Stephen Lendman

Lynn Stewart and Ralph Poynter: Stalwart Cohorts
in the People's Struggle

"She's a heroic role model deserving support at her time of need, facing nine more years unless granted redress at a very tough time when prosecutors demand cruel and unusual punishment, not mitigation. Silence, timidity, and inaction are no options against it."

Seven previous articles discussed her case and status, explaining the gross injustice against a heroic human rights lawyer who devoted her career to defending society's poor, unwanted, and unfairly persecuted - defendants deprived of due process without an advocate like her.

She knew the risks, yet took them courageously, until prosecutorial injustice convicted and imprisoned her for doing her job - defending an unpopular client too vigorously.

Interned on November 19, 2009 at MCC-NY, she remained there until transferred. Her family and attorneys requested FCI Danbury, CT close to home, a facility for low security female prisoners with a satellite camp for minimum security ones. No matter. She was denied the logical choice for a more punitive one.

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Stephen Lendman

Disappearing citizenship...

Numerous previous articles exposed it, highlighting policies affording rights solely to Jews, including a January 2010 Israeli Democracy or Hypocrisy one accessed through this link.

It cited a same titled October 2007 Haaretz editorial, calling for "debate about Israel's control over the lives of Palestinians deprived of civil rights," saying its democracy is flawed for denying Arab Israelis equality with Jews.

In his December 10 op-ed titled titled, "The farce of a secular and democratic Jewish state," Haaretz writer Gideon Levy was equally critical, saying:

"The debate over the conversion bill is deceptive." The IDF bill aims to prevent municipal marriage clerks from refusing to register marriages of people converted during military service. An estimated 2,500 occur annually, mostly among former Soviet Union immigrants. Orthodox parties, like Shas, want the Sephardic chief rabbi to have sole conversion authority. Secular ones want bill's language left unchanged.

Levy believes the debate masks greater issues, fundamental ones

"that define our society and state." Whether military or civilian rabbis decide who is Jewish is a distraction. "Ten times more significant is....whether (we're) living in the only country on earth where clerics determine the right to citizenship. No less important (is the illusion that Israel) is a secular and democratic state."

Imagine debates over whether to rent apartments to Arabs. What about equal rights, democratic freedoms, civil liberties and justice. Choosing who's superior, who's inferior, who gets rights and who doesn't exposes Israel's real agenda, a theocratic-run Jewish state under religious law, deciding who belongs and who doesn't, enforced by hardline officials and MKs.

"It's time to admit that this approach can only be called racist," based on "the blood flowing through (one's) veins....determin(ing) your status....Sixty-two years after (Israel's) establishment, (it's time to) change this reality." It's time for "normalcy, for joining the enlightened world, (and changing) distorted reality." Otherwise, it's ludicrous calling Israel "a liberal and modern state" when growing despotism better defines it. Non-Jews have experienced it for decades, under a repressive occupation, and Israeli Arabs treated like second class citizens.

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