Back in the USSR Palestine Show Opening Theme Lowkey - "Long Live Palestine" You’re listening to Back in the USSR here on 93.3 FM CFRU, I am Siegfried. I was absent from Guelph last week, visiting a good friend of mine in Ottawa-Hull so I didn’t do a live show last week, as you might have noticed, but before I left I said that I’d be addressing a particularly pressing issue on the show when I got back. A subject that I have unfortunately not devoted enough attention to this year, and that is the subject of Palestine and the Palestinian liberation struggle in the face of Israeli settler-colonialism and Apartheid. This issue was recently thrust back into center stage with the recent decision of the Trump administration to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem, thus recognizing Israel’s claim to the entire city and denying the aspirations of the Palestinians who have long sought an independent viable state with East Jerusalem as its capital. To give some historical background: During the 1947-48 ethnic cleansing campaign through which the Israeli state was created, Israel took control of West Jerusalem. Twenty years later, East Jerusalem was occupied and, in 1973, the Israeli government mandated a 73 to 26 percent demographic advantage for Jewish residents. Since that time, 280,000 settlers have illegally moved in, and Israel has stripped 14,500 Palestinians of their residency rights, made it prohibitively difficult for the remaining Palestinians to get building permits, enacted discriminatory budgets, and provided municipal services unequally. In short, Apartheid was introduced to East Jerusalem. However, the city, long the center of Palestinian life, does not fall under Israeli sovereignty according to under international law. In this respect, Trump’s decision, in the words of the Palestine Centre for Human Rights, amounts to “recognition from those who do not own to those who do not deserve.” In the words of the Palestinian Youth Movement, the decision is “tantamount to spitting in the face of our people and decades-long anti-colonial struggle and even constitute[s] a form of colonial incitement,” a “symbolic coup-de-grace towards Palestinian assertion of our rightful self-determination and agency over our shared social, cultural and historical heritage.” Likewise, the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq noted that the “recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel violates the inalienable Palestinian right to self-determination” while the Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights points out that it is a “blatant breach of UN resolutions 476, 478, and 181 and undermines the rights of the Palestinian people.” Palestinians have launched mass protests in response to Trump’s blatant assault on their national rights. Israeli forces have bombed Gaza, killing two, and wounding approximately one hundred Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. The US government and the Israeli government remain defiant of international law and worldwide condemnation and are moving ahead with their clear agenda of further colonization and displacement of the Palestinian people. As my friend Greg Shupak, who recently published a book about the Palestinian struggle for self-determination, has pointed out, this move by the US to recognize Israeli occupation of Jerusalem is nothing new. It pre-dates the Trump administration by decades in fact, and has overwhelming bi-partisan support in the US Congress and Senate. Democrats have actually been pushing for this for the past twenty-five years. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama both came into office saying they supported moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, and, in 1995, Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act, which mandated that the United States move its embassy to Jerusalem. Thirty-two Democrats, including Joe Biden and John Kerry, cosponsored the bill. In June 2017, the Senate voted 90-0 to reaffirm the 1995 law and to call on the president to follow its provisions. Prominent Democrats like Cory Booker, Ben Cardin, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Chuck Schumer co-sponsored the resolution and Bernie Sanders voted in favor of it. Chuck Schumer, the Democrats’ leader in the Senate, actually criticized the president in October for his indecision over the issue and now claims he advised Trump to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s “undivided capital.” In this regard, the Jerusalem declaration represents another instance of bipartisan support for Israeli settler colonialism. The US government provided significant support to Israel since its creation, but the 1967 Six-Day War consecrated the relationship. Since then, Israel has served as, in Greg Shupak’s words. “an invaluable proxy for the American state, providing mercenary services against Arab nationalism, Middle Eastern leftists, Soviet allies in the region and beyond, and any force considered a barrier to American capital.” Israel has also become a lucrative arms market for US firms, and the ruling classes of both nations are so deeply enmeshed in sectors such as technology and security that it’s difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins. Israel could not have committed its innumerable crimes against the Palestinians and others in the region at any approaching the scale that it has without the United States underwriting it financially, military, and politically. The so-called “peace process” is part of this relationship. At the end of the Cold War, American and Israeli capitalists and politicians decided it would be within their best interests to integrate Israel into the regional order in the Middle East. For that to happen, they would have to put the Palestinian question to rest and either eliminate or co-opt the anti-colonial resistance movement among the Palestinian people. The 1993 Oslo Accords, negotiated in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse, were the culmination of this effort. Denied their strongest ally, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, similar to the ANC in South Africa in the same period, was forced to make painful compromises. The agreement put off the issues of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees’ right of return to an unspecified date and gave Palestinians only limited sovereignty over Gaza and the West Bank. Oslo assigned the administration of these territories to the Palestinian Authority (PA), which was itself created as a result of the accords. Mandy Turner accurately describes the PA as “a non-sovereign entity whose existence is subject to continuous negotiations with its occupier, Israel,” as well as with international donors unaccountable to Palestinians, making it “party to a complex process of co-optation while Israel continued its colonial practices.” The PA has regularly fulfilled both Israeli and American wishes, even collaborating with Israeli security forces in suppressing Palestinian resistance to the occupation. Oslo did nothing to halt the Israeli settler colonial project. Since 1993, the number of Israelis illegally settled in the West Bank — including East Jerusalem — has more than doubled. Gaza has been effectively reduced to the world’s largest open-air prison, where Israel has slaughters thousands, while Palestinian citizens of Israel continue to face systemic discrimination. The violence inherent in all these colonial relationships underlines the fact that “peace” is a misnomer: better to think of the process as one more phase of the 21st Century equivalent of the American Frontier, with the Palestinians playing the role of Native Americans on the receiving end of ultimately genocidal policies. As Rashid Khalidi documents in his book Brokers of Deceit, the United States has not stayed neutral in talks between Palestine and Israel but has acted, in his words, as “Israel’s lawyer.” US politicians have acted in accordance with “domestic politics and the politics of big oil and the big arms industry, all of which favored maintenance of a status quo predicated on preventing a just and peaceful resolution” in Palestine-Israel. From this perspective, Trump’s assertion that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel can only be understood as the logical conclusion of the so-called “peace process”. Greg Shupak’s latest article "The Jerusalem Gambit" appeared in Jacobin magazine. Here's a report by the Real News Network on the UN's motion condemning Trump's move and the significance it has: Phyllis Bennis (TRNN 2017) - "UN Defies Trump Threats in Jerusalem Vote" National Anthem of Palestine TRNN (2017) - Palestinians resist Israel and its US enablers MDC - Who's the terrorist now? (song from second intifada) Abby Martin (Breaking the Set 2015) - Apartheid state gives impunity for IDF soldiers The Wolfe Tones - Plastic Bullets Shir Hever (TRNN 2015) - Manifestations of Israeli Apartheid Saree Makdisi (FORA 2015) - Out of Sight Out of Mind, Israel trying to erase Palestinians Lowkey - Soundtrack to the Struggle Abby Martin (Breaking the Set 2015) - How the term human shield is used to justify state sponsored massacres Michael Parenti (Rambo and the Swarthy Hordes 1989) - On racist imperialist propaganda