LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS are now institutionalized, and that is no accident

By Denis Rancourt

I hate those prayer-like public land acknowledgements because they are pure virtue signaling and intended to push a religion of historical interpretation (guardians of nature itself, etc.), and of response to the said interpretation. They are institutionalized social engineering.

I have no problem acknowledging that the State perpetrated on on-going genocide against aboriginal peoples in Canada, and that this is Canada's major foundational and active mass war crime, but those acknowledgements are an intrinsic part of the cover-up, IMO, and to me the words are like the scratching-on-the-blackboard sound of my institutional school days.

"Acknowledgement" is not a first step towards change. On the contrary, "acknowledgement" puts one at easy and asleep. "Acknowledgement" is the peace of complacency, not the anger of motivation. "Acknowledgement" is a false care that nurtures and preserves victimhood, not a cry of a warrior for justice.

Public land acknowledgements are now spoken by paternalistic or motherly institutional guardians of the nurturing State, including its many collaborators. The acknowledgements are State propaganda, being fully integrated into the State educational system.

When Israel starts doing it, we will know that its genocide is complete and irreversible.

UN legalistic final sanitization plan for the post-genocide phase of the global aboriginal problem

The real face of "cultural appropriation"


By Denis G. Rancourt, PhD

(Originally a status post on the Facebook page of the Ontario Civil Liberties Association.)

The latest United Nations (UN) Western-world-led globalist scam plan is upon us: Criminalization of "cultural appropriation":

<< Cultural appropriation: Make it illegal worldwide, Indigenous advocates say - Delegates in Geneva from 189 countries are looking at the issue, and some want UN to speed it up - CBC News, June 13, 2017. >>


My take on this travesty:

When the damn lawyers decide to make work for themselves and further exploit aboriginal peoples!

Intellectual Property is a euphemism for corporate and investor theft not unlike protection money and landlord exploitation.

You don't lose your culture when others use and transform or adopt it into their own.

Culture is not a limited resource that is consumed. It is constantly created or destroyed at every location, where it is rooted in economic and human activity. Its transfer is an influence, not a loss.
You lose it when they control, rob, imprison and kill you and your community and family members.

You lose your culture when you are suppressed to the point of not being independent and viable, and you can't muster the will to fight back. The said suppression involves invasion by the predatory system and its culture, and forceful dismantling of the local culture tied to the local original economy.

The occupying system is doing everything it can to separate culture from actual persons, economics and self-determination, so it can be "studied", "taught", "preserved" and "protected". Don't let them make you into a museum and an education curriculum.

The planned legalistic criminalization of "cultural appropriation" is not the way to make reparation or justice. The way to make reparation and justice is to make reparation and justice. Occupying-system laws and their managers, enforcers and collaborators are the opposite of justice. This legal apparatus will be part of the occupation and exploitation.

Another insane "goodness trap" that will benefit the occupying-system managers and collaborators and will lock-in the apartheid.

On-going mass crime against Yemen

The Saudi war against Yemen is a grotesque violation of the lives and dignity of innocent women, children, and civilians who seek nothing more than peaceful lives under democratic rule of their own choice.

This vile Saudi mass-crime, and the associated inhuman blockade, condoned and supported by the USA, Canada, and the silent Western world, is presently the worst on-going genocidal attack on the planet.

By such behaviour, the West and Saudi show themselves to be hypocritical, vicious, and murderous. I cannot condemn my own government (Canada) enough, which sells arms for profit to the Saudi thugs.

Canada's Genocide Explained

A 5-minute video interview with Dr. Bruce Clark.




"This video segment captures Dr. Bruce Clark’s riveting and historically correct account of Canada’s genocide of the Aboriginal Peoples.

The state’s systematic and total destruction of peoples, food sources, economic base, family ties, and culture -- facilitated by a legal structure, technology, and institutionalized child theft -- may be unprecedented in human history.

Dr. Clark is an expert on aboriginal rights jurisprudence and was a dedicated advocate for aboriginal land rights in Canada. He represented Gustafsen Lake Faith Keepers at the Gustafsen Lake Standoff in 1995 near Shuswap, BC. From defender of Aboriginal rights before Canadian and international courts to being jailed and disbarred for advancing legal arguments, Dr. Clark's struggle is itself a mirror of Canada’s genocidal crimes.

The high-definition version of the full one-hour video interview is on the film maker's channel: https://youtu.be/lp97_pKafC0

Dr. Bruce Clark: Aboriginal rights lawyer
Denis Rancourt: Interviewer, for the Ontario Civil Liberties Association (OCLA)
Produced by the OCLA (http://ocla.ca/)
Filmmaker: Peter Biesterfeld

About the Ontario Civil Liberties Association:
The Ontario Civil Liberties Association (OCLA) defends civil liberties at a time when fundamental freedoms are being eroded in all spheres of social life. OCLA opposes institutional policies and decisions that deprive individuals of their personal liberty or exclude individuals from participation in the democratic functions of society.

Related links
Articles by Dr. Bruce Clark published on Dissident Voice:
http://dissidentvoice.org/author/bruceclark/

BRUCE CLARK fought the entire Canadian legal system for aboriginal sovereignty rights -- Extraordinary interview

Source: Ontario Civil Liberties Association

This interview is an important historic record in the story of Canada’s genocide of the aboriginal peoples.

The Ontario Civil Liberties Association (OCLA) interviewed Dr. Bruce Clark, the lawyer and jurisprudential scholar who describes what ails the Canadian justice system when it comes to dealing with Aboriginal sovereignty issues. Bruce Clark represented Gustafsen Lake Faith Keepers at the Gustafsen Lake Standoff in 1995 near Shuswap, BC. From defender of Aboriginal rights before Canadian and international courts to being jailed and disbarred, Dr. Clark’s struggle has led him to a fight against the justice system itself. 


Related links:

• “Contempt of Court” and “Conduct Unbecoming”: A lawyer’s behavior so bad it justifies imprisonment and disbarment, by Bruce Clark (Dec. 16, 2015, Dissident Voice)
• Occupiers’ Justice, Canada’s Broken Constitution, and Ongoing Genocide, by Bruce Clark (Nov. 8, 2015, Dissident Voice)
• Gustafsen Lake Standoff (Wikipedia)

Dr. Bruce Clark: Aboriginal rights lawyer
Denis Rancourt: Interviewer, for the Ontario Civil Liberties Association (OCLA)
Produced by the OCLA
Filmmaker: Peter Biesterfeld

But is it true? (Catalyzed by CBC's interview of Gideon Levy)

By Denis G. Rancourt

Well-meaning humanists often make broad pronouncements of alleged universal principles that they advance as absolute truth in the face of the most horrendous problems facing humanity. But are these pronouncements true?

There are many examples of this phenomenon in the legal decisions of our highest courts, where, if it were taken into account, sociological evidence would often be counter to the true and apparent purpose of the legal system.

But without going to lawyers and judges in their courtrooms, what about the humanists, and the activists concerned about preventing the largest mass crimes of state, including war, genocide, occupation, slavery, and extreme exploitation, often perpetrated by their home states?

Recently, I heard one of these pronouncements made by the great humanist, Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy, interviewed by Canada's CBC. In expressing his existential commitment to protecting Israel, Mr. Levy said:

"I will never protect myself only based on military power. This will never work. The only guarantee for the existence of Israel for the long run is making it a just place based on justice and international law."

This is a common enough expressed belief, that the application of military power cannot win peace. But is it true? It seems important to ask whether or not this is a fallacy. And the answer lies in history, rather than in our psychological desires for wishful and fictitious principles.

History gives an unequivocal answer in this case. Every time an invader and occupier has been committed enough to accomplish the genocide or permanent expulsion of the native population, by one way or another, and then occupied the territory by force, what followed was territory-wide peace. That is, what followed was virtual complete removal of the native threat, with only the usual domestic violence inherent in any hierarchical society.

Since Mr. Levy was interviewed in Canada, the most convenient example is Canada's accomplished genocide (LINK) of the native peoples that occupied the territory that it stole. Canada is now considered "one of the most peaceful nations on earth", according to the CBC and many primary school teachers. So peaceful in fact, that it now has the resources to inflict mass destruction and societal disintegration on the peoples of distant nations such as Syria, without any apparent negative consequences that rise above the very low domestic crime rate.

One counter example is sufficient to disprove the said pronouncement, but all of history is the history of such "peace making" by extermination and dominance.

Therefore, I conclude that this pronouncement of Mr. Levy is a desperate and toothless appeal to those supporting the mid-phase Israeli genocide to imagine a terrible negative consequence, but one that is not likely to materialize. The fantasy negative-consequence in question would be that occupied Palestinians could find a way to inflict enough backlash to slow and stop the genocide, or that the peoples in influential nations would successfully pressure their governments to pressure Israel enough to stop it in its project.

From the perspective of history, these fantasies are very unlikely. They would require a kind of mass-hysteria of repulsion against the criminal actions of Israel, and against the criminal actions of all home governments that support suppression of peoples.

Clearly Israel and its allied states are very concerned about any possible spark of such mass-hysteria. This explains their extreme obsessions with "hate speech laws" and "antisemitism laws" and "holocaust denial laws" and the many laws against all the civil liberties. The ruling class is feeling very uneasy about its image-management difficulties regarding its criminal activities. But in the end, all this is irrational over-reaction in places like Canada where the police are clearly in charge and where the greatest threat to humanity is "global warming" from atmospheric CO2.

My point is that these general pronouncements of baseless principles are not useful because they are not realistic. Agitation does not rely on grand appeals to the oppressor to be less oppressive, or to kind opinion activists to "mobilize". Effective agitation is based on shared disgust at being stepped on, and is anchored in reality.

I may be wrong? Maybe opinion activism and the "critical mass of like-minded people" will prove me wrong? I hope so. But, from history, it would appear that a class war or struggle leading to (not-necessarily violent) revolution has been needed every time.

Also, who am I to judge that Palestinians are not inflicting enough backlash to slow and stop the Israeli genocide? But from here, the genocide appears to be accelerating if anything. There will be another summer slaughter soon. Expressed disgust is an answer.

"UNFREE in Palestine" -- A most important new book for all who study national liberations

UNFREE in Palestine
-- Registration, Documentation and Movement Restrictions
By Nadia Abu-Zahra and Adah Kay
PlutoPress, 2013, pp. 222

Book reviewed by Denis G. Rancourt, PhD


The new book by academics Nadia Abu-Zahra and Adah Kay is a brilliant achievement, and a landmark in the study of both the ongoing Israel genocide in Palestine [1], and national liberation struggles in general.

At first look the book is simply a well-researched academic treatise, with 693 endnotes, about administrative controls imposed on Palestinians by Israel. It is written in a sober style with great intellectual clarity.

As one enters its pages, however, UNFREE becomes a far reaching analysis of the mechanics of a colonial state's eradication and domination of an indigenous population, that has parallels in other modern states such as Canada [2]. And it becomes an incisive description of the psychological and cultural anatomy of the awe-inspiring Palestinian resistance.

The unstated lessons of this book are transportable to any colonial nation state, and the picture is one that exposes the vicious nature of colonialism in the institutional instruments that are used. Despite the balanced and academic approach of the authors, readers will be horrified to learn the minutia of  what Palestinian citizens continue to endure in "the only democracy in the Middle East", and to learn the history of Israel's colonialism through the lens of administrative controls.

How has and does Israel contravene international law? Let us count the ways...

... the Hague Regulations, the Covenant of the League of Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Fourth Geneva Convention, various United Nations Resolutions, the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

These legal documents run parallel to another story – that of the largest denationalisation project in modern history. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees describes Palestine as “by far the most protracted and largest of all refugee problems in the world today”.2 In Palestine, the tools of the census, the population registry, and residence permits effectively denationalised a nation. It is one of the greatest ironies that, as nationalism faded in Europe, it waxed in the Zionist movement to Palestine, and as international law opposed denationalisation, denationalisation in Palestine rose ever higher. [p. 20]

One of the most profound chapters in UNFREE is the one entitled "Coercion and Collaboration" (Chap. 4). The authors recognize that colonialists always depend on collaborators, and that any colonialist enterprise must implement a strategy for securing collaboration. Israel's methods to coerce Palestinians to become collaborators in its genocide are violations of the explicit language of international statutes, and are inhuman, as the facts presented demonstrate. The authors always summarize by understating, such as:

The pressure to collaborate is one of the most difficult demands on Palestinians who either need IDs or need to retrieve them. This pressure permeates and is instrumental to the perpetuation of the system of control. [p. 83]

At times, the explicit descriptions of documented Israeli war and occupation crimes overpowers any human reader, such as:

In the first decade after 1948, “curfews became the most common method of controlling Palestinians”.68 Perhaps the best-known incident in this period took place in 1956, in the village of Kafr Qassem. The Israeli army gave only a half hour’s notice to the village leader that a curfew would take effect at sunset. With no way of telling the villagers returning home at dusk, the villagers were surprised to be confronted by armed forces asking if they were from the village. When they said “yes”, 47 men, women, and children were shot dead, one by one, at close range, in the first hour of the curfew alone.69

Defending the premeditated massacre, Brigadier Shadmi had told his forces, “A dead man is better than the complications of detention”. Shadmi and his men eventually served short prison sentences, were formally pardoned, and then promoted to leading roles in Palestinian municipalities and the Dimona nuclear facilities.70 [p. 106]

There are descriptions of routine Israeli interferences with births, and with Palestinian health services in general:

Médecins du Monde reported in November 2003 that Israeli officials had been holding birth delivery kits at the airport for seven months (sent by the United Nations Population Fund, UNFPA). The Ministry of Health in Nablus had been waiting for these kits since February 2003. In 2002, when Palestinian needs were greatest after Israeli attacks, Israeli officials at the airport kept medicines for eight months – until one third of them had expired – that had been sent from Germany, the US, and Italy to the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees.23 [p. 129]

Some of the introductory summaries to chapters are among the most compelling academic statements on the treatment of Palestinians by Israel, such as:

In the spring of 2002, yellow and purple blossoms covered the fields and trees around Jenin, a Palestinian town named for the fertility of its earth, and known for the largest forested area in the West Bank. But that spring, the forest had a different use. Israeli army forces were sweeping through the West Bank, taking over 8,500 Palestinians from their homes and workplaces and holding them captive in makeshift camps. Around Jenin, the army separated the men aged between about 18 to 50 from the children, women, and older men; then they took the men to the forest: handcuffed, blindfolded, in their underwear; they were forced to kneel or squat in the cold mud, and denied blankets, food, and water.1

Soldiers had written the ID numbers on Palestinians’ wrists with blue ink.2 Then each man was photographed, interrogated with the use of a digital file containing details about his life, and had his ID number written on the back of the photo. Using plastic shackles – described by Amnesty International as a form of torture because they stop blood circulation and cut into the skin – to bind captives’ hands, they blindfolded them, and kept them, “squatting, sitting or kneeling, not allowed to go to the toilet, and deprived of food or blankets during at least the first 24 hours”.3
Majdi Shehadeh was one of over 600 Palestinians taken from Tulkarem refugee camp:

"We weren’t given any food, and when we asked for water they poured it over us. The handcuffs were tight and when the blindfolds were taken off on our arrival I saw some people with hands black and swollen.4"

By 3.30 a.m. they began to shake with cold. Elsewhere, in the Ramallah area, so many Palestinians were taken that the army forced them into a dried-up septic tank for lack of space in the prisons.5 After a day and a half, they were given their first food:

[F]or 10 people we got a tomato and an apple and we shared this. Every six people had a loaf of bread, but a very small one and 200 grams of yoghurt.6

From 1967 to 2006, Israel incarcerated almost 700,000 Palestinians, that is, nearly one-fifth of the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza.7

[...]

Harvard professor Sara Roy, whose father carried an identification number imprinted on his arm in the Second World War, was one of those who noticed the connections between these so-called bureaucratic elements during the 2002 mass arrests:

"[W]hat does it mean when Israeli soldiers paint identification numbers on Palestinian arms; when young Palestinian men and boys of a certain age are told through Israeli loudspeakers to gather in the town square; when Israeli soldiers openly admit to shooting Palestinian children for sport; when some of the Palestinian dead must be buried in mass graves while the bodies of others are left in city streets and camp alleyways because the army will not allow proper burial; when certain Israeli officials and Jewish intellectuals publicly call for the destruction of Palestinian villages in retaliation for suicide bombings or for the transfer of the Palestinian population out of the West Bank and Gaza; when 46 per cent of the Israeli public favors such transfers and when transfer or expulsion becomes a legitimate part of popular discourse; when government officials speak of the “cleansing of the refugee camps”; and when a leading Israeli intellectual calls for hermetic separation between Israelis and Palestinians in the form of a Berlin Wall, caring not whether the Palestinians on the other side of the wall may starve to death as a result.10" [p. 160, 161]

Finally, a most fascinating section of UNFREE explains the Palestinian spirit and culture of resistance that is termed "sumud". The following sequence of quotes from UNFREE constitutes a description of sumud:

"We Palestinians have learned to lose without being defeated.30" [p. 172]

Sumud is [...] described by Edward Said as “a way of turning presence into small-scale obduracy”,33 in which sheer presence constitutes resistance; it contradicts “the natural behavior expected ... exodus and leaving”.34 [p. 172]

The internationalisation of the term sumud is attributed to Shehadeh, who explains that, faced with the two options of “mute submission” or “blind hate”, he would choose the third: sumud.35 [p. 173]

People in difficult conditions like Hani Amer often refer to their children, their families, and all people suffering collectively, as reasons for staying in place. [p. 173]

[Quoting Anthropologist Rema Hammami:]

"In terms of the society’s self-image, this is a society that for more than fifty years has lived in a constant state of dispossession. [It is] an incremental dispossession: it goes on, and on, and on. And the society is extremely strong in terms of survival, in terms of survival strategies. It’s very proud of that as well.

I mean, I think the self-image that most Palestinians have – we all have of ourselves – is that, “We are constant losers. We’re just people, and we just lose all the time. And we lose, but you know what? At the end of the day, they are not going to win. Because we’re stubborn. We’re stubborn bastards, right. I got nowhere else to go. This is my home. They can do what the hell they want. But I’m staying”.41" [p. 174]

Thus, sumud is a powerful and foundational explanation of the phenomenal Palestinian resistance. Sumud is a psychological alternative to suicidal physical resistance against a vastly more powerful invader, and to fleeing or accepting death. This alternative is made possible by being culturally embedded, and the feasibility of sumud is consistent with the "self-image-incongruence model of individual health" that I have recently described, based on known socio-medical research [3].

There is one aspect of UNFREE with which I do not agree. In their final chapter, the authors cast sumud as a technique of non-violent resistance. I do not see why the cultural and psychological basis for sumud would have to be inconsistent with a resistance that includes armed self-defence.

In other words, there is no reason, in my view, that sumud is at odds with an armed intifada. Indeed, it seems to me that sumud and armed rebellion are natural partners and supporters of each other, and that neither can survive without the other.

This is important because it is becoming more-than-apparent that nothing short of physical force on the ground will stop Israel in its "cleansing" and "grass mowing" projects. Certainly sumud alone, no matter how noble and admirable, is no match for years and decades more of business as usual in Palestine. Applying the myth of pacifism as a realistic counter to a genocidal maniac nation such as Israel would only ensure the murder of Palestinian society.

Nonetheless, that is a minor interpretational aspect, and UNFREE, will be of great benefit to anyone interested in the truth about the so-called "Israel-Palestine conflict", or interested in resistance struggles in history and in colonized regions (everywhere).


Endnotes

This review was first published at Dissident Voice, HERE.

[1] Note: The authors of UNFREE do not qualify Israel colonialism as a "genocide". It is not their goal to establish any legal judgements, but rather solely to factually describe the historic realities on the ground.

[2] See: Rancourt, Denis G., Israel’s Attempted Genocide Must Fail -- Lessons from genocide in "Canada", Dissident Voice, August 2, 2014.

[3] See: Rancourt, Denis G., Self-Image-Incongruence Theory of Individual Health, Dissident Voice, October 26, 2014.

Dr. Denis G. Rancourt is a former tenured and Full Professor of physics at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is known for his applications of physics education research (TVO Interview). He has published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals, and has written several social commentary essays. He is the author of the book Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism. While he was at the University of Ottawa, he supported student activism and opposed the influence of the Israel lobby on that institution, which fired him for a false pretext in 2009: LINK.  

Broad-ranging media interview with Denis Rancourt about Israel's massacre in Gaza

FARS News Agency published this broad-ranging interview, done while the recent Israeli massacre in Gaza was ungoing:

Prof. Denis Rancourt: The United States Supports Israel for Constant Bloodletting in the Middle East (LINK)

TEHRAN (FNA)- A Canadian scholar and academic, who was fired from the university where he was teaching because of his pro-Palestinian viewpoints, believes the US government is funding and supporting Israel for its continued bloodletting in the Middle East.

According to Prof. Denis Rancourt, Israel's plan in the Middle East is ethnic cleansing and the total obliteration of Palestine and its citizens in order to realize a colonial, imperial agenda backed by the US military, economic and finance empire.

"Israel’s program is to eradicate or neutralize all Palestinians who make claim to a home in Palestine. This is exactly what Israel has been doing since before its artificial creation," said Prof. Rancourt in an exclusive interview with Fars News Agency.

"Israel’s program is planned incremental dispossession and an ongoing attempted genocide. This has been repeatedly and explicitly expressed by the Zionist architects and executioners," he noted.

Prof. Denis Rancourt has also praised the resistance movement in the Gaza Strip for its steadfastness against the Israeli aggression during the past two months, maintaining that it was awe-inspiring that Hamas could kill some 70 invading Israeli soldiers.

Denis Rancourt is a former professor of physics at the University of Ottawa. In the fall of 2008, he was removed from all teaching duties under the pretext that he had granted A+ grades to 23 students in one course during the winter 2008 semester; however, it's quite clear to everybody that his outspoken criticism of Israel and his pro-Palestinian activism had triggered his dismissal from the university. Prof. Rancourt's classes were always attended by tens of students and he was considered as one of the popular university professors at the Faculty of Science.

Rancourt has published more than 100 academic papers. He was a member of Ottawa-Carleton Institute for Physics and the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre. He is the author of the book "Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism."

During the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip that just ended on August 26 following the victory of Hamas and the declaration of ceasefire between the Israeli regime and the resistance movement, FNA did an interview with Prof. Denis Rancourt on the influence of the Israeli lobby over the media, politicians and universities in the West, the history of Israel-Canada relations and the international reactions to the recent Israeli war on Gaza. The following is the text of this in-depth interview. CONTINUE READING

Israel-US has interrupted its slaughter in Gaza only to press forward with its genocide

By Denis G. Rancourt


Israel's long-term goal is to cleanse all of the territory that it militarily controls, by whatever most-efficient means it can get away with, which is facilitated and funded by the USA.

Since 1948, the name of the game is genocide, and this is no secret. Israel's plans have been explicitly expressed and Israel's genocide against Palestinians follows exactly the pattern of Canada's genocide against First Peoples, except that it is in full-throttle rather than being in end-phase as in Canada [1].

Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court

Adopted by the United Nations Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court on 17 July 1998Entry into force: 1 July 2002, in accordance with article 126

Article 6

Genocide

For the purpose of this Statute, "genocide" means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

In the latest slaughter in Gaza, Israel again targeted civilian infrastructure and again targeted the civilian population -- following the School of the Americas doctrine of killing the resistance by killing the population that supports the resistance.

No wonder Latin American countries were the most active in applying diplomatic sanctions against Israel: their own populations have been brutally and repeatedly assaulted by the same criminal methods of the same US-Empire that is now exterminating Gazans.

The "reason" for Israel's genocide is tied to Israel's geopolitical role in the service of the US-Empire; to control, divide, and weaken the Arab World in order to prevent emergence and independence from the Empire [2].

Israel-US has finally decided to stop this round of the slaughter in Gaza, for now. Next it will apply the most vicious blockade that Gaza has ever seen, unless we stop it. And, again, it has made this explicit [3]:

"What we want to do is support the Palestinians and their desire to improve their lives and to be able to open crossings and get food in and reconstruct and have greater freedom," US Secretary of State John Kerry said.

"But that has to come with a greater responsibility towards Israel, which means giving up rockets, moving into a different plane," he said ...

Recent Latin American history of violent oppression by the US-Empire has proven that for a resistance fighter to lay down his weapons before the US-oppressor is both to commit certain suicide and to commit one's people to certain and total deprivation. Those fighters who have not learned this lesson will suffer the ultimate consequence, and Gazans know this perfectly well.

In the words of Gazan Nasman Al-Ashi [4]: "We either live in dignity and free or we all die. ... We either live free or we die here."

In this reality -- a reality created by the US-Empire's brutality -- John Kerry's words are diabolical. He is announcing the predictable next step in the continued crushing of the Palestinian Nation. ...Destroy all civil and sanitary infrastructure, spread death and terror, then strangle with a blockade until the caged victims become susceptible to fractionation and deterioration... The model has been repeatedly applied, in Libya, Iraq, Syria, and on and on.

One problem is, Palestinians, and Gazans in particular, and their co-combatants in southern Lebanon, are remarkable freedom fighters, among the most valiant and tenacious that humanity has ever produced. They can only be stopped by a direct hit or by starvation, and they are exceedingly hard to hit and hard to starve.

Another problem is that Palestinians are loved and admired in the entire World precisely because of their courage and determination against the Israel-US monster, and in contrast to the inhumanity of that monster that has been on display for the last month.

In addition, Palestinian fighters have demonstrated themselves to be outstanding combatants since the previous assault on Gaza, and this time defended themselves by killing almost 100 invading IDF soldiers in intense close-range encounters.

In the words of a major establishment intelligence firm [5]:

Hamas appears to be attempting to create the spectre of a continual potential threat to IDF ground units in Gaza, thereby undermining IDF morale. Hamas is also keenly aware of the impact of inflicting casualties on the IDF - not just in the Palestinian Territories and Israel, but in the wider Middle East region - and so it and the PIJ are striving to combine tactics and their geographical knowledge and advantage to inflict maximum casualties on the IDF.

A highly notable and successful example of this occurred on 19 July, when Izz al-Din al-Qassam militants lured a force from the IDF's Golani Brigade into a minefield in the Shujaiya area of Gaza, before then attacking the unit's Merkava Mk 4 main battle tanks (MBTs) and M113 armoured personnel carriers (APCs) with anti-tank missiles. Six IDF soldiers were killed in the attack, while a seventh soldier - Sergeant Oron Shaul - went missing. While Hamas subsequently claimed that Shaul was alive and had been captured by its fighters, Israel stated that the soldier was likely to be dead. A further six Golani Brigade soldiers were killed in separate clashes in Shujaiya on the same day, and the unit's commander, Colonel Rasan Aliyan, was also wounded, underlining the intensity of the fighting.

It is precisely because Gaza and Palestine are so dedicated to their own self-defence, and are so valiant in opposing the vile US-Empire, that we must not allow Obama, Kerry, Netanyahu, Harper, Trudeau, Mulcair, and all the other thugs to strangle Gaza with a continued and more vicious blockade.

The planned blockade announced by Kerry is part of the actuation of the on-going genocide and it is no less criminal than the direct slaughter itself. We must be as repulsed by the planned continued and augmented blockade as we were repulsed by the land invasion.

And we must be as repulsed by Israel's pathological refusal to accept an independent Palestinian Nation as we are repulsed by the blockade. The blockade must die now, and an independent and viable Palestine must be allowed.


Endnotes

[1] "Israel's attempted genocide must fail -- Lessons from Canada's genocide" by Denis G. Rancourt, July 29, 2014; http://activistteacher.blogspot.ca/2014/07/israels-attempted-genocide-must-fail.html

[2] "The Intended Roles of the Israel-Lobby and of Israel in the US-Empire are Incompatible with Peace" by Denis G. Rancourt,July 30, 2014; http://activistteacher.blogspot.ca/2014/07/the-intended-roles-of-israel-lobby-and.html

[3] "Gaza truce enters second day as Israel and Palestine prepare for talks" (Reuters, AFP, Al-Akhbar), August 6, 2014; http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/gaza-truce-enters-second-day-israel-and-palestine-prepare-talks

[4] "Palestinian tells BBC "The World is failing Gaza"" (BBC News), Shazlqbal77 YouTube channel, August 4, 2014; http://youtu.be/OOf1kozJMOI

[5] "Palestinian militants inflict substantial casualties on Israeli forces in Gaza" (IHS Jane's Terrorism & Insurgency Centre), August 1, 2014; http://www.janes.com/article/41421/palestinian-militants-inflict-substantial-casualties-on-israeli-forces-in-gaza


Dr. Denis G. Rancourt is a former tenured and Full Professor of physics at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is known for his applications of physics education research (TVO Interview). He has published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals, and has written several social commentary essays. He is the author of the book Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism. While he was at the University of Ottawa, he supported student activism and opposed the influence of the Israel lobby on that institution, which fired him for a false pretext in 2009: LINK. 

The Intended Roles of the Israel-Lobby and of Israel in the US-Empire are Incompatible with Peace

By Denis G. Rancourt


Several misguided commentators have advanced that Canada's unconditional support for Israel is the result of Christian Zionist ideology.

This is flat wrong, and inexcusably naive. Harper's unconditional support for Israel is not from right-wing or religious ideology. Nor is this the case in the US itself.

Canada's unconditional support for Israel started under former-Prime-Minister Paul Martin after he took over (and destroyed) the Liberal Party of Canada. And the take-over was one additional step from some degree of Canadian sovereignty to complete alignment with the US master.

That Canada has become a vassal to the US Empire -- and subservient to the Empire's military and finance economy -- also explains the new prominence of the Israel lobby in Canada.

The purpose and function of the US Israel lobby is central to the US Empire, and the international Israel lobby -- which radiates from the US base -- is prominent and powerful in every Western democracy that aligns itself under the US Empire, such as France and Canada. (It can't seem to settle-in to the UK, which recently rejected an outright invasion of Syria.)

Despite appearances, the Israel lobby does not "control" the US Empire, in a top-down fashion. Rather, it serves to align and discipline all the politicians (and media and intellectuals), in order to block discourse that would threaten the Empire's global exploitation project.

What started as a lobby that benefited from creating support for Israel as the US agent of discord in the Muslim World has become a highly perfected instrument of internal political alignment with the project of Empire.

The US Empire and the now-international Israel lobby are in a tightly woven symbiotic relation. They are inseparable.

One of the Empire's main concerns is to prevent the emancipation of the Muslim World in the Middle East, in order to control energy reserves and energy distribution routes. Israel is the Empire's main strategy to achieve the dividing, conquering, weakening, and destabilizing of the Middle East.

If the Empire's strategy in the Middle East were more varied, then both Israel and the Israel lobby would lose power and influence. So the lobby is committed to ensuring that Israel is the main show in the Middle East.

Countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Iran, and Syria that dare to practice some independence from the Empire -- in terms of commerce, alliances, and monetary policy -- must be destroyed. Independence cannot be allowed to survive or spread. The same is true of South and Central America, but these are the US backyard that can be rearranged at will, and this backyard has little geopolitical relevance because there is no possibility of strong territorial ties with Europe, Asia, Africa... That is the thinking until things get out of hand.

The Empire is run on brute force and pillaging, in as many arenas as possible. The financial and corporate instruments of exploitation are imposed through the threat and regular actuation of military intervention.

This is the model that makes Israel relevant to the Empire. Israel serves as the Empire's professional thug in the Middle East, and trainer of thugs wherever needed. Talk of "peace" is pure sophistry for the masses.

This is the Israel that also wants to constantly upgrade to more spacious living quarters that exclude Palestinians, because killing Muslims for the Empire is Israel's lifeblood. In exchange for its services, Israel can have its little genocide. A thug needs an extraordinarily secure home-base. Mass murderers do not sleep well alongside the family members of their victims.

The recent rise of The Israel Lobby in Canada and in France is simply a development within the progressing logic of Empire. The media, intellectuals, and politicians need to be kept on track with the project of Empire. The Israel Lobby has developed a niche-expertize to do exactly that, and it has a holocaust that can be used to levy compliance from dissidents anytime.

The relation did not fall from the sky as ideology. It is also not parasitic. It is symbiotic. In symbiosis both partners benefit, and removing one harms the other. And this symbiotic monster wants to eat the World.

We are just the inconvenient citizens that question, and we are to be fed a diet of nonsense, like that there are "peace negotiations" or that there can be a "peace process". Actually, there will be no peace, only resistance, and possible pockets and episodes of liberation. Someday these pockets may coalesce. In any case, our resistance should be anchored in reality.


Dr. Denis G. Rancourt is a former tenured and Full Professor of physics at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is known for his applications of physics education research (TVO Interview). He has published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals, and has written several social commentary essays. He is the author of the book Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism. While he was at the University of Ottawa, he supported student activism and opposed the influence of the Israel lobby on that institution, which fired him for a false pretext in 2009: LINK.

Israel's attempted genocide must fail -- Lessons from Canada's genocide

EN FRANCAIS ICI

By Denis G. Rancourt


The Zionist Project is to eradicate all Palestinians who make claim to a home in Palestine. The Zionist Project is exactly what Israel has been doing since its artificial creation.

The Zionist Project is planned incremental dispossession and an on-going attempted genocide, and this has been repeatedly and explicitly expressed by its architects and executioners. The Zionist Project as attempted genocide is also expressly cheered-on by many Israeli citizens and by members of the Zionist diaspora of all religions.

The Israeli apartheid is not meant as a sustained apartheid. It is an increment in an attempted genocide that accompanies a vast racist pillaging of land and resources (water, gas).

The attempted Israeli genocide, in its on-going mid-phase, is not unlike the now-accomplished Canadian genocide against First Peoples. First there were population displacements, then exterminations, then land treaties, then reservations, then forced cultural assimilation for any survivors, then cultural normalization of the crimes, and never any possibility of return or reparations.

A main difference is that Canada's genocide is virtually complete, whereas Israel's attempted genocide is in full swing and unfolding militarily before the world, in a time of instant and distributed electronic publishing, and in a time when other genocides have been named, exposed, condemned, and studied and understood. [1]

Another difference is that Canadian politicians are -- these days, in the end-game of the Canadian genocide -- lying cover-up artists, whereas Israeli politicians are straight-up, and are supported by an overtly and enthusiastically racist population. 

By comparison, Canadian citizens are racist in condoning their state's violence (both domestic and international) but they practice language-cleansing to hide their true racism from themselves. (There is even a pseudo-intellectual legalistic framework to help accomplish this known as "critical race theory" [2] -- The aftermath of a genocide is always a bit tricky, with wanting a "safe" mental-environment for the children and all, and for the professionals that continue to advance and maintain the exploitative system.)

Yet another difference is that Israel was created and is supported by the super-genocidal states (USA, Britain, et al.) in order to prevent and police-against any unified emergence of the Muslim World in the resource-rich and geopolitically central Middle East. Then again, Canada was entirely supported by Britain during the most brutal period of its genocide, and this was in-part to counter USA emergence and domination on the North American continent.

An analysis of Israel's on-going attempted genocide is informed by the social history of Canada's genocide, and this model should be predictive.

If Israel's attempted genocide is allowed to ripen to completion, then Israeli's will cleanse their history and their language and thoughts, in the post-genocide period. We must not get there. The overt racism-of-expression of Israeli society and of the Zionist diaspora is an unmistakable indicator that the attempted genocide is in mid-project, as was the case in Canada during the overtly racist campaigns to take the territory.

Language and silence are both indicators of intention, but racist language is not the cause of the genocidal thrust. The cause is a lust for power and resources actuated by global and regional dominance hierarchies that are very real entities in themselves: The top layer probably being the global exploitation project of the American Empire, driven by its military economy and its control of global economic instruments.

I personally do not believe that Israel is the tail that wags the USA dog, but there is certainly a large degree of that going on [3][4]. The Zionist diaspora derives power and influence from supporting the Zionist Project, from its support for Israel's genocide [4].

The Zionist Project must now be stopped. This genocide must be stopped in its tracks, if it's the last significant geopolitical accomplishment of the global civil society. The tide is turning. We see real political movement in the UK itself. Western World civil society must not be irrelevant and ineffective. We owe that to ourselves.

The only effective barrier against the Zionist Project at the moment is the remarkable Palestinian resistance itself. And Israel is doing everything it can to isolate, divide, erode, and destroy that resistance. The Palestinian resistance is phenomenal. Against all odds, Palestine has repeatedly found ways to assert itself, despite the tremendous pressures to make it abandon.

The World civil society must actuate arguably-the-first stoppage of a nation-scale genocide pursued by a colonial invader.

There can be peace and coexistence but Israel is hell-bent on its Zionist Project, and those Muslim countries with corrupt leaders are participating in the Israeli genocide rather than impeding it. Therefore, the only chance for Palestinian survival, at this time, is increased armed Palestinian resistance. And that is something Western civil society had better understand before it's too late, if it wants to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem [5].

If Israel cannot be discouraged, and since it cannot be disarmed, then Palestine must be armed sufficiently to effectively discourage the on-going Israeli genocide. Can Israel be discouraged from pursuing its vicious plan? It's time to test that question, while supporting that Palestine be enabled to defend itself.

Israel must live and thrive without Zionism and thus without its apartheid/genocide project, and Judaism must thrive in Israel and in the World, but the Zionist project must die. Until that can be feasible, Israel must be ostracized, isolated, boycotted, and shunned. World civil society can achieve this if it gets serious and starts by rejecting the Zionist diaspora wherever it acts. Jews that abandon and reject the Israeli genocide must be loved, and Zionists of all religions must be constrained from supporting the Israel genocide.

In Canada, Stephen Harper is the "Prime Minister of Canada for Israel". Israel's regional violence keeps the price of oil high and the tar sands exploitable and profitable to the US masters of the Canadian economy.

The Canadian Israel lobby is an arm of US imperialism and has taken over as arguably the most influential superstructure acting on Canadian politics. Trudeau [6] and Mulcair are vying to be more Zionist than Harper. It's disgusting and humiliating for Canadians.

Virtually no Canadian members of parliament have condemned Israel for its grotesque massacre. Those who speak out condone and normalize the genocide. The Canadian mainstream media is largely poisoned by the same Zionism [7].

In Canada's capital Ottawa, the university presidents of the two largest universities in the city are both staunch Zionists that make artificial academic ties with Israel and suppress student movements for justice for Palestinians.

This has all gone too far. It's time to roll back Zionism in Canada and everywhere. Palestinians are doing the remarkable. The least we can do for ourselves is to cut back Zionists in our own countries.


Endnotes

[1] "A Little Matter of Genocide - Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present" by Ward Churchill, City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1997.

[2] "Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism" by Denis G. Rancourt, Stairway Press, Mount Vernon, WA, 2013.

[3] "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" by Mearsheimer, John J. and Walt, Stephen; New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.

[4] "The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering" by Norman G. Finkelstein, Verso, NY, 2000.

[5] "Rockets from Gaza are morally justified and are not contrary to international law" by Denis G. Rancourt, Activist Teacher blog, July 24, 2014.

[6] "Justin Trudeau: 'We have Israel's back'", Carey Miller YouTube Channel, published April 6, 2014.

[7] "CBC-Ottawa's biased reporting of a pro-Palestine rally -- Not good" by Denis G. Rancourt, Activist Teacher blog, July 27, 2014.


Dr. Denis G. Rancourt is a former tenured and Full Professor of physics at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is known for his applications of physics education research (TVO Interview). He has published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals, and has written several social commentary essays. He is the author of the book Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism. While he was at the University of Ottawa, he supported student activism and opposed the influence of the Israel lobby on that institution, which fired him for a false pretext in 2009: LINK.

Rockets from Gaza are morally justified and are not contrary to international law

By Dr. Denis G. Rancourt

"It is the obligation of every person who claims to oppose oppression to resist the oppressor by every means at his or her disposal. Not to engage in physical resistance, armed resistance to oppression, is to serve the interests of the oppressor; no more, no less. There are no exceptions to the rule, no easy out..."
--Assata Shakur, 1984 [1]

Many well-meaning observers who indiscriminately oppose violence and who support Palestine against its ruthless oppressor Israel have condemned the Hamas rockets launched towards Israel.

To condemn the rockets is misguided at best.

To condemn the rockets supports Israel in its war crimes against Gaza.

To condemn the rockets is also pompous, paternalistic, and racist.

Who are we -- as outside observers not sitting in Gaza -- to dictate to the victims of the brutal, systematic, long-term, and on-going suppression perpetrated by Israel against Palestinians how best to defend themselves?

Who are we to dictate which tactic might best increase survival?

Who are we to judge that Israeli civilians have such a high degree of innocence regarding the actions of their army as to prevent Gaza from attempting to defend itself with homemade rockets pointed in desperation at the only available targets?

In addition, one can easily make the moral argument that Israeli civilians share significant responsibility for the Gaza massacres. This responsibility follows from the structural circumstances:

• Israelis are well informed about the war crimes
• Israelis have political influence within a democratic system
• Israelis have the means and institutions to speak out
• Israelis can chose to abstain from military service

And it follows from the facts on the ground. Instead of opposition to the Israeli state's war crimes, social statistics show overwhelming support for the organized murder and genocidal suppression of Palestinians.

• Only 5% of Israeli academics have expressed opposition to the land invasion, in a recent petition. Where academics have total freedom of inquiry and of expression. 
• Israelis shamelessly gather to cheer-on the show of bombs dropped on Gaza, and threaten journalists with bodily harm who might report negatively about this particular display of cruelty.
• The Israeli media is overwhelmingly brutal and racist in its expression against Palestinians. Politicians make political points the more violent and waring they are -- there's an indicator. 
• The state is an apartheid state in both law and fact, yet there is virtually no opposition from Israeli civil society against the apartheid.
• And so on.

There is no doubt that the Hamas rockets constitute self-defence. The statement that the rockets are "indiscriminate" is no more than a statement that the rockets are not high-tech weapons, and this fact on-its-own is irrelevant to whether or not the rockets constitute self-defence.

There is no doubt that the rockets constitute self-defence because the rockets are a response to a brutal occupation, deprivation, and slaughter. No sane analyst can claim that Israel's long-term policy and actions of genocidal cleansing and land and resource annexation by force is caused by rockets or by suicide bombs or anything that the resisting Palestinians have or may do. (The inverse logic itself should be declared criminal.)

In my estimation, the use that Gaza makes of rockets is amply morally justified. And it is up to Gaza to decide how best to defend itself for its own survival.

Israel is showing little sign that it cares about World criticism of its actions in Gaza. It does not appear that anything except some moderately effective military resistance could slow Israel down in subjugating and torturing Gaza. For this reason, for the sake of Gaza, we can only hope that it will secure more and better weapons for its defence in the future, as this would probably minimize the loss of life and accelerate a just political resolution.

Furthermore, for readers who require the approbation of jurists, recently Dr. Norman Finkelstein has competently argued that the Hamas rockets, in the context of Israel's aggression, are not contrary to international law (LINK):

Human Rights Watch has argued that, even if its civilians are being relentlessly targeted, a people does not have a legal right to carry out “belligerent reprisals”—that is, to deliberately target the civilians of the opposing state until it desists. “Regardless of who started this latest round, attacks targeting civilians violate basic humanitarian norms,” HRW’s Deputy Middle East and North Africa director stated in the first press release.  “All attacks, including reprisal attacks, that target or indiscriminately harm civilians are prohibited under the laws of war, period.” Not so. International law does not—at any rate, not yet—prohibit belligerent reprisals.[4] The United States and Britain, among others, have staunchly defended the right of a state to use nuclear weapons by way of belligerent reprisal.[5] By this standard, the people of Gaza surely have the right to use makeshift projectiles to end an illegal, merciless seven-year-long Israeli blockade or to end Israel’s criminal bombardment of Gaza’s civilian population. Indeed, in its landmark 1996 advisory opinion on the legality of nuclear weapons, the ICJ ruled that international law is not settled on the right of a state to use nuclear weapons when its “survival” is at stake. But, if a state might have the right to use nuclear weapons when its survival is at stake, then surely a people struggling for self-determination has the right to use makeshift projectiles when it has been subjected to slow death by a protracted blockade and recurrent massacres by a state determined to maintain its occupation. 

One might legitimately question the political prudence of Hamas’s strategy. But the law is not unambiguously against it, while the scales of morality weigh in its favor. Israel has imposed a brutal blockade on Gaza. Fully 95 percent of the water in Gaza is unfit for human consumption. By all accounts, the Palestinian people now stand behind those engaging in belligerent reprisals against Israel. In the Gaza Strip, they prefer to die resisting than to continue living under an inhuman blockade. Their resistance is mostly notional, as makeshift projectiles cause little damage. So, the ultimate question is, Do Palestinians have the right to symbolically resist slow death punctuated by periodic massacres, or must they lie down and die?

***

Endnotes:

[1] This is the opening quote in Ward Churchill's essay "Pacifism as Pathology: Notes on an American pseudopraxis". Churchill's works are dedicated to the genocides against the native peoples of the Americas, including Canada. Assata Shakur has been feature on this blog in these posts.

Dr. Denis G. Rancourt is a former tenured and Full Professor of physics at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is known for his applications of physics education research (TVO Interview). He has published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals, and has written several social commentary essays. He is the author of the book Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism. While he was at the University of Ottawa, he supported student activism and opposed the influence of the Israel lobby on that institution, which fired him for a false pretext in 2009: LINK.

How easily a genocide can be ignored

This is a stunning video about the well-documented NATO genocide in Iraq that killed one million children, for racist geopolitical gain. The video is made by surviving North American aboriginal freedom fighters, who know something about genocide.

Meet physicist activist Dr. Hajo Meyer

Hajo Meyer on Israel

Related Israel Lobby activism at the University of Ottawa, Canada: HERE.