Aref Nammari (goplayer)'s blog/

Many in the US do not know the story behind May Day. The article below sheds light on the events in Chicago's Haymarket Square which May Day commemorates.

Source: http://socialistworker.org/2009/05/01/the-story-of-may-day

Yep this is what US Universities have sunk to. Academic freedom and freedom of speech are abolished especially in cases where Israel is concerned. The latest victim of defamation and accusations of anti-semitism is Professor William Robinson -- UC Santa Barbara. He is accused of anti-semitism because he dared to distribute images from Israel's recent actions in Gaza with the Nazi actions in concentration camps. Pressure is brought on the university by the ADL (Anti- Defamation League) to investigate Prof. Robinson on charges of anti-semitism. Several professors have been investigated and some denied tenure (Norman Finkelstein-DePaul University, Joel Kovel-Bard College, and numerous others) because they dare to criticize Israel. There is a website dedicated to tracking professors and where students are encouraged to report their Professors who are critical of Israel and who express their views publicly (here).

To read more about the case of Prof. Robinson see the website of the Committee to Defend Academic Freedom and Open Anthropology

For information about curtailing the right to criticize Israel especially in academia see muzzle watch

Yes MacCarthyism is alive and well in US Universities and Colleges especially when it comes to criticizing Israeli government practices and policies of occupation and Apartheid.

The right of return is inalienable. Human rights guarantee the right of people to return to their homeland. The state of Israel has systematically refused to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes. Many excuses are presented but the inherent racism is plainly obvious in the attitude of Israel toward its Palestinian Arab citizens. They are referred to as a "demographic threat". Their increasing numbers is viewed as a threat to the "Jewish character" of the state of Israel.

Sixty one years of dispossession continues with the complicit silence and indifference of the so-called "democracies" and self-described "civilized" world.

Peace can never come to this part of the world until the rights of those who were driven out of their homes and whose villages (about 400 of them) were completely destroyed--razed--to disguise the fact that Palestine was not the mythological "land without a people" that the Zionists wanted to believe.

An account on a visit to the site of a destroyed village (in 1948) can be found here

Other accounts and pictures can also be found in the same blog here

MAAN NEWS AGENCY
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Armed soldiers, police, attempt to shut down Palestine Festival of Literature opening night

Date: 23 / 05 / 2009 Time: 19:45

Jerusalem – Ma’an – Israeli police and armed border officials shut down the Palestinian National Theater in East Jerusalem on Saturday, in an effort to quash the Palestine Festival of Literature and prevent international writer and poets from addressing Palestinians.

The weeklong festival, sponsored in part by the British Council and UNESCO, was scheduled to begin at 6:30 with two panel discussions by authors from Canada, Britain, South Africa and Australia. The second annual festival will travel around Palestine and decided to begin and end events in Jerusalem in honor of Al-Quds Capital of Culture 2009.

In a last-minute effort to let the show go on, organizers moved the event to the French Cultural Center, which is also in East Jerusalem. Audience members crowded on the lawn outside the building as book readings and discussions on the theme of displacement in world literature were interrupted by power cuts and police sirens.

The spectators and litterateurs were greeted at the new event by five Israeli police vehicles stationed outside the garden wall.

According to Ma'an's Jerusalem correspondent the initial decision to close down the performance at the National Theater was made at the request of the Israeli Interior Ministry. The move mirrors efforts to quash celebrations of Jerusalem culture for the 2009 Capital of Culture events.

The French consul, as well as head of the Palestinian President's office Rafiq Al-Husseini, attended the event. Al-Husseini, as well as the six authors who spoke in an abbreviated format, condemned the Israeli actions.

Al-Husseini also praised France for stepping up to host the event, viewing it as empowering Palestinian demands for reopening closed offices in the capital.


***Get breaking news from Palestine: Click to follow Ma’an on Twitter.

Source: http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=38040

As I wrote in a comment on Halfbreed's post www.ipernity.com/blog/halfbreed/154928

Thank you for posting this. Well yes Zionism as an exclusivist ideology based on 19th century colonialist thinking has no legs to stand on. Apartheid has no room in today's world of open and easy communication among people.
They can threaten all they want but the fact is that "a Jewish and democratic state" is an oxymoron just as is "A christian and democratic state", "a Muslim and democratic state" or any self-described "democratic state" which at the same time defines itself along narrow ethnic, religious and nationalist terms. The only possibility for peace anywhere is to grant equality of citizenship to all who live within the state regardless of their ethnicity, religion, gender or national origin. One person one vote. Separate is never equal that is what history teaches us.

While it is true that Arab citizens of Israel do get elected to the Kenesset (Israeli parlaiment), it is only a facade because they do not have any real power or a real voice to affect anything. Meanwhile the instutionalized racism--the inevitable product of Zionist ideology--is enforced and practiced at all levels.