Anti-Zionism is not anti-Jewish
Dawn Cohen (Write On, GLW #534) equates anti-Zionism with being anti-Jewish, and thus denies the anti-war movement the right to attack Israel's role in the US-led invasion of Iraq.
"It is important to criticise the Sharon government's actions, but blaming Israeli Jews for Bush's war is absurd", Cohen writes. Indeed, we should denounce Israel's criminal, racist government, but not conflate it with the entirety of people living in Israel (many of whom oppose Israel's occupation of Palestine).
But in the next sentence, Cohen extends defence of ordinary Israelis with defence of Israel itself: "Anti-Israel posters at rallies, and the 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly's frequent juxtaposing of the war with articles on Israel communicate a subliminal message that somehow Israel is to blame."
Yes, Israel — the US proxy state in the Middle East, the receiver of the second greatest amount of US military aid, the country that breaks more UN resolutions than any other — is part of the imperialist problem. Nothing subliminal here, in either the placards or the GLW articles — we oppose Israeli aggression and occupation, just as we oppose the US-UK-Australian invasion, and every other injustice we see.
Cohen's confusion is revealed in the sentence, "Most Jews are Zionists, which simply means believing in the right of Jews to have a homeland, like everybody else". No, Zionism means belief in an exclusively Jewish state, justifying acts such as the mass dispossession of the Palestinian people and non-Jews receiving second-class citizenship (at best). This is not the sort of "homeland" that everybody else has, unless Cohen is referring to examples such as whites in apartheid South Africa, which indeed is a rather apt parallel.
Cohen, correctly, urges us to take action to oppose violence against Australian Jews. We should do the same to oppose those most in the firing line at the moment — Muslim and Arab Australians, who are facing a media and government onslaught. All people should have equal rights, regardless of their religion or race — a principle we should fight for here, and around the world, including Israel.
Paul Benedek
Lilyfield NSW
[Abridged.]
Statement twisted
I wish to clarify two matters for the public record arising from the article in the Weekend Australian on April 5 on Resistance and the anti-war movement.
The article stated that NUS Research Officer Graham Hastings said "that students are shunning Resistance in Melbourne". Firstly, as I stated to the journalist my interview was based on my personal capacity as an expert on the student activism rather than an employee of NUS. Much more importantly I did not argue anything like the article states.
What I said was that while it is undeniable that Resistance is a significant player in the high school anti-war movement, it was a broad-based movement with other groups involved, and that many students were organising themselves spontaneously of any organised political group.
It takes considerable journalistic license to twist a statement that the anti-war high school movement is broad based to "students are shunning Resistance in Melbourne".
Graham Hastings
Education research coordinator
National Union of Students
Melbourne
Protesters were right
The millions of protesters around the world who opposed the unprovoked attack on Iraq have been vindicated by what has happened. The unlawful invasion resulted in thousands of innocent Iraqis being killed and maimed. There has been untold damage to infrastructure and homes. There has still been no valid justification put forward for the attack, and now we have the spectacle of a new regime being imposed while Iraq is occupied by military aggressors.
The US aggressors had overwhelming firepower but not justice and morality on their side. The fact that a few thousand Iraqis come out on the street to pull down statues of Hussein does not mean a great deal. Just as prior to the invasion, the pro-Saddam rallies didn't mean a great deal either.
The Iraqi people are made up of various religious and ethnic groupings. Some will be sad to see the previous regime fall. Others will be happy, and yet others will have mixed feelings because of uncertainty about the future.
What is certain is that the Iraqi people do not want to replace one sadistic regime with another. They don't want to be like Australia — a puppet of the United States. They are a fiercely independent people who want to decide their own future free of foreign dictates.
Those of us who support the Iraqi people's right to determine their own future now need to direct our efforts to having US, British and Australian troops removed from the Iraqi homeland. The Iraqi people will never be able to determine their own future while these illegal military forces occupy their land.
Adam Bonner
Meroo Meadow NSW
Lucaston struggle
Over the past three years, the small community of Lucaston, in Southern Tasmania, has been struggling against industrial logging in their valley by Gunns Ltd. As usual in Tasmania, all of the native forest cleared will go to the woodchip mill in Triabunna.
Lucaston is a lovely valley, flanked on all sides by mountains and hills covered in beautiful native forest. One side of the valley is largely taken up by the Mount Misery Habitat Reserve, which is to continue spreading as private land owners bring more land into the reserve. Eco-tourism ventures are being established, two of which look directly on the site to be cleared.
While we have won exemptions (no use of 1080 poison, no atrazine spray), the community still feels that industrial logging is inappropriate in a residential area, and that the main road in Lucaston (a small dirt road) that log trucks will be using is extremely dangerous for cars, let alone the children who use the school bus every morning and afternoon.
Recently, the Lucaston community picket was broken by police and Gunns Ltd after drawn out confrontations which saw three local residents, and another protester, arrested within the space of a fortnight. Gunns Ltd are now the blockaders, guarding the gate to the forest during the day, and even hiring corporate security to blockade the site at night.
Despite this, the Lucaston community struggles on, knowing that we can continue to make a difference. The harder we can make it for Gunns, the more difficult it will be when they try and do the same to other Tasmanian communities.
Please visit to give us support and see what you can do.
Solidarity to all communities fighting against corporate resource plundering in Tasmania, Australia, Iraq and the Earth.
Lilia Letsch
Lucaston Tas
Freedom of speech
I'm writing to thank you for alerting us of the crackdown on poet/writer Bill Nevins (GLW #531) and his students in New Mexico who had their slam shut down because of an anti-Bush poem written by a student.
I've alerted various poetry lists, plus our own crew of slam poets who teach at high schools. Today in Lynn, Massachusetts, we told this story and read the poem in question repeatedly.
How ironic that it takes a publication from Down Under to alert Americans of their freedom of speech being under attack. Well, some of us are attuned and fighting, just to let you know!
Thank you so much!
Robyn Su Millerz
Quincy Massachusetts, USA
Protest emails
Your article "Student poets victimised for anti-war stance" (GLW #531) contains a link to the web site for the New Mexico Governor's office to send an email to protest the reprimanding of Bill Nevins. I wanted to inform you that Governor Bill Richardson does not have an email address for public use. The emails are being sent to our office (Lieutenant Governor Diane Denish) and they come directly to me.
The Governor and the Lieutenant Governor cannot get involved in matters between school administrations and their teachers, this is up to the school board and the county school organisation.
I would urge you to change the link to < http://www.rrps.k12.nm.us/rrhs/Administrative%20Contacts/adminA href="mailto:contectindex.htm"><contectindex.htm>, which is the Rio Rancho High School web site administrative contact list, including the principal, who is responsible for this. Or the City of Rio Rancho at .
The Governor and the Lieutenant Governor had absolutely no involvement in the suspension of the teacher or the poetry group, it is misleading to your readers to presume that we are the root of the injustice.
Samantha Johnson
Staff Assistant Office of the Lt. Governor Diane Denish
New Mexico USA
Buffy
Personally, I don't watch Buffy, so I don't have a view on its "feminist" characteristics. Andrew Martin (GLW #533) however should take a strong sniff of reality before condemning GLW or anyone who watches TV as somehow being less than sincere about activist politics.
The first lesson of socialist activism is that we are revolutionaries wherever we go and therefore our task is to learn how to relate to and engage with the people we come into contact with in our daily lives. I would find it incredibly difficult to talk to work colleagues if I dismissed their TV-viewing habits, let alone accused them with watching "bourgeois pop".
We need to engage with people in order to understand how to work alongside them and be in a position to encourage them to develop beyond the bourgeois ideas fed by the media. Assuming ideological superiority is for the dilettante. You are missing out if you don't take the time to skim through the Daily Telegraph to find out how it is presenting the world or go to the pub for the occasional after-work drink or maybe watch the odd TV program that is, possibly, tripe. I'm a fan of Scrubs and Coupling myself.
Being a political activist, and GLW being a political newspaper, does not mean shutting ourselves away from the rest of the working class. We aim to encourage a sense of collective solidarity in order to change the world for the benefit of the majority. The best way to win the confidence of our class is by being a colleague, working hard alongside others and being willing to share a broader view of the world without putting anyone down for a perceived lack of revolutionary sophistication.
Melanie Sjoberg
Kensington NSW
Congratulations
Congratulations on your spirited, fearless, truth-telling paper and on your professionalism. Reading 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly is like drinking from a well of pure water after for so long having had to filter truth from the muddied streams of the mainstream media.
John Pilger's Paying the Price, shown on March 28, drove home the atrocity of British and American (and Israeli) actions against Arabs. I cannot see one jot of difference between their activities and those of the Nazis. It is our human duty to oppose this evil with all our strength — and it is some strength.
The protest movement has emerged as a world power, as Michael de Wall says so eloquently (GLW March 26). It will not go away, it will not be vitiated and it will not be betrayed. It has the greatest power of all: for the first time in human history, the whole human race, as one, can articulate, coordinate and achieve their hopes and aspirations. No power can stop them, for without the people of the world, what is power?
This will not be the "American century", this will be the People's Century.
Marie McKern
Potts Point NSW
Osama Whatsisname?
Can we celebrate the Passover with a prayer that someone, somewhere, remembers Osama bin Whatsisname?
There was a time when the Bush Brothers and the White House Gang were as keen to kill him as they had been to silence Timothy McVeigh.
Then the opium poppies blossomed again in Afghanistan and all mention of Osama suddenly evaporated. There's nothing like the power of a heavily bartered commodity to shut down loose talk, as they say on the trading floor. Is Donald Rumsfeld planning to roll away the stone from the door of Osama's tomb, or is the "Syria thing" entirely occupying his extraordinarily short span of attention?
Peter Woodforde
Melba ACT
Double standards I
Listening to Donald (Duck) Rumsfeld and Co quacking on about Syrian nationals assisting the Iraqi defence forces and thus threatening the American "liberation" troops just about caused my blood to boil. These warmongers, sadly for the world, are re-writing a new ethics of war manual.
I say this after hearing a story on ABC world news about (America's) first war casualty. This was broadcast by an American-based program called All Things Considered. They explained that he was not a US citizen nor was he even a naturalised migrant. This young man was a born and bred Venezuelan, who was allowed to join the US forces and was promptly transported to Iraq, a country with whom his own national government had no quarrel with.
I make that point because nobody can deny that Syria must feel threatened by America's insatiable appetite to engage in war games, and that they are next in line to be "Shocked and Awed", thus giving them some cause to resist and resent the US military attack on their next door neighbour.
The storyteller of this program went on to say that this young private was not alone in helping out the war hawks — he had fellow Venezuelans with him, Mexicans, Colombians, Cubans and others who were not US citizens — to murder innocent Iraqi civilians.
Now, does this little scenario then give Iraq the right to warn Venezuela, Mexico, Colombia and Cuba to step back, or suffer the consequences?
One final note, the dead Venezuelan was posthumously awarded US citizenship. Now isn't that a wonderful inducement for the millions of young men who are striving to make life a little better in the so called Third World. Die for the great American dream and we will make you a US Citizen. Talk about double standards.
John Daly
Rockingham WA
[Abridged.]
Double standards II
Heard on ABC program on Monday 7 April on Channel 2 news about 7.20pm where an American reporter was quoted as saying referring to Iraqis: "What's going on here is genocide."
The later news program at 10pm that night said: "So far, no weapons of mass destruction found."
Only this morning, 12 April, I read or heard that Israel has warned Palestinians to stop their protest actions, or their protest will be dealt with in the same way as the Iraqis have been treated.
How come that the US is allowed to have "Weapons of Mass Destruction" and terrorise the world and legalising mass murder as happened in Iraqi, and threats by the Israelis to intimidate the Palestinians who are losing their rights and lands to the aggressive Israelis.
Jean Hale
Mannering Park NSW
Humanitarian aid?
To be humanitarian is one thing, but to be a hypocritical humanitarian is another and lethal. In other words, the so-called US/UK "humanitarian aid" for the Iraqi people is indecent. It is similar to the US-style death sentence by electric chair when the individual before execution is well fed with everything she/he wishes.
Therefore, it is indecent when the same US/UK soldiers who are killing Iraqi non-combatant civilians help their victims. Genuine Humanitarian work is absolutely neutral and independent. Whereas the intent and the underlying purpose of these US/UK humanitarian aid is to steal the Iraqi oil, occupy Iraq and to fabricate an artificial government made in Washington DC and London.
Hence, the US/UK humanitarian aid masquerades as 1) a justification to kill non-combatant civilians and 2) to have a serene conscience.
Also, what about this so called "friendly fire"? Was the US aerial shooting or firing-on the Russian ambassador/diplomats a "mistake"? Was the US aerial bombing of the Chinese embassy in the then Yugoslavia a "mistake"? And if, I repeat, if these are/were genuine mistakes then it is appropriate to remind the following proverb: A jackass falls once in a pot-hole, not twice. Apologies for the strong word as it is unintentional. Please consider it as a Friendly Fire.
Vic Savoulian
Mt Druitt NSW
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, April 23, 2003.
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