Hebron settler riots were out and out pogroms
December 10, 2008 By Avi Issacharoff
Source: Haaretz
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An innocent Palestinian family, numbering close to 20 people. All of them women and children, save for three men. Surrounding them are a few dozen masked Jews seeking to lynch them. A pogrom. This isn't a play on words or a double meaning. It is a pogrom in the worst sense of the word. First the masked men set fire to their laundry in the front yard and then they tried to set fire to one of the rooms in the house. The women cry for help, "Allahu Akhbar." Yet the neighbors are too scared to approach the house, frightened of the security guards from Kiryat Arba who have sealed off the home and who are cursing the journalists who wish to document the events unfolding there.
The cries rain down, much like the hail of stones the masked men hurled at the Abu Sa'afan family in the house. A few seconds tick by before a group of journalists, long accustomed to witnessing these difficult moments, decide not to stand on the sidelines. They break into the home and save the lives of the people inside. The brain requires a minute or two to digest what is taking place. Women and children crying bitterly, their faces giving off an expression of horror, sensing their imminent deaths, begging the journalists to save their lives. Stones land on the roof of the home, the windows and the doors. Flames engulf the southern entrance to the home. The front yard is littered with stones thrown by the masked men. The windows are shattered and the children are frightened. All around, as if they were watching a rock concert, are hundreds of Jewish witnesses, observing the events with great interest, even offering suggestions to the Jewish wayward youth as to the most effective way to harm the family. And the police are not to be seen. Nor is the army.
Ten minutes prior, while the security forces were preoccupied with dispersing the rioters near the House of Contention, black smoke billowed from the wadi separating Kiryat Arba and Hebron. For some reason, none of the senior officers of the police or the army were particularly disturbed by what was transpiring at the foot of Kiryat Arba. Anyone standing hundreds of meters away could notice the dozens of rioters climbing atop the roof of the Abu Sa'afan family home, hurling stones. Only moments later did it become apparent that there were people inside the home.
I quickly descend to the wadi and accost three soldiers. "What do you want from me? The three of us are responsible for the entire sector here," one said, his hand gesturing towards the entire wadi.
"Use your radio to request help," I said. He replies that he is not equipped with a radio.
A group of journalists approach the house. A dilemma. What to do? There are no security forces in the vicinity and now the Jewish troublemakers decided to put the journalists in their crosshairs. We call for the security guards from Kiryat Arba to intervene and put a halt to the lynch. But they surround the home to prevent the arrival of "Palestinian aid."
The home is destroyed and the fear is palpable on the faces of the children. One of the women, Jihad, is sprawled on the floor, half-unconscious. The son, who is gripping a large stick, prepares for the moment he will be forced to face the rioters. Tahana, one of the daughters, refuses to calm down. "Look at what they did to the house, look."
Tess, the photographer, bursts into tears as the events unfold around her. The tears do not stem from fear. It is shame, shame at the sight of these occurrences, the deeds of youths who call themselves Jews. Shame that we share the same religion. At 5:05 P.M., a little over an hour after the incident commenced, a unit belonging to the Yassam special police forces arrives to disperse the crowd of masked men. The family members refuse to calm down. Leaving the home, one can hear a settler yell at a police officer: "Nazis, shame on you." Indeed. Shame on you.
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Obama's Center-Right Presidency
The Die is Cast
By GLEN FORD
In case there are any lingering doubts, it's official: Barack Obama has earned a well-deserved rating of "center-right" politician, courtesy of the New York Times. The president-elect worked hard to pull himself rightward, after starting off with a reputation as a liberalish "peace" candidate. Nobody calls Obama that anymore, not since he endorsed the bankers' bailout, put the economy's future in the hands of the same people that set the stage for financial meltdown, and let Bush's War Secretary keep the keys to the imperial armory. So let's give it to Obama. He won't ever have an identity crisis, again.
There are lots of political appointments to go before Obama's roster is complete, but the heavy lifting is done. The ideological pillars of America's first Black presidency have been planted wholly within the parameters of governance allowed by big capital and the imperial military. Obama's "transition" is more accurately seen as a "continuity" of rule by the lords of finance capital and their protective screen of warriors and spies. The Obama regime, still incomplete, already reeks of thieves and war criminals.
Obama's "national security" and economic lineup is an infinity of ugliness, more repulsive than I could have imagined back in the summer of 2003, when Obama's rise to glory was about to begin. The supremely talented actor/state senator's capacity for obfuscation; his refusal to take a firm position on any subject of real controversy; his transparently false denials of fealty to the corporate Democratic Leadership Council, which had publicly claimed him - all this should have marked Obama as bad news for Black America. But his was a fatally attractive package, like the shiny little cluster bomblets that kids pick up in places like Afghanistan.
My colleagues and I were most fearful of the effect Obama's corporate-rigged explosion onto the national scene would have on the black polity - both the masses and leadership circles. Obama's phony progressivism didn't fool us for a second - although we yearned as much as other African Americans for the appearance of a Great Black Hope. Obama wasn't "The One," no matter what Oprah said. Rather, he became a menace to black folks' collective mental health.
We knew that a mass hallucinatory phenomenon was about to occur, that would loosen many black folks' grips on reality no matter how often and loudly we warned that Barack Obama was a cynical corporate striver who encouraged whites to believe that his election would mark the end of black politics as we have known it. (Take breath, here.) He was the anti-Jesse, the anti-Sharpton, a fraudulent peace candidate, an eager servant of the rich. We diligently provided evidence of Obama's true political nature, and at every juncture before and during the primaries we were proven correct in our analysis. But no matter. African Americans' pent up hunger to see a (pretty) black face in the highest place, would not be denied. They desperately needed the Obama of their imaginings, and would draw and quarter anyone that questioned the senator's sainthood.
Were black folks "losing their damn minds," as comedian David Alan Grier puts it on Comedy Central's Chocolate News?
Yes, they were.
Black America became a fortress, impregnable to truth. The ever-mounting evidence of Obama's abhorrence of real social change beyond his own singular elevation; his fawning deference to big business; his call for an additional 100,000 soldiers and Marines; his early refusal to consider a moratorium on housing foreclosures; his reversal on electronic spying on Americans - none of these actual, real world occurrences could puncture the mass delusion. A kind of collective autism sealed off the African American mind from reality-based phenomena. The cruelest, blanket insults to African American dignity issued repeatedly from Obama's mouth, yet were gratefully accepted as proof of the candidate's "tough love" for "his people."
Fast forward to the present. Obama has awarded his administration's economic and imperial military portfolios to plundering investment bankers and their servants (Robert Rubin's derivative-addicted sidekicks) and endless-warriors (Iran-Contra super-spook and master of intrigue Robert Gates). In this scariest chapter of world history to date, the Secretaries of War (let's have some truth in language) and Treasury will be the dominant players in determining the nation's economic and military place on the planet. That's where the bulk of the national wealth will be diverted. Everyone else will scramble for crumbs. The store has already been given away to the military and economic Right. Thank you, Obama. Macro military and economic adventures and experiments will be the governmental order of the day - and whatever else happens will be sideshows, dwarfed by the massive movement of mega-money deployed to salvage the imperial system.
Which is why it is pitiful - and sad in the extreme - to hear influential black activists make a huge deal out of Obama's proposed White House Office on Urban Policy. "Just you wait and see," these wishful souls seem to be saying. "Obama's gonna come through for us. Yes, he will." As if a little advisory outfit tucked into the White House organizational chart will make a damn bit of difference as the giants of the cabinet battle over trillions.
Our world changed fundamentally between Obama's acceptance speech in August, and his endorsement of the banker bailout in early October. The bottom fell out of the global capitalist financial system. From now on, it's all crisis, all the time. Obama has done everything humanly possible to assure the Lords of Capital that he is at their service. His appointments prove it. But some African Americans - far too many - still labor under the illusion that a solemn pact exists between themselves and Obama. It is a belief based on blind faith and things unseen - or an imagined exchange of winks.
A prominent and highly intelligent, lifelong New York activist assures audiences that Barack Obama is winking at black folks, to confirm the understanding between the president-elect and his people. White folks can't see the wink, but if a black person looks closely - there it is! And black folks shouldn't hesitate to wink back at him, to acknowledge the secret we share.
I assume the organizer is speaking metaphorically, though I sometimes wonder. The point is, although it might appear that Obama has broken his commitment to African Americans (actually, he never made one), we should rest easy - his thoughts are with us. Whenever it seems like he's brushing us off, well, that's just his way of fooling the white folks - in our interests, of course.
When the psychological need is great enough, people will believe anything. But chasing mirages is no road to freedom.
Glen Ford is editor of Black Agenda Report, where this article appears. He can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com
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