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Weekly Newsletter. Jan 31-Feb 7, 2018. Visit our website: English; French. To help us, click here

The Trials of Africa and the Real Dr. King They Want Us to Forget


On January 15, millions of Americans commemorated Martin Luther King's Day. His famous speech, 'I Have a Dream' was repeated numerous times in media outlets as a reminder of the evil of racism, which is being resurrected in a most pronounced way in American society.
But that is only one version of Dr. King that is allowed to be broadcast, at least in polite company. The other, more revolutionary, radical and global King is to remain hidden from view.
Exactly one year before he was assassinated, on April 4, 1968, Dr. King delivered a truly scathing speech that challenged not only the state apparatus by the liberal hierarchy which posed as if they were his allies. It was called: " Beyond Vietnam".
"We must stop now," he said, his voice thundering. "I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted."
Then, he added these words, which sent much alarm among those who sought to isolate anti-war efforts from King's own struggle:
"I speak of the - for the - poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam."
Unlike the more famous speech 'I Have a Dream' - delivered in the 1963 'March on Washington' - 'Beyond Vietnam' pushed past the boundaries of what is acceptable by 'liberal' America into whole new territories, where Dr. King's anti-war and global solidarity values were unapologetically linked to the fight against racism and poverty at home.
On that day, the American civil rights struggle courageously broke free from the confines of American exceptionalism, to join a worldwide movement of struggles against racism, colonialism and war.
Unsurprisingly, Dr. King's speech  angered many members of White communities who were directly or indirectly affiliated with the Washington establishment.
Merely three days after the speech, the New York Times countered in its editorial: "There are no simple answers to the war in Vietnam or to racial justice in this country. Linking these hard-complex problems will lead not to solutions but to deeper confusion."
In fact, there was no 'confusion', but total and complete clarity and coherence. To be truly meaningful, human rights values cannot be sectionalized and isolated from one another.
Yet, what alarmed the so-called liberals is the intellectual growth and awareness of the civil rights movement at the time, which matured enough to the point of pushing for greater integration among all struggles.
A more vibrant and empowered King, aged only 38 years at the time, seemed to have fully fathomed the link between the oppression of poor, Black Americans at home and the oppression of poor Vietnamese peasants abroad. They were all victims of what he dubbed the "giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism."
Right there and then, King had achieved a revolutionary and terrifying idea that might have contributed to his assassination a year later, for many of his allies outside the Black communities began disowning him.
But this passage in particular gave me a pause, as I reflected on the plight of millions of refugees and poor migrants forced to leave their homes in Africa and the Middle East, driven by wars, corruption and extreme want.
"A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies," he said.
"On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day, we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway."
The metaphor of the road - to salvation, freedom, safety - was particularly emotive and foretelling.
If Dr. King was alive, he would have certainly placed the refugees as a top priority in his "revolution of values."
Africa in particular, is being  robbed. Tens of billions of dollars are being siphoned out of the continent, while Black men and women are being sold for slavery, in Libya and  elsewhere.
Libya was torn apart by the NATO-led war that left the country without a government. The war on Libya channeled massive armaments to neighboring African countries, leading to new wars or resuscitating old conflicts.
According to the United Nations, there are nearly  700,000 African refugees in Libya who hope to reach Europe. The latter, which has fueled the Libya conflict, has taken no responsibility for the crisis.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM)  reported that 2,550 refugees and migrants died trying to cross to Europe from the Libyan coast in the first 9 months of 2017. One of every 50 persons who embarks on the journey dies on that tragic "Jericho Road."
They do so while knowing the risk, because staying in Libya or going back home could mean a far  worse fate.
While in Libya news reports speak of  'slave markets', in Israel, the country's immigration ministry is  offering civilians lucrative jobs to 'locate, detain and monitor' African refugees, who are all being pushed outside the country and thrown into other perilous regions.
In the US, the government and media, selectively exploit the legacy of Dr. King, but behave in ways that are completely contrary to the true values of that noble man.
The US military is  expanding its operations in Africa faster than in any other part of the world. This means more weapons, more political instability, coups, wars and eventually millions more of poor men, women and children being driven to flee, often to their own demise.
The legacy of Dr. King, as presented in mainstream media, has become about the whitewashing of a racist, militaristic and materialistic system, although King himself has championed the exact opposite.
"Now let us begin," he concluded in his anti-war speech. "Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world."
50 years after his assassination, maybe it is time to truly listen.
- Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His forthcoming book is ' The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story ' (Pluto Press, London). Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter and is a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California Santa Barbara. His website is www.ramzybaroud.net.
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Rebranding Zionism: The American Zionist Movement and the Holocaust


Herbert Block, the  new executive director of the American Zionist Movement (AZM), says he wants to "rebrand" Zionism. What direction this re-branding will take is anybody's guess, as he is still talking in the language of the existing brand of Zionism, which  equates Zionism with being Jewish.
The days are long gone when, as in the movement's infancy, Zionism was largely  opposed by world Jewry, although we might be now witnessing a  resurgence of that opposition.
Whereas he himself has not faced anti-Semitism (i.e., he has not been "the target of discrimination"), living as he does in New York and sending his four children to a Jewish day school - free to worship, free to educate, free to influence power - Block states in an  interview:
"I have dealt with many people [meaning Jews] throughout my career who have experienced racism and anti-Semitism. I have also worked closely with many Holocaust survivors and heard their stories of suffering and living under the ultimate discrimination perpetrated by the Nazis."
The rationale for the existence of the American Zionist Movement and its support of Israel, according to Block, is the unique history and uniqueness of the Jewish people. His "heritage", he explains in that same interview mentioned above, is not in New York (where I believe he was born and raised) but in Israel, where "his cousins" have emigrated.
The cornerstone of Block's rationale is, "the ultimate discrimination perpetrated by the Nazis" against Jews.
Zionism has traditionally used the Holocaust to justify its violent takeover of part of historic Palestine (and its current control of the rest) without the slightest nod of awareness to Palestinian Arabs, who certainly ought not to be the ones  paying for the consequence of the Holocaust; the US and EU are.
Zionist logic also fails to see the commonalities of different experiences of racism and oppression, such as those ongoing forms of it which the Jewish state exercises daily against Palestinians.
Denying the  Nakba, or ignoring it and its consequence, as though Palestinians were a dispensable people, goes hand in hand with Zionist  myth-making and renders it hard for Palestinians and their supporters to address the nature of Israel as a settler-colonial Jewish state, because being against the Jewish state in Palestine is often translated as denying the Holocaust.
In Quora, according to one  interlocutor, for example, certain language that expresses the goals and sensibilities of Palestinians is impermissible:
"A 'solution to the problem of the Jewish state' sounds eerily familiar to 'the final solution to the Jewish problem.' Coupled with language about 'ending the Zionist project,' and the claim that Israel is illegitimate."
But Palestinians must be able to declare their political goals. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions ( BDS) Movement addresses Palestinian fundamental human rights. But once these rights are addressed, a political solution in the form of one democratic state presents itself, and that means  the end of the Jewish state.
Censoring people from broadcasting the Palestinian condition, because the "Zionist narrative"- i.e., the claim to Palestine Zionism makes for the Jews (more and more of whom are denying such an identity as Jews today) over and above the fundamental rights and sensibility of the Palestinian Arab indigenous population of all religions - is wrong. (See  More Than 100 Protest Birthright HQ, Call For Jewish Boycott)
Coopting the Holocaust, as Block does for Zionism, is a disgrace.  Haneen Zoabi, Palestinian member of the Israeli parliament (Knesset) for the Balad party, has recently  exposed Israeli hypocrisies in the way it does this. Managing to side-step the pitfalls of discussing the Holocaust "inclusively".
Zoabi  writes:
"Poland's attempt to scrub clean its role in the murder of European Jewry is, at its core, no different from Israel's attempt to erase the catastrophe that befell the Palestinians in 1948... The Nakba Law ("which would withhold state funds from cultural and educational institutions that commemorate the horrors that befell the Palestinians in 1948") is the natural result of a process that began long ago. Moreover, the state's use of the Holocaust is no worse than Holocaust denial. The Holocaust has turned into a political tool to be used against anyone who dares criticize the state. Accusations of anti-Semitism have become a way to defend Israel, which claims to represent world Jewry."
I doubt that Block has any idea how to re-invent Zionism to make it palatable; Zionism is an ideology that is  inherently destructive of the aspirations and dignity of a whole people, and perhaps we can even go as far as saying, on a moral plane, of two.
- Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father's side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank. She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

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Yemen's Treacherous Crossing

By Kathy Kelly On January 23 an overcrowded smuggling boat capsized off the coast of Aden in Southern Yemen. Smugglers packed 152 passengers from Somalia and Ethiopia in the boat and then, while at sea, reportedly  [...]

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