Roger Tucker

The recent open letter Granting No Quarter: A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon, apparently written by Ali Abunimah, has come as a shock to many people, including yours truly. Not only have the Zionists colonized Palestine and subjected them to a permanent campaign of genocide, but as anyone who has been paying attention knows, they have colonized the Western democracies, turning them into obedient puppets. Now it appears that they have also colonized the Palestine Solidarity movement.

At the end of this essay are links to a number of responses supporting Atzmon and what he stands for. These cover the ground pretty well, but I’d like to add a critical look at the language used by Abunimah et al and some of the notions underlying such terminology. I’ll start with the title itself, which begins with the curious phrase “Granting No Quarter.” The phrase is familiar to anyone who has read books or seen films based on British naval warfare set in the 18th or early 19th centuries. - this is as extreme as it gets. This from a group of mostly Palestinian supporters of the Palestinian struggle against Israel in opposition to another such supporter. That is sufficiently mind-boggling in itself, but Ali Abunimah, and I would assume at least some of his fellow signatories, are also supporters of One Democratic State as the solution to the basic conflict in the Middle East, as is Atzmon. Some fundamental and portentous difference, beyond a mere dispute about strategy or tactics, must be responsible for such a total and uncompromising attack on a seemingly close ally. It allows for no debate, no compromise – no quarter offered or accepted.

Some observers have implied that Ali & Co. have actually gone over to the enemy, or may have been Zionist agents from day one, and that the Jewish members of these Solidarity groups are acting as their handlers. For the sake of argument, I’m going to assume that is not so, that they are perfectly sincere in considering themselves loyal to the Palestinian cause as they conceive it. Looking at the signatories of the Letter we find some successful academics, Abunimah and Massad being the most prominent. They have prospered as unofficially sanctioned spokesmen for the Palestinian cause in the US and have no incentive to rock the boat. If they presented any perceived danger to tribal Jewry, they would likely find themselves on the street, as has happened to a number of academics, many of them Jewish, who have dared to challenge the predominant Jewish narrative. This points to a simple motivation based on economic and professional self-interest, but I believe there’s more to it than that.

More »

Stephen Lendman

The ink's barely dry on the March 21 Security Council Presidential Statement. It called on both sides "to bring an immediate end to all violence" and engage in conflict resolution diplomacy.

Nonetheless, Western-backed killer gangs keep attacking civilians and Syrian forces. According to Reuters:

Clashes continue. At least 40 died. The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights (SOHR) isn't sure who's responsible but implies Assad. A pro-Western front group, its spurious accounts lack credibility.

Independent observers called past reports propaganda, not truth and full disclosure. Critics denounce its pro-Western anti-Assad bias. In fact, two SOHR sites each claim to be the original.

The initial one's in Arabic with a Facebook English version. The splinter group's in English. Each calls the other an impostor. Information they report differs. Featuring falsified claims and bogus casualty counts, both lack credibility.

Their agenda entails blaming Assad for killer gang violence and condemning his efforts to stop it. According to Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Aleksandr Lukashevich:

"As far as we know, this organization employs only two people (its head and secretary-translator)." The original's "headed by Rami Abdulrahman, who has no training either in journalism or law or even a complete secondary education."

"The fact that representatives of the 'observatory' have been avoiding contact with our diplomats speaks for itself. We think that these facts allow one to judge how trustworthy the information provided by this structure is."

More »

Bill Van Auken

An Afghan woman, right, is interviewed as she sits next
to the body of a child killed by a U.S. service member in
Panjwai, Kandahar province south of Kabul, Afghanistan,
Sunday, March 11, 2012. (AP Photo/Allauddin Khan)

While the US media, searching for an explanation for the mass killings, has focused its attention on Bales’ mental state and the possibility that he was abusing alcohol, the Afghan villagers have a simpler explanation: revenge.

The US government Friday officially charged Staff Sergeant Robert Bales with 17 counts of murder and other offenses in connection with the March 11 massacre of Afghan civilians, most of them children.

The killing spree, which took place in the Panjwai district of the southern province of Kandahar, has sharply escalated an already advanced deterioration in relations between the Afghan population and the US-led military occupation, now in its 11th year.

While until now, both US and Afghan officials had given the death toll in the murderous rampage attributed to Bales as 16—including nine children and three women—the 17 homicide charges indicated an additional victim. The official charges gave no explanation for the additional murder count, and press reports cited unnamed officials as attributing it, in one case, to the death of an Afghan severely wounded in the massacre and, in another, to the forensic identification of an additional set of remains.

Bales is also charged with having “assaulted and attempted to murder six other civilians” in the incident. At least three of these victims remain hospitalized. One of them is a six-year-old girl who was shot in the head and has not regained consciousness since being taken to Kandahar Hospital. She is not expected to survive.

More »