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Holiday Shopping to benefit our community and the world community!
Crossroads Springs Institute (www.crossroadssprings.org)
15% of net sales from 4-8 PM will benefit Crossroads Springs, Kenya, a school and care center for orphans of AIDS. Your purchase helps provide artisans with the means to support their families through the sale of beautiful fairly traded handcrafts.
Thursday, December 10, 2009, 4-8 PM
Ten Thousand Villages
5596 Main Street, Williamsville, NY 14221 Read more »
Don't Worry!
We will not be providing commentary on She-Who-Must-Not-Be Named's new book tour. It's not worth our time.
Troops Out of Afghanistan Now
By
We often hear in American political rhetoric that the war in
A Tale From Gaza
By John Lloyd
A friend just asked me if the situation in Gaza had calmed down because they had not heard anything on the news lately. I was shocked because of course it isn’t better in Gaza, it’s worse. Do we have so much going on in our lives that conflicts in other countries become abstract unless we have periodic reminders? Perhaps. If so, here’s a reminder in the form of the story of a friend of mine.
Ayman Hassan Al Masri lives in the town of Biet Lahya in the northern part of the Gaza Strip along with his wife Ghada and their six children. The kids range from one to fourteen years old. I met Ayman over repeated card games at our home in Gaza during 2004 and later in and around his farm lands. We spent a lot of evenings together and I knew him to be kind, even tempered and having a gentle disposition. In normal times, he runs the family nursery business raising fruit trees for local farmers and for export. But these are not normal times.
Early in 2004, an Israeli tank paid the Al Masri family business a visit. The results were catastrophic. The tank ran directly through a line of greenhouses carrying away the construction and irrigation system. It also destroyed the entire nursery stock. When I visited the site, six months later, it was still a jumbled mess of mud, torn plastic, broken piping and dead plants. But, it gets worse. In 2003, a year earlier, the nursery had also been paid a visit by a marauding armored vehicle. This previous attack had also completely destroyed the greenhouses and nursery stock. The family business was wiped out two years in a row and as far as I know, never did recover. Read more »
Kathy Kelly's Speech at the WNY Peace Center Dinner
Kathy Kelly spoke at the WNY Peace Center's 42nd Anniversary Dinner. Thanks to Alt Press for hosting.
Jim Holstun on Effie Eitam
November 3, 2009
Last night (Monday, November 2), Israeli Brigadier General (ret.) Effie Eitam gave a talk at the University at Buffalo. The talk, sponsored by Buffalo Hillel and the Jewish National Fund (JNF), has generated a good deal of controversy, including a protest during the talk. I’ll begin with an announcement I drew up drawing attention to some of General Eitam’s statements, and inviting people to the protest. The links give a good taste of General Eitam’s extreme positions:
protest Fascist effie eitam!
Monday, November 2, 7:00 p.m.
ub Student Union, 2nd floor (map here)
Sometimes, people overuse the word “fascist”; sometimes, it fits just right.
Hillel of Buffalo and the Jewish National Fund are sponsoring a campus talk by Israeli Brigadier General Effie Eitam, a man so extreme that he has attacked Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert from the right! Israeli journalist Uri Avnery has called him “the #1 fascist in Israel.” General Eitam
—calls Palestinians a “ticking bomb” and a “cancer“ that Israel must cut out.
—admits that Israel attacked Palestinian schools in Gaza; advocates mass transfer of Gaza civilians and turning Gaza Strip into a “free hunting zone.”.
—organizes, as Housing Commissioner, illegal Israeli colonization of the West Bank.
—calls on Israel to expel West Bank Palestinians and colonize their land.
—demands that Israeli Palestinians be ethnically cleansed.
—advocates using Palestinian civilians as human shields in battle.
—calls nations other than Israel a “world of robots without souls.”
—worships warfare in classic fascist fashion: “In war, the most sublime things in man appear. . . . There is a certain uplifting, like the offering of a sacrifice.”
Stop the Hate! At 6:30 p.m. tonight, please join concerned UB students, faculty, and members of the community for the protest in the lobby of the Student Union. General Eitam’s lecture, allegedly open to the public, follows at 7:30.
It was one of the most energetic, unified, raucous, and impressive demonstrations I’ve seen on the UB campus. Thanks are due to primarily to UB Students for Justice in Palestine, and also to the Palestine-Israel Committee of the Western New York Peace Center, and many students, teachers, and other friends from the community.
The lecture room was packed: at least 100 people, maybe more. Moderator Dan Lenard began with a denunciation of our effort to present critical information about Eitam and to urge Hillel to cancel the lecture. General Eitam’s lecture was a mish-mash of Arab-hating, awkwardly-presented hasbara (Israeli boosterism and propaganda), and pure lies. He actually said that Iran is behind Al Qaeda (no, I’m not making this up), that Palestinians fled their homes in 1948 because Arab leaders ordered them to do so (a mythy debunked decades ago by Walid Khalidi and Erskine Childers), that everyone should stop worrying about the Palestinians and let Israel take care of them (they certainly do seem inclined to do this, as the Gaza Massacre shows), that there was a constant barrage of rockets from Gaza until Israel invaded (simply a lie: see “Israel’s Fabricated Rocket Crisis”), and that Palestinians on the West Bank are desperate for Israel to maintain the Occupation and save them from Hamas. Eitam was practicing not just the Big Lie Theory, but the Multiple Hilarious Big Lies Theory. There simply was no time to address them all.
General Eitam devoted most of the evening to inciting a US war against Iran. Like so many American warhawks unfazed by the disastrous war we have waged to find Iraq’s non-existent nuclear weapons, General Eitam is apparently indifferent to the baseline idiocy of this jingoistic campaign: two massive nuclear powers, one of them berserk enough actually to have used nuclear weapons against human beings, whipping themselves into a lather over the nuclear threat posed by a nation with no nuclear weapons. Eitam even included the most famous “quote” by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (in fact, Ahmadinejad never said it) about “wiping Israel off the map.” In a quietly terrifying suggestion, he observed that Harry Truman was absolutely right to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, despite the horrors of the results. I don’t think we need to work too hard to see what this analogy implies for Iran. What would local media be saying if someone had appeared at UB urging Americans to launch an unprovoked nuclear attack on Israel, or any other nation?
Hillel Student to Arab Student: "Why don't you go blow yourself up?"
By Irene Morrison
On Monday afternoon, I snuck into the private lunch for Israeli General Effi Eitam, a far-right, blatantly anti-Arab member of the Israeli government, held in the Hillel offices at UB. My intention was to confront Eitam about his many racist comments and the criminal actions of his government, only to hear shocking comments made by students in Hillel.
"Should we kill him when no one's looking?" joked one Hillel student, referring to Nicolas Kabat, who stood outside the Hillel office, handing out fliers to passerby. The flier is entitled "STOP Hate Speech on Campus" and quotes Eitam's reference to Arab Israelis as a "ticking bomb" and a "cancer" Israel must cut out, as well as his defense of using Palestinians as human shields.
In perhaps the most blatantly racist statement, one Hillel student shouted to Thawab Shibly, "Why don't you go blow yourself up?" But before this, two students remark of Kabat's flier: "But I love hate speech, that's why I'm here," and "I wish I had a human shield."
I then listened to Eitam go on a tirade about Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah, and how their efforts to make peace with them all failed, and “withdrawal” from Gaza was also a failure. He then compared Israel's reactions to the likes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, explaining that Truman had to "incinerate 200,000 people in a second" to protect American troops. You're right in one respect, Mr. Eitam: bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki is very similar to systematically killing Palestinians. Where I differ: they are similar in that they are both completely morally indefensible.
The greatest irony was his explanation of why they "had to" attack Gazan civilians. He related a story of a female suicide bomber in Israel before she blew up a bus, saying that she looked at an Israeli mother with a baby in her lap before pressing the button. "Even animals don't do that," he said, "when they fight, animals protect their children." He mentioned nothing of the 400 Palestinian children killed in the attack on Gaza, or the fact that their teeth sometimes shatter because of calcium deficiencies as a result of severe restrictions on food aid, or that 91%* of Gazan children have PTSD.
When he was done speaking and it was time for questions, I asked him why he has made such racist comments as calling Arab Israelis a "cancer" and a “ticking time bomb” that needed to be expelled from Israel. I had to ask him the question three times before he denied ever having said those things, saying he can't believe people would take his words so far out of context, and that the Arab Israelis in parliament were being "very irresponsible." Of course, these statements are well-documented.
Before leaving (after being yelled at by the organizer for getting into a private talk, with two dozen angry people at my back saying nasty things to & about me), I reminded him of the 400 Palestinian children killed in the most recent attack on Gaza. I didn’t stick around to hear his response. Read more »
Lessons in Neutrality From a UB "Distinguished Speaker"
By Nicolas Kabat
There are many lessons to learn from “distinguished speakers” such as Tony Blair, the current Mideast Quartet Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, who spoke at the University of Buffalo last Wednesday. One statement in particular by the former Prime Minster struck a chord: “you never solve these conflicts by taking one view and forgetting about the other.” Of course, he was referencing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Later, he demanded that captured Israeli Soldier Gilad Shalit be released. However, he seemed to have forgotten the Palestinian prisoner story. So, I will tell the other side of the Gilad Shalit story.
In its 2007 annual report, B’tselem, the Israeli human rights organization, noted that Israeli military forces arbitrarily detained about 830 Palestinians a month. These “administrative detentions” amount to midnight kidnappings of Palestinians without any justification or proper legal proceeding. Detainees are rarely informed of the nature of their infraction, and they face a military, not civilian, tribunal. These detentions can last up to 6 months, but may be renewed as many times as the military deems them necessary. As a result, Israel often holds Palestinians indefinitely and without charge.
There have been many cases of minors being detained by Israeli forces, who seldom inform parents of the whereabouts of the children or about the nature of their supposed violations. In 2008, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Israeli forces detained two Palestinian girls from a West Bank town near Bethlehem for unexplained reasons. Family members and friends said that the girls had avoided political matters. Four months after their detention, they were still in Israeli prisons. This was not reported in the American media. However, the story of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier held captive in Gaza by Hamas, has made international headlines for months.
A Different Kind of Green: The Clean Air Coalition of WNY Mobilizes for Cleaner Air in Tonawanda
By Erin Heaney
At first glance, it doesn’t appear the green movement has hit Kaufman Avenue. The three-block street is nestled in the heart of industrial Tonawanda. Her neighbors are FMC Industrial Chemicals, Noco and Tonawanda Coke. A walk down the street reveals more clunkers than hybrids, more power lines than gardens. Kids play in the shadows of ominous smoke stacks and the towering Huntley power plant ensures that the residents have no view of the Niagara River.
But appearances can be deceiving. Despite the odds, Kaufman Avenue is home to Western New York’s most powerful environmental movement. In spite of the stench that oozes from their industrial neighbors, they’ve gone outside, talked to one another and collectively decided that they deserve better. The families on this street are serious about reducing pollution in their neighborhood and they are building the political will to ensure that they get the results they want.
Their story begins humbly. When Jackie James-Creedon was diagnosed with fibromyalgia she suspected that what she was breathing had something to do with her illness. She began to speak out and quickly found others who had similar suspicions.
Jackie met people like Jen Ratajczak, a mom from Kenmore, who was battling leukemia, and Jeani Thomson, who had lived in Tonawanda 40 years and battled four different forms of cancer. Together, they decided to find out what was in the air they were breathing. They partnered with the Global Community Monitor to create their own air monitoring devices using equipment they bought at Home Depot. Their findings were astonishing. The buckets revealed extremely high levels of benzene, formaldehyde and ammonia.
But Jackie, a chemistry student, knew they would need more proof. So she and others named themselves the Clean Air Coalition of WNY and headed off to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). Using the data they had already collected and a lot of persistence, the CACWNY convinced the DEC to fund a year long air quality study in the area around Kaufman Avenue. Read more »