EDITOR: Who controls Washington’s policy?
Well, you may well ask. Not Obama, that’s for sure. He can say what he likes (actually, he can’t!) but not do anything the boss does not like… and the boss is AIPAC, with its financial contribution to all but 5 senators and congressmen, and with its hosting of all presidential candidates, it is clear who controls Washington, and AIPAC is not even shy or coy about it. Of course, you cannot quite quite this in the media in so many words, but read below and see if you disagree. While in earlier times you needed Anti-Semites to invent racist lore about Jewish control, today AIPAC supplies the narrative, and it is not an invention. As usual, the west has bought the Israeli policy, hook, line and sinker. They are hooked.
Obama’s Iran strategy backed by US defence secretary amid GOP criticism: Guardian
Defence secretary Leon Panetta tells Aipac that critics of Obama’s Iran policy should not mistake diplomacy for weakness
Chris McGreal in Washington
The US defence secretary, Leon Panetta, has warned critics of Barack Obama’s Iran policy not to mistake a willingness to pursue diplomacy for weakness.
Panetta, speaking to a largely sceptical audience at the annual conference of the powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington, derided the aggressive posturing of some of the president’s opponents and more hawkish supporters of Israel, who have pressed for an explicit commitment to the use of force against Iran by setting “red lines” that Tehran’s nuclear programme must not cross.
Panetta said the military option is on the table as a last resort if sanctions fail, and the president’s record demonstrates he will use it if he believes there is no alternative.
“As the president made clear, the United States does not bluff. In this town it’s easy to talk tough. Acting tough is a hell of a lot more important,” he told the the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) conference.
“The president ordered 30,000 additional troops to battle in Afghanistan to confront a resurgent Taliban. He launched a comprehensive precision bombing campaign to protect the Libyans and ultimately toppled a brutal dictator. He has ordered US warships to pass through the straits of Hormuz – despite the threats that we have received from Iran.
“And he has been the driving force behind the most successful and lethal counter-terrorism campaign in US history, culminating in the bold decision to send US special operations forces hundreds of miles into Pakistan to take the risk to take down Bin Laden. And he did.”
Panetta’s speech was a clear rebuke to other speakers at Aipac, including three of the four Republican presidential candidates who also addressed the conference on Tuesday. Ron Paul was not invited following his calls to cut off aid to Israel, along with every other country, and because of his criticism that sanctions on Iran are driving it toward developing a nuclear weapon.
The other candidates also came out swinging against Obama’s Iran strategy.
Mitt Romney called Obama’s policy of “engagement” with Tehran naive, and said it gave the Iranian leadership time to develop its nuclear programme.
“Hope is not a foreign policy. The only thing respected by thugs and tyrants is our resolve backed by our power and our readiness to use it,” he said.
“In recent days and weeks we’ve heard a lot of words from the administration. Its clear message has been to warn Israel to consider the costs of military action against Iran. I don’t believe we should be issuing public warnings that create distance between the United States and Israel.”
But in the end, Romney’s position was not so far from Obama’s.
“I will bring the current policy of procrastination toward Iran to an end. I will not delay in imposing further crippling sanctions,” he said. “As president I’ll be ready to engage in diplomacy but I will be just as ready to engage our military might.”
Newt Gingrich, also speaking via video link, went furthest in saying that as president he would give Israel the means to attack Tehran’s nuclear facilities and let it do so without question.
“I will initiate a strategy in the tradition of Reagan, Thatcher and Pope John Paul II to undermine and replace the Iranian dictatorship by every possible method short of war in order to achieve a government we could trust and could deal with,” he said.
“At the same time I would provide all available intelligence to the Israeli government, ensure that they had the equipment necessary and reassure them that if an Israeli prime minister decides he has to avoid the threat of a second Holocaust through preemptive measures that I would require no advance notice to understand why I would support the right of Israel to survive in a dangerous world.”
Rick Santorum was the only candidate to appear in person at Aipac.
“As I’ve sat and watched this play out on the world stage I’ve seen a president who has been reticent. He says he has Israel’s back. From everything I’ve seen from the conduct of this administration, he’s turned his back on the people of Israel,” Santorum said to applause.
He accused Obama of appeasement over today’s news that the US will join Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany in a fresh round of negotiations with Iran.
“Another appeasement, another delay. Another opportunity for them [Iran] to go forward while we talk,” he said.
Santorum – breaking with the tradition that the president’s opponents do not generally side with other powers on the question of foreign policy – said there was a “tragic disconnect” between how Obama and the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, viewed the urgency of the situation.
“We need to set forth a clear ultimatum to the Iranian government. We need to say to the Iranian government: the time is now – you will stop your nuclear production now, you will open up your facilities for inspectors from the United States ad other countries so we can certify that those efforts are stopping and being dismantled, now,” he said to strong applause from the Aipac audience.
“We need to put that ultimatum in place and we need to be prepared if that ultimatum is not met … that if they don’t tear down those facilities, we will tear down them ourselves.”
The Republican candidate also had stinging criticism for the US military chief, General Martin Dempsey, who called Iran a “rational actor”.
“Rational actors don’t call for the destruction of other states, call them cancers, preach radical theologies,” he said. “Rational actors do not develop nuclear capability, calling for nuclear power, when they have hundreds of years of oil and gas to provide for their power and their medical research.”
Romney broke with the focus on Iran to mention the Palestinians – who have been virtually invisible as an issue at this Aipac conference to the gratification of the Israeli government – although his comments will have brought them little comfort.
“The current administration has distanced itself from Israel and visibly warmed to the Palestinian cause. It’s emboldened the Palestinians. They’re convinced that they can do better with America directly than they can at the bargaining table with Israel,” he said.
Romney took a stab at Obama’s assertion last year that a two-state solution will be based on the 1967 armistice lines with land swaps – a statement long accepted as the basis of a deal but which brought a torrent of accusations from the Republican right and some of Israel’s more militant supporters that he was selling out the Jewish state.
“I’ve seen Israel by land and by air. I’ve seen its narrow waist and its vulnerability,” said Romney. “I would never call for a return to the indefensible ’67 lines because I understand that, in Israel, geography is security.”
By conjuring the Holocaust, Netanyahu brought Israel closer to war with Iran: Haaretz
Haaretz’s editor-in-chief says that the Prime Minister publicly booby-trapped himself to war with Iran by comparing the need to strike its nuclear program with the Jewish request to bomb Auschwitz.
By Aluf Benn
In his speech to the AIPAC conference Monday night Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu moved closer than ever to the point of no return en route to war with Iran.
Netanyahu compared Iran to Nazi Germany, its nuclear facilities to death camps, and his current trip to the White House to a desperate plea to former U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt by the U.S. Jewish community to bomb Auschwitz.
The request, as Netanyahu told a sympathetic AIPAC crowd, was denied, using justifications similar to those used today by those who object to a military strike against Iran.
“Israel has patiently waited for the international community to resolve this issue. We’ve waited for diplomacy to work, we’ve waited for sanctions to work. None of us can afford to wait much longer,” Netanyahu warned, adding that, as Israeli premier, he would “never let Israel live under the shadow of annihilation.”
It was the same reason former Prime Minister Menachem Begin used to bomb the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981: preventing the possibility that Jewish children would face the peril of another Holocaust. Now it’s the turn of his successor, Netanyahu, to remove the danger hovering over the heads of Jewish children.
Netanyahu was in the habit of comparing the Iranian nuclear threat to the Holocaust back when he was opposition leader, claiming that the western powers were not doing enough to thwart it. But, since coming back to power, three years ago, he has refrained from making these kinds of statements, opting for a vaguer rhetoric and asking his ministers to keep the fervor down. That vagueness dissipated on Monday. In his speech to AIPAC, coming mere hours after his meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama in the White House, Netanyahu escalated the tone, both in his reference to a clock that was running out, and in his expressed disappointment from U.S.-led diplomatic sanctions.
The Holocaust talk has but one meaning: they force Israel to go to war and strike the Iranians. The justifications against an attack, weighty as those may be, turn to fumes when put up against the Warsaw Ghetto, Auschwitz, and Treblinka. No calculus of missiles falling on Tel Aviv, rising oil prices and economic crisis can hold water when compared to genocide. If that’s the situation, the option of sitting quietly, expecting the “world” to neutralize Iran, or of a stable balance of terror, becomes nonexistent. If Netanyahu doesn’t act and Iran achieves nuclear weapons capabilities, he’ll go down in history as a pathetic loud mouth. As a poor man’s Churchill.
But Netanyahu booby-trapped himself back when he was still making his way to Washington, when he presented Iran with a public ultimatum: dismantle the underground enrichment facility near Qom, cease all enrichment activity, and remove the medium-grade uranium from Iranian territory. He realizes that the Iranian government will never agree to those terms, which seems more like setting up a casus belli that a reasonable diplomatic demand. But Netanyahu’s Holocaust speech at the AIPAC conference went much further than that.
Obama asked Netanyahu to avoid inflammatory statements in regards to Iran, to keep gas prices down in America’s gas station. It’s an important issue when trying to rebuild the American economy as well as, of course, his reelection bid. And while Obama’s thinking may seem reasonable, he’s living in an entirely different world than that of Israel’s prime minister. From the White House, Iran looks like a strategic problem, not as a Holocaust. Thus, time isn’t of the essence, and diplomacy and sanctions should still be given a chance. Netanyahu is motivated by other things.
It’s possible to detect enough loopholes that would allow Netanyahu to escape an imminent decision to go to war. Netanyahu has a political interest to aid his Republican friends against Obama, so his statement that “there wasn’t a decision to attack” seems more like an attempt to stir things up ahead of the U.S. presidential elections than a command to Israel Air Force units. There are those who believe he’s just a second-guessing coward who would never take it upon himself to initiate a war. It could be that all those interpretations are true. Nevertheless, Netanyahu took on a public obligation on Monday that would make it very hard for him to back away from the path of war with Iran.
Obama derides Republican ‘posturing’ over use of force against Iran: Guardian
President responds to criticism of his Iran policy by challenging GOP candidates to address the consequences of an attack
Chris McGreal in Washington
Barack Obama has accused Republican presidential candidates of casually “beating the drums of war” over Iran without having the political courage to directly advocate a military attack or considering the human cost of battle.
In his first press conference of the year on Tuesday, Obama turned on the Republican politicians who for days have been accusing him of weakness and naiveté over Iran, ramped up by the visit of the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and a meeting of the US’s most powerful pro-Israel lobby group.
The president said his policy of sanctions has united much of the international community to pressure Iran and that “we have a window of opportunity where this can still be resolved diplomatically”.
“That’s my track record. Now, what’s said on the campaign trail – those folks don’t have a lot of responsibilities. They’re not commander-in-chief. And when I see the casualness with which some of these folks talk about war, I’m reminded of the costs involved in war,” he said.
“I’m reminded that the decision that I have to make in terms of sending our young men and women into battle, and the impacts that has on their lives, the impact it has on our national security, the impact it has on our economy. This is not a game. There’s nothing casual about it.”
Obama returned to the theme later in the press conference.
“When I sign letters to families that haven’t – whose loved ones have not come home, I am reminded that there is a cost. Sometimes we bear that cost. But we think it through. We don’t play politics with it,” he said.
“Typically, it’s not the folks who are popping off who pay the price. It’s these incredible men and women in uniform and their families who pay the price.”
The president went on to challenge his Republican opponents to say if they want a war and then address the consequences of attacking Iran.
“Now, the one thing that we have not done is we haven’t launched a war. If some of these folks think that it’s time to launch a war, they should say so. And they should explain to the American people exactly why they would do that and what the consequences would be. Everything else is just talk,” he said.
Obama’s comments were aimed, among others, at Mitt Romney, who described the president as “feckless” over Iran in Tuesday’s Washington Post and advocated a policy of “peace through strength”.
The press conference came hours after the announcement that the US will join Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany in a new round of negotiations with Tehran, a move that led Rick Santorum to accuse Obama of “appeasement”.
Obama defended those talks, saying they are an opportunity to judge whether Iran understands that “the world community means business”.
“I don’t expect a breakthrough in a first meeting, but I think we will have a pretty good sense fairly quickly as to how serious they are about resolving the issue,” he said.
Obama derided the aggressive posturing of some of his opponents and more hawkish supporters of Israel who have pressed for an explicit commitment to the use of force against Iran by setting “red lines” that Tehran’s nuclear programme must not cross.
“When I see some of these folks who have a lot of bluster and a lot of big talk but when you actually ask them specifically what they would do, it turns out they repeat the things that we’ve been doing over the last three years. It indicates to me that that’s more about politics than actually trying to solve a difficult problem,” he said.
The president had a similar reaction to calls for military action against Syria, including Senator John McCain’s demand this week that the US bomb in support of the forces fighting the regime in Damascus.
Obama said events in Syria were “heartbreaking” but that military intervention was not the answer.
“For us to take military action unilaterally, as some have suggested, or to think that somehow there is some simple solution, I think is a mistake. What happened in Libya was we mobilised the international community, had a UN security council mandate, had the full co-operation of the region, Arab states, and we knew that we could execute very effectively in a relatively short period of time. This is a much more complicated situation,” he said.
“The notion that the way to solve every one of these problems is to deploy our military, that hasn’t been true in the past and it won’t be true now. We’ve got to think through what we do through the lens of what’s going to be effective, but also what’s critical for US security interests.”
The president has been accused of weakness over both Syria and Iran, but the focus of recent days has been on Tehran because of differences with Netanyahu over the value of sanctions and diplomacy.
The Israeli prime minister on Monday derided the effectiveness of sanctions in a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) and said that “none of us can afford to wait much longer” to act against Tehran.
Romney told Aipac on Tuesday that Obama’s policy of “engagement” with Tehran was naive and gave the Iranian leadership time to develop its nuclear programme.
“Hope is not a foreign policy. The only thing respected by thugs and tyrants is our resolve backed by our power and our readiness to use it,” he said. “As president I’ll be ready to engage in diplomacy but I will be just as ready to engage our military might.”
Newt Gingrich went further in telling Aipac that as president he would give Israel the means to attack Tehran’s nuclear facilities and let it do so without question.
“I will initiate a strategy in the tradition of Reagan, Thatcher and Pope John Paul II to undermine and replace the Iranian dictatorship by every possible method short of war in order to achieve a government we could trust and could deal with,” he said.
“At the same time I would provide all available intelligence to the Israeli government, ensure that they had the equipment necessary and reassure them that if an Israeli prime minister decides he has to avoid the threat of a second Holocaust through pre-emptive measures that I would require no advance notice to understand why I would support the right of Israel to survive in a dangerous world.”
Santorum said Obama should put an ultimatum to Tehran to end its nuclear programme and “that if they don’t tear down those facilities, we will tear down them ourselves”.
Obama’s pushback was reinforced by the US defence secretary, Leon Panetta, who told the president’s critics not to mistake a willingness to pursue diplomacy for weakness.
Panetta, speaking to Aipac on Tuesday, said the military option is on the table as a last resort if sanctions fail and the president’s record demonstrates that he will use it if he believes there is no alternative.
“As the president made clear, the United States does not bluff. In this town it’s easy to talk tough. Acting tough is a hell of a lot more important,” he said.
“The president ordered 30,000 additional troops to battle in Afghanistan to confront a resurgent Taliban. He launched a comprehensive precision bombing campaign to protect the Libyans and ultimately toppled a brutal dictator. He has ordered US warships to pass through the straits of Hormuz despite the threats that we have received from Iran.
“And he has been the driving force behind the most successful and lethal counter-terrorism campaign in US history culminating in the bold decision to send US special operations forces hundreds of miles into Pakistan to take the risk to take down bin Laden. And he did.”
Netanyahu, our savior the fearmonger: Haaretz
Netanyahu has built his career on being an alarmist, with an impressive record of incessant fearmongering.
By Gideon Levy
If it looks like a duck (frightened), walks like a duck (spreading anxiety), quacks like a duck (disseminating dread), then it must be a duck (a frightened fearmonger). Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who quacked his fearmongering speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee convention on Tuesday, proved yet again that Israel has never had a statesman quite like him – a statesman who has built his career on being an alarmist, and who boasts an impressive record of incessant, decades-long fearmongering.
“Mr. Terror” has over the years become “Mr. Iran,” fear-struck even by swine flu, frightening the public and insisting that every citizen be needlessly inoculated. These inoculations cost NIS 450 million, and some have been lying unused and useless in emergency storage since 2009.
Leaders who spread anxiety are abundant in non-democratic regimes. But in Israel, these tactics evidently win elections, as has been the case for Netanyahu. What does he have to offer Israelis but fearmongering? And what will happen after, one way or another, he eradicates the present danger? Will we be infected with a new one? Will he invent one?
And what about imbuing us with some hope for change? A young person born in Israel 30 years ago has grown up only on Netanyahu’s fearmongering: terror, swine flu and nuclear armament. Nothing else.
Netanyahu’s speech at AIPAC was interrupted 46 times by rousing cheers. He knew what he was doing when he delivered this speech at AIPAC, of all places. It is the home turf of conservative Jews, his natural bastion of sympathy, his America.
“Wow, just like in the Knesset,” he said bitterly at the start of his address, upon hearing the cheers. But if Netanyahu is giving a speech that favors missiles striking Tel Aviv over a nuclear Iran, then he should have found the courage to give this speech in Tel Aviv, where those missiles would actually fall. Not to a blindly, automatically, intoxicatedly cheering Jewish America, which is in no danger of even the tiniest missile.
Young Tel Avivians deserve to hear about their prime minister’s plans before the residents of old-age homes in Florida do. But forget about geography – Netanyahu also reverted once again to history. He pulled a document from the Holocaust archive and waved it around like an amputee waves his stump. In the United Nations over two years ago, it was the Auschwitz maps; Tuesday it was the letters of the Jewish community in America. And the message is the same: We are on the brink of another Holocaust.
To compare Nazi Germany to Iran, to compare Munich to Tehran, is to minimize and trivialize the Holocaust. But the Jews of America love it, this improper use of the memory of the Holocaust. People in Israel even love it. According to a survey by the Israel Democracy Institute – published by Haaretz about two months ago – 98 percent of Israelis pointed to the Holocaust as their most important guiding principle. That is the outcome of Netanyahu’s speeches. But what does 1944 have to do with 2012? What does Hitler have to do with Ahmadinejad? Isn’t the danger of nuclear weapons in Iran serious enough without calling on the Holocaust to magnify it? And perhaps there has been enough of the assertion that “in every generation there are those who want to destroy the Jewish people,” as Netanyahu also recited Tuesday.
This must be reiterated: The danger of a nuclear Iran is real and serious. Israel has the tools needed to deter Iran from using nuclear weapons, to the extent that using them would be suicide for Iran. Tehran knows this. Of course every effort must be made to prevent Iran from getting the bomb, but not by means of messianic leaders who think they are saving Israel and the Diaspora from another “Holocaust” that is not even on the horizon.
Then again, most Israelis do believe in the coming of the Messiah, don’t they? No less than 55 percent of Israelis said they did in the above-mentioned survey. So what do we end up with? A prime minister who scares his people, a people that believes in the coming of the Messiah, and Netanyahu casting himself in the role of the Messiah – who, meanwhile, has not come, nor have his footfalls even been heard.
EDITOR: They know the truth…
Despite the fact that Netanyahu can force the US, UK and the other western nations to do his bidding and support an attack on Iran, it seems he is less successful at home, where people will have to live (or die) with the results of his mad policies. It seems Israelis are not yet ready to die in order to prove their PM wrong (or right…) they obviously know he is bluffing for political gain, and also noticed they are not quite living in Auschwitz… the comparison to the Holocaust must have grated with most Israelis who sport brain cells. Still, while this is interesting and pleasant to learn, most of these intelligent people will not do anything to stop him for starting the worst war in Middle East history.
Haaretz poll: Most of the public opposes an Israeli strike on Iran: Haaretz
Support for Netanyahu’s Likud party is at all-time high, but Israelis still skeptical regarding attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities without U.S. backing.
By Yossi Verter
Most Israelis believe that if the United States does not attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, Israel must no try to do so alone, according to a Haaretz poll.
The Haaretz-Dialog poll, conducted under the supervision of Prof. Camil Fuchs of Tel Aviv University on Sunday and Monday during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, also showed that the prime minister’s Likud party would win big in the next election, taking between 35 and 37 seats.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
Photo by: Moti Milrod
Likud, the rest of the right wing and the ultra-Orthodox parties would get between 71 and 74 mandates. Under such a scenario, only Netanyahu would be able to form a government.
However, Netanyahu, who returned to Israel on Wednesday, is facing a complex political situation.
On the one hand, he and his party seem to be in top political form. On the other, 58 percent of those polled opposed an Israeli strike on Iran, without U.S. backing.
Thus it seems Netanyahu has not convinced those for whom he has been repeatedly threatening Tehran.
Even so, half the respondents said they are relying on Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak to handle the Iran issue.
Moreover, the poll also found that if elections were held today, the Kadima party under Shaul Mofaz would capture more Knesset seats than under current chief Tzipi Livni.
The centrist party would garner only 10 seats under Livni and 12 under Mofaz, according to the Haaretz-Dialog poll conducted under the supervision of Prof. Camil Fuchs of Tel Aviv University. Kadima currently has 28 Knesset seats.
These results are a bad sign for Livni, less than three weeks before the Kadima leadership primary. She has been campaigning on the claim that she is “the real Kadima” and would bring the party more votes than Mofaz.
A Mofaz-led party came out ahead both with the general public and Israelis who identified themselves as Kadima voters.
The reason given for this is that voters from the more financially secure Ashkenazi community are finding political homes in Labor and Meretz, as well as with TV personality Yair Lapid, who entered politics two months ago.
But Lapid is losing ground fast. The new poll predicts that he would win only seven to eight seats, around half his showing in a Dialog poll conducted for Channel 10 on January 9.
It’s telling that Lapid is in decline even though his main rival, Kadima, is hemorrhaging. Lapid has not yet formed a political party and has been campaigning mainly on Facebook.
Never mind Johnny Rotten, real punks boycott Israel: The Electronic Intifada
Alexander Billet, Chicago 20 February 2012
“If Elvis-fucking-Costello wants to pull out of a gig in Israel because he’s suddenly got this compassion for Palestinians then good on him. But I have absolutely one rule, right? Until I see an Arab country, a Muslim country, with a democracy, I won’t understand how anyone can have a problem with how they’re treated.”
These words weren’t spoken by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. They didn’t crawl from the bile of AIPAC, Newt Gingrich or some hardened, right-wing ideologue from the heart of the Israel’s illegal settlements. They came from the mouth of John Lydon, a.k.a. Johnny Rotten of The Sex Pistols.
Most devotees of punk rock stopped taking Lydon seriously well before he started shilling for Country Life butter. To be sure, any and all credibility he once had from his work with the Pistols, or, for that matter, later on with Public Image Ltd (PiL), flew out the window years ago.
It’s also true that the Pistols idiotically paraded around in swastikas during their early years. Still, even taken with that grain of salt, Lydon’s words are profoundly troubling. Like it or not, the former Rotten is considered a granddaddy of punk rock. It’s not far fetched to imagine someone reading his words and thinking his flagrant racism, his willful defense of an apartheid state, are somehow the punk norm. It’s for this reason that Punks Against Apartheid exists.
In the summer of 2011, Punks Against Apartheid came together as an ad hoc formation of BDS activists and punk fans (a formation that, in the interest of full-disclosure, includes this writer). The goal was initially modest: draft a letter and petition urging Jello Biafra, formerly of The Dead Kennedys, to cancel his gig in Tel Aviv with his band The Guantanamo School of Medicine.
The response was overwhelming: within four days, Punks Against Apartheid’s petition had more than 500 signatures (“Sign the petition: Tell Jello Biafra to cancel the gig in Tel Aviv,” 16 June 2011).
As pressure built and Biafra publicly reaffirmed his commitment to the show, he specifically called out Punks Against Apartheid. However, a few days after that, with the petition bearing more than a thousand signatories, Biafra canceled the gig (“Jello Biafra cancels Tel Aviv gig,” 29 June 2011).
Furthermore, many of those who had supported us were urging Punks Against Apartheid to continue as a formal network.
Now, Punks Against Apartheid has finally launched its official website: www.punksagainstapartheid.com. Of course, the group doesn’t exist in isolation. The global movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions is at a crucial international turning point. With the Arab revolutions and the anti-capitalist Occupy movement in close to 100 countries inspiring a new generation of rebel musicians, there may be no better time for Punks Against Apartheid to announce its formal presence.
“Racism Ain’t Punk”
Punks Against Apartheid follows a firm tradition of anti-racism within the punk movement. This encompasses punk rockers’ early embrace of reggae, the formation of Rock Against Racism and the Two Tone movement, the music of the Clash and Bad Brains, X-Ray Spex and MDC, Subhumans and The Specials.
There’s more than a little romance to the idea that all of this came out fully formed somehow. On the contrary, it had to be fought for both in the concert halls and on the streets. In both the US and the UK, open white supremacists vied for support within the punk movement during these early years. In a climate of economic crisis and harsh anti-immigrant scapegoating, the angry wail of punk was initially just as liable to trail into some dangerously dark territory. (Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?)
And just like today, there was an international dimension that was difficult to ignore. Punk groups like National Wake from Johannesburg, South Africa were shut down and prevented from playing just like Black Flag in Los Angeles — though in the former’s case it was usually due to it being an integrated band in an apartheid state. The pleas from Nazi boneheads like the UK’s National Front or the American National Socialist Party to “support white South Africa” obviously had the effect of dividing the global punk community rather than uniting it.
No surprise then that the anti-racist side also embraced the worldwide movement against South African apartheid. David Widgery, one of the founders of Rock Against Racism, recalled in his book Beating Time that South Africa was a key part of Rock Against Racism’s message. Its publication, Temporary Hoarding, featured pictures of the Soweto uprisings on its cover. The same issue made a case that, as Widgery put it “our little Hitlers had their big brothers in power in South Africa.” The Specials, with their infectious blend of ska and punk energy, were particularly moved to support the anti-apartheid movement — most famously and obviously in “Free Nelson Mandela.”
When Steven Van Zandt, a guitarist in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, formed Artists United Against Apartheid and declared “I ain’t gonna play Sun City,” Joey Ramone and The Dead Boys’ Stiv Bators were among those who recorded the single. Countless other punk acts heeded that same call and pointedly refused invitations to perform in South Africa — including The Dead Kennedys and Public Image Ltd.
The parallels between apartheid South Africa and modern-day Israel have been laid out again and again. Areas designated “off limits” to Arabs and Palestinians, systematic denial of basic rights. Forced removals, refugee camps and checkpoints. Random raids of homes and violent repression of anything smacking of resistance. Though it’s been almost twenty years since white rule was abolished in South Africa, its ancestor is alive and well in a similar colonial settler state.
Of course, punk rock hasn’t gone anywhere either. For every sugary corporate Green Day ripoff willing to cross the Palestinian people’s international picket line (I’m looking in your direction, Simple Plan), there are untold numbers of young folks forming their own bands, their own labels and own fanzines because they believe punk stands for something. It’s these people that Punks Against Apartheid seeks to reach.
And believe it or not, despite the stubbornly persistent notion that punk remains a white boy thing, many of these punks are those most under the gun of American racism, a racism that has become more pronounced since 11 September 2001.
“Being a punk and being a Muslim-American to me go hand in hand,” says activist and writer Tanzila Ahmed. “They are both about standing up to the man. They are about believing what you believe with your whole gut and soul … It’s about being marginalized and fighting to reclaim your voice.”
Ahmed, or “Taz,” as she is known, is one of many participants in the burgeoning Taqwacore scene: Muslim punks. It’s a sub-culture that is currently taking its rightful place next to riot grrl and Afro-punk in the ever expanding horizons of a diverse punk scene.
In an interview with The Electronic Intifada, Taz also insisted that her identity as a Muslim punk is a big reason she supports BDS: “The US government is largely why Israel feels empowered to bully the way it has … It’s all about political power, and at this point of history hate speech against Muslims is the tactic and Muslim-Americans are the pawns. I absolutely believe that the lack of support for Palestine is the sacrifice politicians are making to stay in power and to win votes.”
Bigger than Jello
Thirty years ago it was open fascists emboldened by a political establishment who turned the other cheek. Now it’s white nationalists milling around the ranks of the Tea Party and the “Stop Islamization” crowd. Back then they pointed at jobs and services “stolen” by black people and higher crime rates in the inner-city. Today they shriek about Arabs and Muslims conspiring to impose sharia law via downtown mosques.
Back then, both gutter racists and establishment politicians alike looked to South Africa as a bulwark against the invading brown hordes. Today, it’s Israel. Global empire doesn’t care about apartheid. On the contrary, without divide-and-conquer, it probably wouldn’t survive.
As always, the fight is international. Amplifying the shouts of those shoved to society’s margins doesn’t end at national borders. Perhaps that’s why the original Punks Against Apartheid petition included signatories from all over the world — London, Beirut, Chicago, Istanbul, Paris and beyond.
It’s also perhaps why a glimpse of those who have signed on to Punks Against Apartheid’s “points of unity” so far will reveal a diverse swathe: “Spirit of ‘77” originators The Angelic Upstarts, anarcho-punk architects Oi Polloi and the Oppressed, riot-folk singer Mark Gunnery, radical torch-bearers Propagandhi and more.
Of course, Punks Against Apartheid is tapping into something much bigger than any list or artists, bigger than Jello Biafra, John Lydon, or even “Elvis-fucking-Costello.” Punk rock’s legacy, twisted and contradictory though it may be, had to be fought for and can still mean something to a new generation. Ultimately, it’s about solidarity. If the world’s most marginalized are ever going to take back what’s theirs, then this is one value that has to remain at our very core. Time to show the world that punk is a lot more powerful than any divisions — real or imagined — ever could be.
Alexander Billet, a music journalist based in Chicago, runs the website Rebel Frequencies and has contributed to The Electronic Intifada, TheNation.com, Z Magazine, International Socialist Review and SOCIARTS.com. He is a founding member of Punks Against Apartheid and has been active in various anti-war, anti-racist and economic justice movements. He can be reached at rebelfrequencies [at] gmail [dot] com.
Netanyahu: Israel has right to pre-emptive attack on Iran: Independent
AP TUESDAY 06 MARCH 2012
Taking sharply different stands, President Barack Obama urged pressure and diplomacy to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb while Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu emphasised his nation’s right to a pre-emptive attack.
Even in proclaiming unity, neither leader gave ground on how to resolve the crisis.
Seated together in the Oval Office, Mr Obama and Mr Netanyahu at times tried to speak for each other, and other times spoke past one another.
The president and prime minister are linked by the history and necessity of their nations’ deep alliance, if not much personal warmth, and both sought to steer the Iran agenda on their terms.
“I know that both the prime minister and I prefer to resolve this diplomatically,” Mr Obama said. “We understand the costs of any military action.”
If he agreed, Mr Netanyahu said nothing about sanctions or talks with Iran, or Mr Obama’s position that there still is time to try to deter Iran peacefully.
Instead, Mr Netanyahu drew attention back to Mr Obama’s acknowledgement that Israel is a sovereign land that can protect itself how it sees fit.
“I believe that’s why you appreciate, Mr President, that Israel must reserve the right to defend itself,” Mr Netanyahu said.
Israel, he added, must remain “the master of its fate”.
Israel has not yet decided whether to launch a unilateral strike on Iran, a point underscored in the White House meetings.
Across days of comments, speeches and interviews, Mr Obama and Mr Netanyahu left no doubt about where they stand on Iran.
Far less clear is whether they have done anything to alter each other’s position in what has become a moment of reckoning over Iran, and an important foreign policy issue in the US presidential race.
Both are adamant Iran must not develop a nuclear bomb. Mr Obama’s aim is to keep Israel from launching an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, fearing that would do little lasting good toward the goal and engulf the region and the United States in another war.
Senior Obama administration officials said the talks at the White House left the two sides closer than they were a week ago.
The Israelis walked away with prominent statements from Mr Obama that he would not stand for containing a nuclear-armed Iran, and that the crisis was in the United States’ interests to solve.
In turn, Israelis did acknowledge privately they would prefer a diplomatic solution, despite enormous scepticism about the Iranian government, officials said.
And there were no demands that Mr Obama set a new “red line” of what it would take for a US strike – the US position remains that Iran must not get a nuclear weapon.
Mr Netanyahu emphasised that Israel must defend itself from an Iranian nuclear threat.
He said after his talks with Mr Obama: “I think I was listened to and understood.”
The last time the two men met in the Oval Office, in May, Mr Netanyahu lectured Mr Obama in front of reporters as differences over Mideast peace unfolded.
This time, their body language as they spoke was not so glaring but still telling: Mr Obama addressed the media; Mr Netanyahu spoke directly to Mr Obama and locked on him.
US offered Israel new arms to delay Iran attack: report: Ahram online
Israel is to put off possible attack on Iran in exchange for more advanced US bombs, says Israeli daily Maariv
AFP , Thursday 8 Mar 2012
An American bunker busting bomb being handled on the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier, (Photo: Reuters).
The United States offered Israel advanced weaponry in return for it committing to not attack Iran’s nuclear facilities this year, Israeli daily Maariv reported on Thursday.
Citing unnamed Western diplomats and intelligence sources, the report said that during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington this week, the US administration offered to supply Israel with advanced bunker-busting bombs and long-range refuelling planes.
In return, Israel would agree to put off a possible attack on Iran till 2013, after the US elections in November.
Israel and much of the international community fear Iran’s nuclear programme masks a weapons drive, a charge Tehran denies, and it was top of the agenda at talks between Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama in Washington this week.
The US and Israel are at odds over just how immediate the Iranian threat is. Netanyahu said on Monday that sanctions against Iran have not worked, and “none of us can afford to wait much longer.”
A key difference between Washington and Israel has emerged on the timeline available for a military strike against Iran, with the Jewish state warning that the military material available to it gives it a shorter window for action.
In response, the report said, the US administration offered to give Israel weapons and material that could extend its window to act against Iran.
In particular, it would offer bunker-busting bombs more powerful than those currently possessed by Israel, which would allow the Jewish state to target Iranian facilities even under solid rock.
The report comes shortly after world powers known as the P5+1 — five UN Security Council members plus Germany — offered to resume long-stalled talks with Tehran over its contested nuclear programme.
Israel has cautiously welcomed the talks, but warned it must be prepared for the potential failure of any new dialogue with Iran.
Leading article: Barack Obama must hold his nerve on Iran: Independent Editorial
For all the mutual distrust, diplomatic efforts are yet to be exhausted
There are many alarming aspects to the escalating tension over Iran’s nuclear programme. But perhaps the most worrying of all is that every pressure on Barack Obama – be it political, economic, or, most of all, electoral – is pushing him to take a hard line. He must resist.
This week’s fractious talks between the US President and his Israeli counterpart have only added to the strain. Mr Obama attempted to set a temperate tone: blending the assurance that the US will “always have Israel’s back” with a much-needed warning about the dangers of too much “loose talk” of military conflict.
Benjamin Netanyahu showed little sign of softening his bellicose stance, however. “I will never let my people live under the shadow of annihilation,” the Israeli Prime Minister told his US audience, adding a darkly emotive comparison with US unwillingness to bomb the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.
It is not that Israel’s concerns about Iran are unjustified, or that it has no right to defend its interests. And with Iran rapidly shifting its enrichment facilities into heavily fortified bunkers beyond the reach of Israeli weapons, Mr Netanyahu’s assertion that “none of us can afford to wait much longer” is an understandable one.
Nonetheless, both sense and feeling argue in the strongest possible terms against an attack on Iran. Not only would such a move achieve little, setting Tehran’s nuclear ambitions back by perhaps two years at best. The cost – in terms of loss of life, of diplomatic relations soured for a generation, and of the potential for wider geopolitical catastrophe – is simply too high.
Neither should Mr Obama’s resistance be restricted to the subject of an immediate strike. Mr Netanyahu wants the US to draw a “red line” – which, once crossed, would trigger instant military intervention – at Tehran’s acquiring the capacity to build a bomb. So far, Mr Obama has maintained his position, insisting that the red line is not the capability but the construction. But the pressure on him to give ground will only increase.
Such strained relations with Israel would be tricky for a US president at any time. In an election year, they become egregious indeed. To appreciate the risks, one need look no further than the otherwise-lacklustre Republican candidates’ efforts to characterise Mr Obama as soft on Iran. But it is not only the exigencies of the relationship with Israel which are putting the President’s Iran strategy under the microscope.
With oil prices up by more than 10 per cent thanks to uncertainties over sanctions on Tehran, there is also the drag on America’s burgeoning economic recovery. Even worse, petrol prices nudging up towards $4 per gallon are electoral poison in the land of the sports utility vehicle. The President is right to counter calls for military action against Iran with the observation that the sanctions programme is yet to fully bite. He will have to stand firm even as the effects of the strategy are felt at home.
Sanctions are not everything, however. For all the mutual distrust, diplomatic efforts are yet to be exhausted. And it is here that Mr Obama must direct his energies.
There has been real progress. Last month saw international nuclear inspectors allowed into Iran for the first time in three years, and, after a rather patchy start, they are now to gain some access to the controversial military site at Parchin. Meanwhile, Tehran’s offer to resume nuclear talks with the West has been accepted.
Given Iran’s long history of playing for time, it would be naïve to expect too much. But with so much at stake, it would be irresponsible not to make the most of any opportunities for an amicable solution. Election or no election, Mr Obama’s primary responsibility must be to avoid a war.