Date: Tue, 09 Apr 2002 14:19:35 -0400
From: John Lacny <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [It's No Accident] The Consequences of Telling the Truth
About Palestine
To: "It's No Accident" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
A Special Announcment from It's No Accident, April 9, 2002
Dear friends and comrades,
Since January of this year my political column, "It's No Accident,"
had been making regular appearances in the pages of The Pitt News,
the student newspaper at the University of Pittsburgh. Well, no
longer. Here's the story why.
On April 5 I submitted a column which argued that Israel's current
assault on the Palestinians has passed beyond the realm of even an
ordinary colonial war and has come perilously close to what in any
other context would be described as "ethnic cleansing." The talk
within Israel of a "security separation" and even of "population
transfer" were signals that all people of conscience -- no matter how
"apolitical" they fancied themselves -- had to speak up now, or risk
making themselves accomplices to crimes against humanity because of
their silence. I quoted the veteran anti-apartheid fighter Ronnie
Kasrils, who said in Al-Ahram Weekly that Israel's repression had
surpassed even that of the apartheid state; I celebrated the heroism
of the Israeli reservists who were refusing to serve in the Occupied
Territories; and I called on people to support the Palestinians in
their fight to claim their human rights, a struggle that is every day
becoming a struggle for their very survival as a people. Despite the
ferocity of the repression, the intifada ("uprising") continues.
On April 7 I received a communication from my editor informing me
that the paper was not going to print my column on the grounds that
it was "too rhetorical" and constituted "an endorsement of
terrorism." In response, I made clear that I had no intention of
toning down the moral urgency of my column, and that if they were
choosing not to print it, it was time for me to quit.
There were other issues in the dispute that I should mention for the
sake of context. The (needless to say, groundless) accusation that I
had endorsed terrorism was offensive, and I said so. Beyond that,
though, my editor was unclear on what I meant by the term
"Occupation"! This is a disturbing indication of the ignorance of
basic information on this issue in the United States, where the
simple fact of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and
East Jerusalem is somehow subject to debate. Further, the editor
accused me of using my column to further the views of a student group
of which I am a member. I wrote that this accusation was ridiculous,
because an earlier column of mine (about Martin Luther King, Jr., on
the occasion of the April 4 anniversary of his assassination) --
which they had printed without incident -- was much more directly
related to an event my student group was organizing, while the column
on the Palestinians was an expression of my own deep moral outrage at
what was going on. Clearly something else was at work in the paper's
decision not to print my column on the Palestinians.
This is not the first time The Pitt News has done its readers a
disservice in the matter of Israel/Palestine. Keep in mind that, as
a student newspaper, The Pitt News prints all manner of
self-indulgent and irrelevant fluff (about dating or oral sex, for
example), but when anyone writes a substantive political column that
challenges the status quo, all of a sudden the editors start flashing
warning signals and intoning pieties about bourgeois-journalistic
"respectability." Earlier in the year I wrote a column about
Israel/Palestine in which I called for a cessation of the $5 billion
in US aid to Israel. The Pitt News printed a letter from a
pro-Zionist student group in response. Not only did this letter trot
out the tired (and totally spurious and disgusting) accusation of
anti-Semitism, but it displayed a supreme contempt for facts. For
example, it alleged that US aid to Israel was only about $2 billion a
year. A routine resort to a fact-checker would have turned up the
tidbit that Israel receives $2 billion in military aid, nearly $1
billion in direct economic assistance, and another $2 billion or so
in other forms of aid like loan guarantees. In other words, then, my
original figure of $5 billion was the correct one. However, I had no
forum in which to respond to this underhanded and dishonest attempt
to discredit the rest of my column, because one standard of truth
(roughly, no standard at all) applies to people who support the
conventional wisdom, while those of us who challenge it are expected
to provide copious footnotes in support of rudimentary facts.
If this kind of moral cowardice is the norm even at student
newspapers, what does that say about the climate that prevails in
mainstream dailies? For my part, I hold to the journalistic
principles espoused by the great abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison,
who promised never to temper his staunch advocacy of the truth in the
face of evil.
I'm appending the original, rejected column -- "Victory to the
Intifada" -- to this message, and I encourage people to circulate
this story. You can sign up to receive my column, "It's No
Accident," for free by sending an e-mail to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] or by going to the website at
groups.yahoo.com/group/lacny
In solidarity,
John Lacny
**********
It's No Accident, April 5, 2002
Victory to the Intifada
by John Lacny
There are moments in history when people of conscience are called to
raise their voices in unison against cant, hypocrisy, and those
libels on a whole people that facilitate a program of wholesale
race-murder. This is one of those moments.
Anyone -- even among those who fancy themselves "apolitical" or
unconcerned -- who cannot spare a word of solidarity with the
Palestinian people in their hour of need (or who -- even worse --
side with the aggressors) will stand condemned before the bar of
history as an accomplice to crimes against humanity.
It is easy to feel helpless at this moment, as the Israeli tanks
crash through Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nablus. Perhaps Hebron or Jericho
will have fallen by the time you read this, their men rounded up and
blindfolded, with even more homes destroyed, random people --
including children -- gunned down in the streets, curfews imposed and
entire cities placed under house arrest without access to basic
utilities like electricity or water.
And all of this -- the latest round of humiliation imposed on a
people who have suffered under military occupation for thirty-five
years -- facilitated by the settler-state's degraded paymaster, the
United States of America.
When the Bosnian Serbs talked about "ethnic cleansing," the whole
world recognized it as the bloody-minded euphemism for mass murder
that it was. Now as the Israelis talk openly of "creating a
separation" (by which they mean the confinement of Palestinians into
even smaller and more meticulously-policed ghettoes) and even
"population transfer" (by which they mean the wholesale expulsion of
Palestinians from the Occupied Territories), we indeed see outrage
around the world, but not where it counts: in the United States, from
which Israel draws its sustenance.
Let us not kid ourselves: without the resolute action of decent
people, the future looks very grim. Ronnie Kasrils, the South African
Minister of Water Affairs who was a militant activist in the
anti-apartheid movement for decades, granted a fascinating interview
to the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Weekly. Kasrils points out that "The
South African apartheid regime never engaged in the sort of
repression Israel is inflicting on the Palestinians. For all the
evils and atrocities of apartheid, the government never sent tanks
into black towns."
For statements like these, Kasrils -- who is Jewish -- has been
attacked by the leadership of major South African Jewish
organizations, but he brushes off such criticism: after all, these
same organizations used to denounce other Jews who struggled against
apartheid.
Yet those of us who cherish human rights must embrace what the
Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish has called "an incurable malady":
hope. And there is cause to do so.
As of this writing 398 Israeli reservists have signed a statement
(available online at seruv.org.il) saying that they will not serve in
the Occupied Territories, and there are even more "refuseniks" out
there, even if they have not signed.
The bulk of world opinion outside of the United States and the top
levels of a few other governments is resolutely on the side of the
Palestinians. Many a Zionist has used this as "proof" of the world's
enduring anti-Semitism, but as Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery says
bluntly: "World public opinion is always on the side of the underdog.
In this fight, we are Goliath and they are David."
You will note that all of the inspiring examples I have cited so far
are Jews. This is no accident, because these courageous individuals
represent a break from the grotesque tribalism that has led to so
much oppression and bloodshed. These individuals recognize that the
prerequisite for any solution in the Middle East must be an
unconditional end to the Occupation.
But above all, let us in these dark times honor the courage of the
Palestinians themselves who are fighting for their survival as a
people. For my part I will say it unequivocally:
Victory to the Intifada.
- - - - - - - - - -
"I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is
there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as
uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think,
or speak, or write with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is
on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his
wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually
extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; but urge
me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest
-- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a
single inch -- and I will be heard."
-- William Lloyd Garrison, 1831
"It's No Accident" is a political column by John Lacny, a student
activist at the University of Pittsburgh. If you forward it, please
include this notice to let people know how to subscribe.
To subscribe to "It's No Accident" send an e-mail to:
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You can change the settings of your subscription and read archives of
these columns at the website:
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lacny>http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lacny
There, under "Bookmarks," you can also find a small but respectable
list of links to progressive organizations and sources of
information. Use them.
Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the
<http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/>Yahoo! Terms of Service.
--
Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus:
<http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>
* Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html>
* Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/>
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>
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