Opinions of Peter Belmont
Speaking Truth to Power
| Why OWS can and should support Palestine |
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by Peter A. Belmont / 2011-11-13
OWS—Occupy Wall Street—has coalesced as a broad locus of complaint around the slogan “1%—99%”. The complaint is that the 1% (of great wealth) oppress the 99% of everyone else. OWS goals for within the USA OK. Good. I agree. Locally within the USA, the most important goal of the OWS should be to remove BIG MONEY from politics, to return democracy to the people. Very hard to do. Corporations are now endowed with unlimited rights to “speak”, that is, to publish (in print, on TV, etc.,) political opinion, facts, propaganda, etc. Lobbying, too, to the extent that that is any different. Campaign donations as well as other expenditures are almost unregulated. Makes the very, very rich very, very powerful in ways not at all suggested by the words “freedom of speech”. Of course, the aristocrats who launched the USA limited the vote to the somewhat “rich”, to property owners. But the enormous wealth of the modern corporation could not have been foreseen by the “framers”, and the idea that a corporation should be, juridically, a “person” entitled to “free speech” would have seemed ridiculous in that day. OWS goals for outside the USA But what about goals for OWS which are not local to the USA? What about oppression worldwide of the 99% by the 1%? I think that OWS can oppose oppression (of 99% by 1%) world-wide, especially considering how much the wealth generated in the USA or by USA multi-national corporations are involved with oppression world-wide. OK, oppression of whom? If OWS should focus, where should it focus? Well, for starters, oppression of Palestinians (part of the world-wide 99%) by Israelis and the kindly old USA (or their 1% controllers). For it is hard to imagine Israel being as oppressive of Palestinians as it has been for 63 years without protection by the USA, especially since 1967 and the beginning of the Israeli regime of settlements (illegal at international law) in the territories it occupied after the 1967 middle east war. And that protection comes about because of the power in the USA of BIG-ARMS, the corporate part of the military-industrial-complex (the wealthy corporations being ipso facto part of the 1%), which sells arms for use by Israel and to most of the nearby Arab regimes as well. And that protection comes from the power of BIG-ZION, the vastly wealthy “lobby” (AIPAC, etc.) whose donors are definitely part of the 1%. And that protection also comes from the USA’s mainstream-media (MSM), which hides unfavorable news (which is to say, almost all news) regarding Israel and Palestine, the MSM being controlled or outright owned by BIG-ZION. But, isn’t criticism of Israel, however richly justified, an illicit instance of anti-Semitism? No. Anti-Semitism is hatred or persecution of Jews because they are Jews, whereas anti-Zionism (or anti-Israelism) is opposition to the practices of the state of Israel, particularly where these practices are illegal at international law or violate the human rights of the Palestinian people or are war-crimes, etc. Information about Israel’s violations of international law, of human-rights, and of its war-crimes, is hard to find in the USA’s MSM—from which they are rather scrupulously excluded—but are spread all over the internet. See the MondoWeiss blog for almost daily lists of Israeli atrocities. See the 972mag blog for Israeli views. See Richard Silverstein’s blog for more Jewish criticism of Israel. See electronic intifada for Palestinian views. The reason, to reiterate, that Israeli oppression of Palestinians is the proper concern of OWS is that the Palestinians are part of the world-wide 99% and the government and oligarchic controllers of Israel, like the government and oligarchic controllers of the USA, are members of the 1%. And the mainstream media and academia in the USA are staffed almost entirely by people who are themselves part of the 1% or who—because they earn their livings by cozying up with the 1%—must “make nice” with the 1% and subject themselves to the censorship imposed by the 1%. Today, in the USA, censorship of criticism of Israel, and of good information about Israel’s oppression of Palestinians in the MSM, is almost total. The apparent “ownership” or total control of the USA’s Congress by Israel is palpable: consider Bibi Netanyahu’s speech to the USA Congress on 5/24/2011 at which he received what seemed like 56789 standing ovations (HuffPo says “more than two dozen sustained standing ovations”. The president of the USA couldn’t equal that! That’s not approval—that’s kow-tow-ing. The other reason OWS, a USA protest, should be concerned to protest USA’s support for Israeli oppression of Palestinians, and Israeli oppression of Palestinians itself, is that these things are seen by most of the world as products of USA’s “democracy” and OWS must make it clear that the USA—when supporting Israeli oppression of Palestinians --does not speak for the 99% of Americans who oppose oppression of the weak by the super-rich wherever it occurs and who are as angry and upset by their own government—responsive to the BIGs of the 1% but not responsive to the people, the 99%—as the rest of the world is. When the state members of UNESCO overwhelmingly elected Palestine[1] as a member “state” on October 31, 2011, the nations were “sending a message” to the USA of near world-wide opposition to USA’s support for Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians, and they were sending that message to OWS as well. It is for OWS to pick up the banner and run with it, and I hope that they will do so. ----------- [1] The simple arithmetic of the UNESCO vote, 107 in favor, 14 opposed, 52 abstentions, and 21 absent fails to tell the story of really one sided was the vote. Toting up the for and against votes obscures the wicked arm twisting, otherwise known as geopolitics, that induced such marginal political entities as Samoa, Solomon Islands, Palau, and Vanuatu to stand against the weight of global opinion and international morality by voting against Palestinian admission as member to UNESCO. This is not meant to insult such small states, but to lament that their vulnerability to American pressure should distort the real contours of world public opinion. Such a distortion makes a minor mockery of the idea that governments can offer adequate representation to the peoples of the world. It also illustrates the degree to which formal political independence may hide a condition of de facto dependence as well as make plain that voting within the United Nations System should never be confused with aspirations to establish a global democracy in substance as well as form. As an aside this consistently compromised electoral process within the UN System demonstrates the urgency and desirability of establishing a global peoples parliament that could at least provide a second voice whenever global debate touches on issues of human concern. What is most impressive about the UNESCO vote is that despite the US diplomacy of threat and intimidation, the Palestinian application for membership carried the day. |
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