. Our voices are marginalized, and by the very same folks who should be joining us.

After all, who better than Jewish activists to challenge the Jewish community? Personal discussions with Christian activists indicate that all-too-many are terrified of being labeled an "anti-Semite". Terrified to the point of inaction, at best. They look to Charles Freeman, Arun Gandhi, Helen Thomas, and Will Smith as examples of what could happen to them should they speak truthfully.

This sets the stage for true peace activism from Jews in the movement: The racist nature of the Jewish state is fostered in local, American Jewish communities. As an example, the rabbi at Beth Israel Congregation, where we protest every Saturday, confirmed in the local newspaper that his congregation is unabashedly Zionist: "there is one general statement which I can make on behalf of the congregation - Beth Israel Congregation affirms without any hesitation or equivocation the legitimacy of the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish state". According to its website, Beth Israel proudly stood with Israel as it battered Lebanon in 2006. Children from Beth Israel are taken on trips to Israel where they are posed with armed IDF soldiers and in front of military vehicles. In short, Zionist indoctrination and support for Israel are staples in the religious life of that congregation.

The unwillingness of many Jewish activists and organizations to confront the local roots of violent Jewish supremacism foisted upon the indigenous people of Palestine is shocking and inexcusable. It would be clear to Malcolm X, were he to return to us today. He would most likely have harsh words to Jewish peace activists who do not hold their own community accountable for the support they give the Jewish state, much like he had for Whites who refused to expose the racism in the White community.

The solution to Jewish supremacism in Palestine is simple: End it. Demand of Jews in the peace movement that they stop yelling only about a 1967 "occupation", and start condemning the creation and maintenance of a Jewish supremacist state imposed by force upon an unwilling and incredibly resilient native population in 1948. This was the culmination of a Jewish movement started decades earlier. Taking the cause of justice and peace back to the Jewish community is the most valid path forward for Jews supporting an end to the racism both in Palestine and in their own community.

Henry Herskovitz is a retired Mechanical Engineer, and became a peace activist after witnessing the effects of US-led sanctions against Iraq in 2000. He founded Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends, a group in Ann Arbor that has held non-violent vigils at Beth Israel Congregation for over seven years. He's worked with the International Solidarity Movement as well as the Michigan Peace Team in Palestine. Contact:  http://www.facebook.com/people/Henry-Herskovitz/627467402

Netanyahu is turning Israel into another South Africa

Haaretz
Sefi Rachlevsky

Let us imagine Meretz founder Shulamit Aloni as prime minister of Israel. An impish fantasy for some of us. In that case, would it be reasonable to imagine Shas launching a campaign under the slogan "Only the daring will win," calling upon Aloni to gather her courage and transform Israel into a theocracy under rabbinical law? Not really.

And is it possible that in their "Zurich initiative," the leaders of the settlers would submit to Aloni a practical and detailed plan for building 500,000 apartments in the Israeli colony in the territories, with the aim of perpetuating it? This too is not really likely. And not only in Israel.

Is it possible to imagine the American right in a campaign advising President Barack Obama to gather his courage and revoke medical insurance legislation or submitting a detailed plan to him for a sweeping prohibition on abortions in the United States? Did the left in the U.S. ever suggest to President George W. Bush a plan for making the country a welfare state and did it bother to urge Nixon to embrace the peace organizations during the Vietnam War?

Even as rhetorical questions, these things look imaginary. And this, strangely and exceptionally, is exactly how the non-right in Israel has been operating for years now. In all the established democracies there is the simple awareness that the role of the alternative is to be an alternative. It has to challenge the regime and its values. Not give advice to the ruler but instead display determination to replace him. The alternative's role is to delegitimize the regime, its ways and its values, and to try to obtain a majority for a different set of values.

Only in non-democratic countries does the head of state derive his power from being perceived as impossible to replace and it seem possible only to advise him. This is the way things have looked in the Arab countries until recently. These simple things are clear to everyone in democratic systems. To everyone, that is, except the non-right in Israel. Only these people - from within what they perceive as good intentions and "responsibility" - look like eunuchs scurrying in an attempt to give advice "from within" to a regime that has chosen the opposite path.

It is not possible to understand the messianic, racist and anti-democratic right's move from the margins to dominance in the government without considering the flaccidity of the non-right in Israel and its choice of political conduct, for which there is no parallel. This strange stance has built up the power of the right in many dimensions. First of all, this depicts it as a "regime," for which there is no substitute, and all that remains is for the advisors/eunuchs to fight for closeness to its ear.

Secondly, this enables the extreme rightist ruler to move towards the "center" in the public's perception. This is how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's success came about. He is the leader of a radical and multi-faceted rightist outlook, from the incitement demonstrations before the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin to the intentional damage inflicted on the Oslo agreements and democracy - an outlook that should be locating him in a place similar to that of a politician from the fringes of the American right, beyond Sarah Palin. His image, however, has become that of someone located close to the center. Someone who will soon decide between advice from National Union MK Michael Ben Ari and advice from the 'Geneva Peace Initiative'.

There is nothing that distances the public more from the alternative than arrogance. The politically mistaken path also radiates tremendous arrogance. As though there were an "objectively" correct path, which the right and its voters in their stupidity are not managing to understand. If only we explain it well - to the appropriate person - and market a precise plan that is worthwhile to everyone, then those who are having difficulty will understand.

But having Israel return to its Declaration of Independence and establish a democratic and egalitarian state within the 1967 borders is not good for everyone. The racist and messianic world is not going to enjoy this change. Its values are the opposite.

Avoidance of the battle over values at this time is tantamount to an existential scandal. The Palestinians are getting close to a declaration of independence. Israel, with its Declaration of Independence, should be the first to support this.

It is not by mistake that Netanyahu is leading the country to the lepers' corner where South Africa used to be. For precisely the same racist values, the Declaration of Independence is being trampled in the Knesset. It's not advice whispered into the prime minister's ear that Israel needs - but rather a clear alternative that will supplant him for the sake of a democratic Israel.

Israeli town rallies against African refugees

Al Jazeera

African refugees, and the misconceptions
that come with them, have become a major
issue in the Israeli town of Eilat, inspiring the
"red flag" campaign against the newcomers
[Mya Guarnieri]

Eilat is home to thousands of refugees and their lives in the small town are often marred by open hostility.

James Anei was a 16-year-old boy when he witnessed a massacre carried out by militias loyal to the government in Khartoum, Sudan's capital. Terrified, he fled his village in South Sudan.

"You see someone dying in front of you and you know this guy and you know his parents and so you run ... because you fear that you will be killed too," Anei said.

"I find myself in another place," he added, explaining that he was so frightened that he did not know he had been running until he stopped.

Once he realised he had escaped, Anei headed north. That year, 1999, he arrived in Khartoum. There, he managed to scrape together a living and go to school. Anei remembers crying sometimes when he saw his classmates with their mothers and fathers - not knowing whether his own parents had survived the massacre.

Eventually, Anei went on to Egypt. But, because he did not feel safe there, he crossed into Israel in 2007.

With a smile, Anei recalls the difference between Egypt and Israel he felt the moment he entered the country. "We received water and blankets," he said. "They made us feel at home."
But Anei was one of the earliest African migrants to arrive in Israel, and things have changed dramatically since then.

The shift is most obvious, perhaps, in Eilat, the small city in the south where Anei and several thousand African asylum seekers live. Here, refugees find their children barred from municipal schools. And in a move that has alarmed both human rights organisations and the local branch of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the municipality has hung red flags throughout the city as part of a municipal campaign against African migrants - initiated by employees of the state of Israel and financed with public funds.

The flags are part of a campaign called "protect our homes", hung by residents under the auspicies of local solidarity against the migrants.

Job and rape issues

I visited Eilat in the wake of several media reports that the 1,500 red flags had been taken down. I found that they were not removed but reduced; some were replaced by Israeli and municipal flags.
And the sentiments that gave rise to the campaign are still running high.

Shimon Hajiani, the 19-year-old son of Jewish immigrants who came to Israel from Morocco and France, remarks that the state needs to "throw" African refugees out.

"They make problems," he says.

When asked what those problems are, Hajiani answers: "Rape and robbery. Also they work in the hotels instead of Israelis."

Eilat's economy is dependent on tourism. While many African asylum seekers are employed in local hotels, the commonly held idea that they have "stolen" jobs is untrue. These are jobs that Israelis do not want - which is one reason why government initiatives encouraging Israelis to move to Eilat and work in this sector have failed.

Other interviewees repeated Hajiani's claim that African refugees are robbing Israelis and raping Jewish woman. But according to statistics compiled by the Knesset, asylum seekers have a lower crime rate than Israelis. And in fact, as the community of asylum seekers grows, their crime rate goes down.

Misinformation abounds

I conducted dozens of interviews with Israelis who live in Eilat, and not a single one had their facts straight; each and every Israeli I spoke with is a victim of misinformation.

Ester Ederi, a 72-year old immigrant from Morocco, told me it would be fine if Israel took in 100,000 asylum seekers and then closed its doors.

In reality, Israel is home to only 30,000 asylum seekers.

A 29-year-old man, who preferred to remain anonymous, told me that asylum seekers should be sent back to Africa because "the Filipinos" took his mother's job as a caregiver. He does not know that a tremendous majority of Filipinos arrive legally, holding visas issued by Israel.

He added that if the Africans were here "within a legal framework," he would have no problem with them.

"But there is a legal framework. There's an application that would give African migrants refugee status," I replied. "The government just ignores these applications."

He was visibly uncomfortable. "Really?" he asked.

"Yes. Did you know that?"

"No."

Like other interviewees, he calls them "infiltrators". This is a word he has picked up from the Israeli government and media, not knowing that when Israel speaks to the UN about the issue, it admits that 90 per cent of these "infiltrators" are, indeed, refugees.

Every interviewee parrots the government lines, including those of Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, who calls "the flood" of African migrants a "threat" to the state. Some repeat the words of Eli Yishai, the interior minister, who claims that foreigners bring diseases into the country.

Refugee status in question

Anei is now a man of 28. We sat on a half-broken picnic table outside a small classroom where Sudanese children study English with a European volunteer. In a few minutes, the class Anei teaches - also on a volunteer basis - would begin.

The municipality's treatment of the children, most of whom are barred from local schools, is a rare soft spot among some Eilat residents.

Itzik Moshe, the owner of a falafel stand and the son of Moroccan immigrants, remarked that Israel needs to respect the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

"We signed this international agreement and we have to honour it," Moshe said, adding that if the government does not want to be responsible for the asylum seekers, it should tighten up the porous southern border.

Some Jewish critics of Israel's treatment of African asylum say that their history as refugees - Biblical and historical, ancient and modern - means that the Jewish people have a special responsibility to help those who face discrimination and genocide.

But many Eilatis do not want to help others. And some, like Simon Ben David - who is organizing a small grassroots organization called "The War against the Infiltrators from Africa" - simply deny that these African asylum seekers are indeed refugees.

Ben David added: "I believe, as I see in the newspaper, that some of them are from al Qaeda and they're from Hamas and Islamic Jihad," referring to several unsubstantiated reports that have appeared in the Israeli press.

Asked if he considers the city's campaign against Africans to be racist, Ben David simply answered, "Jews cannot be racist."

Open hostility a way of life

While African refugees and their children have been targeted in isolated incidents of violence throughout the country, Eilat remains relatively quiet.

But as I stood on a sidewalk interviewing Deng Wol, a 37-year-old refugee from South Sudan, a Jewish Israeli pushes past us. He hit Wol's leg with a bag of groceries so hard that my recorder caught the slapping sound.

Wol looked shocked. He called after the man. "Aiii!" he said, grabbing his calf.
The man turns around. He didn't apologize. Rather, he said that there wasn't space on the sidewalk for all of us. Wol accepted the explanation, even though it's not true. "Okay, fine," he said, waving at the man.

Wol gave a nervous laugh and turned to me. "This is not my country," he said, shrugging.
Many Israelis consider Eilat - a faraway town at the southernmost tip of the country - an isolated issue. But it seems that the xenophobic sentiments which have taken root there, with the encouragement of both the local and national governments, are spreading.

I have seen several red flags hanging from balconies in south Tel Aviv, an area home to low-income Jewish Israelis, African refugees, and migrant workers. Jewish Israelis here have held protests against the presence of foreigners.

The most recent march came in early April, just weeks before the Jewish holiday that celebrates the ancient Hebrew exodus from slavery and persecution in Egypt. Protesters, who screamed at Africans that they should "Go home," held signs that read: "Return [deport] the 200,000 infiltrators and illegals now."

Mya Guarnieri is a Tel Aviv-based journalist and writer.