Watching the direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians fizzle out over the last week, I was reminded of Conor Cruise O’Brien’s observation that “conflicts don’t have solutions - they have outcomes.” For nearly two decades, the contours of a final compromise on territory that would enable the State of Israel to live alongside a new State of Palestine have been known, yet an actual agreement has remained elusive.
Here’s another Argentine “story” for guilt-stricken Israelis like Noam. Today is a public holiday in Argentina. What’s being celebrated is The Day of the Race. No, that’s not race as in human race, it’s race as in the conquerors and colonizers who came here from Europe and wiped out the indigenous population. A day to celebrate the start of a genocide, if you like.
Earlier in the year the government of Ireland expelled an Israeli diplomat because it suspected Israel of using cloned Irish passports in the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in January. Quite right too, states have to do what they can to defend the integrity of their passports.
You’ll find the laws and decrees governing access to Argentine citizenship by naturalization here. It’s stated on more than one occasion that citizenship can’t be denied to someone for political, ideological or religious reasons. Lovely.
Neve Gordon is an Israeli academic who favors an international boycott of Israeli academics. David Hirsh goes to town on him here. You really should read it all but I’ll provide a brief taster:
Yoram Hazony, the Israeli scholar whose brilliant essay on Europe and Israel I critiqued here, has a piece in The Forward replying to a particularly silly take by J.J. Goldberg on the same piece. Inter alia, he writes:
In a paean to Tony Judt and Edward Said, Jerónimo Páez has the following to say about the former in today’s El País:
He was born in Great Britain and proud of being Jewish. Nevertheless, he considered himself to be a citizen of the world. He didn’t like nationalism. “Identity”, he said, is a dangerous word.
Readers will not want to let this article by David Hirsh escape them. In due course I hope to write something of similar length, if not quality, on a related discursive phenomenon, the Gurvitz-Goldman doctrine.
I am standing before you in this court so that the Almighty will be a witness before you and I. A witness to what is happening today to our beloved Iran and to its brave sons and daughters. So that upon the judgement day when we are held accountable, those of us who stand proud and those of us who hold our heads down will remember that such is destiny. The final reward and punishment is only by God.
If justice was the benchmark, instead of me standing trial today, it should have been those who have disgraced Iran and Islam who should have been standing trial. The very people who want to plunder Iran’s wealth and use Islam to cover up their foray and despotism.
I was arrested on 15th February when the intelligence ministry agents broke into my house. They smashed up our furniture and rummaged through our belongings just to maximise their intimidation. This was all because of a song I had written that according to the gentlemen had ‘endangered the national security’. After that, I spent 44 days in solitary confinement where I was put under a series of emotional, mental and physical tortures. Allow me to describe just a small part of what I was put through:
- Hurling insults and profanities to belittle me, even ridiculing the way I looked
- Intimidating me by threatening to arrest my wife, even though she has had no political activities or played a role in anything I have done
- Insulting my war veteran brother and threatening to arrest him as well if I did not co-operate
- Intelligence agent threatening me with death (He said to me I can easily kill you outside here with a single bullet and no one can question me)
- Prison officials threatening me with execution
- Keeping me in a 2 metre by 1.5 metre cell without any hygiene facilities that led to infected boils all over my body
- Deliberate negligence in giving me my medication related to my heart problem
- Putting me in a cell next to an inmate with AIDS and making me walk with bare feet on his blood after he had committed suicide by slashing his wrists
- Giving me insinuating offensive information about my wife
- Stripping me naked in front of an agent who was holding a camera in his hand, who kept laughing and asking me ‘are you scared?’ every time I protested at his immoral behaviour
- Severe physical beating when I asked to see the prison doctor, beatings so bad that the marks were visible all over me for a long time
- Chaining my hands and feet for long periods of time
And these were just a small glimpse of what I went through during my detention.
After the Ashura uprising which resulted in so many of my compatriots being killed, I felt it was my duty to condemn this inhumanity and use my musical talents in doing so. I wrote and composed a song, which became known as ‘Ali, Rise up’. The content of this song is to do with the exploitation of God, the Koran and the Imams by a bunch of impostors to achieve their demonic goals. In this song, I asked the Imams for help in uprooting lies and hypocrisy. Is it not strange that in these days to ask the Imams for help in battling against evil is considered a crime in our country?
Imam Hussein was martyred for good to triumph against evil, so should we not expect the same from his followers? Or are we just supposed to ceremoniously beat our heads and beat up our chests and pretend we despise tyrants and despots?
I do not recognise this man as our president! Am I then not a Muslim? On the day of Ashura, I chanted ‘God is Great’ and I am proud of calling His name. Surely whoever jails me for chanting ‘God is Great’ is a non-believer and an infidel himself.
Those who make out they are Muslims these days, themselves disregard the most basic teachings. They easily lie to nation of seventy million and make false promises, and feign that they want to glorify Iran and Islam. Iran and Islam are both much grander than having the need for such claimants.
The constitution has to be made clear. It gives me the right to criticise. It gives me the right to take part in gatherings without carrying weapons, it gives me the right to free speech and free thought. And because of this constitution that our fathers voted for, I am free not to be indifferent to the destiny of my country. Interestingly instead of being commended, I have to stand trial today for this.
Sadly in the report made by the intelligence ministry, it is stated that I have written an insulting song against Mu‘āwiya and posted it on my blog. Has the intelligence ministry now become defenders of Mu‘āwiya and Yazid? In another section of the report it says, I made up this song against the Supreme Leader, which is the most comical part of the report. The song is clearly against those who desecrated the sanctities of Ashura, but it seems the intelligence ministry is insistent that someone else is responsible for all this. Such is the illusion of power by those who seek the temporary reigns of power.
These policies of mass oppression and intimidation are dictated by which eternal power that justifies silence. Which divine laws allow such invasions of privacy into people’s homes and into the privacy of people’s private beliefs? and not tolerate the slightest of criticisms? These self interest seeking persons who claim to be kinder child minders than our own mothers, not only think they own this land but consider any non-conformity a crime and trample on the basic rights of our citizens. I recommend, in a brotherly way, some reality check and some insight than just having your eyes fixated on the seats of power; for rectifying your mistakes in the future will be much harder.
Respected judge, I am worried today about your judgement, for my interrogators said you are their puppet and will do whatever they tell you to do. I hope God will reveal you the truth, so that God forbid, you will not be held accountable for what others have asked you do for them in another world.
In the end, I reject all charges against me and ask you to find me not guilty.
This is the song written by Arya, which has been deemed to ‘endanger the national security of the country’:
As I reported here a few days ago, in her speech to the recently concluded General Assembly of the United Nations, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner offered the Iranian government the possibility of trying the AMIA massacre suspects in a third country if it believes they could not get a fair hearing in Argentina. She said that this offer would end the excuses being offered for the Iranian regime for not extraditing the AMIA fugitives.
The intelligence of her initiative deserves to be highlighted. It serves to protect her from accusations of doing nothing to bring real pressure to bear on Tehran to give up the AMIA fugitives, has delighted the official representatives of the Argentine Jewish community and the simple act of mentioning Iran in connection with terrorism helps her government’s relationship with the United States.
On Tuesday afternoon I was walking home from the Acoyte subway station when I happened across the aftermath of an arrest. There were three police patrol cars, six or seven cops, a bunch of onlookers and the two arrestees. The cops were variously smoking, talking into their radios and writing in notebooks. At their feet - on the street, not on the pavement - two adult males lay face down. They had their hands cuffed behind their backs. The onlookers gaped. It was cold for Buenos Aires in spring and raining lightly.
Here are eight representatives of Iran’s brutal regime:
1. Mohammad Ali JAFARI [Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, born September 1, 1957]
2. Sadeq MAHSOULI [Minister of Welfare and Social Security, former Minister of the Interior and Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces for Law Enforcement, born 1959]
3. Qolam-Hossein MOHSENI-EJEI [Prosecutor-General of Iran, former Minister of Intelligence, born circa 1956]
4. Saeed MORTAZAVI [Head of Iranian Anti-Smuggling Task Force, former Prosecutor-General of Tehran, born 1967]
5. Heydar MOSLEHI [Minister of Intelligence, born 1956]
6. Mostafa Mohammad NAJJAR [Minister of the Interior and Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces for Law Enforcement, born 1956]
7. Ahmad-Reza RADAN [Deputy Chief of the National Police, born 1963 or 1964]
8. Hossein TAEB [Deputy Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Commander for Intelligence, former Commander of the Basij Forces, born 1963]
What do they have in common - apart from being brutes, that is? Over to the White House:
Statement by the Press Secretary on the New Executive Order Designating Iranian Officials Responsible for or Complicit in Serious Human Rights Abuses
The United States is strongly committed to the promotion of human rights around the world, including in the Islamic Republic of Iran. In accordance with U.S. law and the Administration’s commitment to human rights for the Iranian people, the President has signed an Executive Order authorizing the Departments of State and Treasury to impose sanctions on eight Iranian government officials tied to serious human rights abuses against the people of Iran.
These measures are being taken pursuant to the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010, which imposes sanctions against senior officials in the Iranian government who, based on credible evidence, were involved in the commission of serious human rights abuses during or after Iran’s 2009 presidential election. The individuals designated will be subject to financial sanctions and visa ineligibilities under U.S. law. The list of names is not exhaustive and will continue to grow based on events in Iran, and as additional information and evidence becomes available.
As the President noted in his recent address to the United Nations General Assembly, human rights are a matter of moral and pragmatic necessity for the United States. The United States will always stand with those in Iran who aspire to have their voices heard. We will be a voice for those aspirations that are universal, and we continue to call upon the Iranian government to respect the rights of its people.
Here’s what’s significant: “The individuals designated will be subject to financial sanctions and visa ineligibilities under U.S. law. The list of names is not exhaustive and will continue to grow based on events in Iran, and as additional information and evidence becomes available.”
Here’s a tremendous story from The Brooklyn Paper, right here in New York City:
Local Jewish leaders and anti-Israel protesters faced off on Montague Street - again - on Tuesday, holding a raucous debate over whether West Bank-made lotions sold at Ricky’s cosmetics shop support Israel’s “illegal” occupation of the embattled region.
In the end, the boycott supporters ended up actually promoting the Ahava products, as Brooklyn Heights residents flocked to Ricky’s with their wallets open.
“I came in when I saw the flags - I think [the boycotters] are absurd,” said Ginger Berman, who bought a tub of Ahava bath salts. “There are so many other big issues to protest, why this?”
I’ll confess to always having liked Pink Floyd. For anyone who attended, as I did, an English public school, you pretty much have to. And so, amongst my record collection, which spans painfully hip genres like underground techno, dub reggae and first-wave punk, a few Floyd albums can be found discreetly nestling.
At the same time, there was a part of me that found singer Roger Waters appallingly self-indulgent. Next time you listen to “Comfortably Numb,” ignore the Gilmour guitar solo and check out the lyrics. Yech.
In recent years, Waters’s upper class leftism has become increasingly strident. Now, along with other artier-than-thou types like Oliver Stone, Waters has embraced antisemitism.
Here’s a video of a recent Waters gig in Toronto. Notice how, at about 1′30″ into the ballad “Goodbye Blue Sky,” you see bombers dropping Stars of David, rapidly followed by dollar signs, followed in turn by various corporate symbols (Shell, Mercedes and so forth,) all ending in a stream of religious symbols - crosses, crescents and stars.
I need not spell out what message that sends. I will say that it is shameful. Perhaps John “Johnny Rotten” Lydon - a man who gloriously told the Israel boycotters to “f**k off” before playing Tel Aviv - was right after all.
After months of anticipation and almost two years after his arrest and imprisonment, blogger Hossein Derakhshan was sentenced to 19.5 years in prison by Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Courts today. News of the stiff sentence was first published by Mashreq website. A source close to the family of Hossein Derakhshan confirmed the news for the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, adding that Derakhshan’s family are shocked by the news. ”Neither the family nor the lawyer knew about the sentence, they read the news online.” The conservative website referred to Hossein Derakhshan as an “anti-revolutionary blogger.”
“According to the sentence issued today by Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Courts with Judge Salavati presiding, Derakhshan who was arrested in October 2008, has been charged with ‘cooperation with hostile states, propagating against the regime, propagation in favor of anti-revolutionary groups, insulting sanctities, and implementation and management of obscene websites,’ and sentenced to 19.5 years in prison, five years’ ban from membership in political parties and activities in the media; and returning received funds in the amount of 30,750 Euro, US$2,900, and 200 British Pounds,” reported the Mashreq website.
The crackdown on dissent is clearly in full swing. Derakhshan’s sentence comes just a few days after the regime sentenced Shiva Nazar Ahari, one of Iran’s most courageous human right activists, to six years behind bars, just days after the regime extorted $500,000 from her family to bail her out of prison.
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