It’s now just 17 days and 18 hours till the start of the Chicago Hearing, a breakthrough gathering in the heart of our country where a number of singularly well-informed speakers will be addressing the question of “Does U.S. Policy on Israel and Palestine Uphold Our Values?”
The witnesses who’ll be giving their testimony at this citizen hearing include Jeff Halper, founder and director of the Israeli Campaign Against House Demolitions, Cindy Corrie, veteran Palestinian social activist Jad Isaac, and Amer Shurrab, a Palestinian activist from Khan Younis whose father and brother were killed during Israel’s “Cast Lead” assault.
You can be a part of this event, wherever you are! Organize a listening party in your home, congregation, or community center. The whole hearing will be live-streamed from the website, starting at 2:15 p.m. EST on April 18. So all you need is a computer and a web connection. (If you can hook it up to a big screen, so much the better. But not necessary.)
The “Listeners” at the hearing will include Prof. John Mearsheimer, and the “Introducers” will include Josh Ruebner of the U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation. I can’t wait to be there.
Oh, did I tell you? I’m going to be the moderator. What a fabulous and timely initiative this is. Americans need to hear these people’s voices.
18 thoughts on “Chicago Hearing, April 18: Be a part of this happening!”
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I wished if Professor Walid AL-Khalidi had been invited for this pannel, unfortunately they didn(t remember him as well-known scholar.
Hahid
I come across this place
looking to talk for about
Isreal, but I can’t
find hardly nobody here.
Snip… Don’t know who this sock puppet really is, but all the rambling here comes from the same author claiming to be ‘Steven Crocker’ and ‘Daphne Jenkins’ below. Now banned. What sad sacks, eh?
Yep, she will talk about Rachel Corrie until she goes senile but the Thai worker killed by the Hamas rocket a month will be never mentioned. Nor will be there a thread on the Mossad agent “Green Prince”, the son of the Hamas founder that despised Hamas and converted to Christianity. Innuendo about Mossad in Dubai, sure, but 10 years of the inside scoop by the real person, no, it does not fit her singular propaganda line.
Listen Elisabeth,
During the first half of the XXth century, the Jews were victimes. We all have compassion for what they endured.
However, times have changed. Some Jews installed them newly in Palestine. One can undestand this movement, after all they suffered. Yet this came with a problem, since they dispossed the Palestinians from their land. As the decennies passes, the Israelians living there slowly caught more and more land. Their wars against the Palestinians (who were not the culprits of the Jews sufferances in Europe) created thousands of refugees and as of now, Palestinians are still dispossed from their rights. They are now living in a kind of apartheid.
The last Israelians wars both against Lebanon and Gaza have opened our eyes here in the EU. For a very long time, we have had a guilty feeling toward Jews which prevented us to see clearly what was succeeding in the land you are colonizing. But now things are clear for us : the Israelians are no more victimes. They have become the oppressors of the Palestinian people. It is very clear for us that this has to come to an end for the sake of justice. Personnally, I still hope that there can be a two states solution, although I’m less and less sure that this is what the Israelians wants.
I don’t understand why America is still such a firm defensor of Israel and tolerates all the injustice made to the Palestinians. Is it because they see the Israelians as their only strong ally in Israel ? Clearly, as soon as the US stops applying a double standard justice to the Israelians, then they will be left to themselves and will have to enter into compromises with their Arab neighbours. With the need to fight terrorism, the misdeeds of the Israelian government are running against the US interest. I hope that the Americans will soon realize it.
And I’ll state it again : the fact that the Jews have been the victimes of atrocious persecution during the first half of the XXth century doesn’t allow them to become oppressors afterward.
Listen Christiane:
Why don’t the Palestinians live in Jordan, which is a part of historic Palestine? Why don’t they BUILD SOMETHING in Gaza, instead of shooting rockets from there? Why haven’t they made something out of the West Bank, instead of stealing and wasting the BILLIONS of dollars of aid — a lot of it on arms –they have received in the past sixty years? Why don’t they make peace with themselves instead of throwing each other off of rooftops? Why doesn’t Hamas renounce its charter which calls for the DESTRUCTION of Israel? Why don’t Palestinians live in Muslim countries like Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia where Jews could never live in freedom and where hundreds of thousands of Jews were thrown out of after 1948? (They could even move right into the thousands of homes and apartments in those places that were stolen from Jews.) Why didn’t they accept the state they were offered in 1948 by the United Nations? Why have they turned down every peace offer the Israelis have made since 1948, and there have been many, including one brokered by President Clinton, which Arafat walked away from? Why don’t they ever stop the vicious anti-Semitic attacks that they carry out morning, noon and night over their radio and televison stations and in their schools and mosques? Why do they glorify and celebrate suicide bombers? Why do they continue to delude themselves into thinking that one day they will defeat the Israelis and make them all move to
New Jersey? Why, why, why?
All good questions, Steven. And let me add
a few more if you don’t mind?
Sock puppet of the aforementioned Steven. Sad. Snip.
Instead of going to Chicago, I think Helena and her friends should be going to Gaza or the West Bank or Syria or Saudi Arabia or Egypt or Libya or Lebanon or Jordan to speak out there in favor of free elections, free speech, freedom of religion for all (including Jews), reformed legal systems, women’s rights and gay rights. There are always plenty of people in the world ready and willing to attack Israel, but currently there seems to be an acute shortage of progressive peace activists who are willing to draw attention to even the slightest defects in Arab society. Presumably this is because they believe that no such defects, great or small, exist.
And another hasbarist sock-puppet. Wassup guys? Have to suddenly justify your claims for vast subventions from Hasbara Central?
Christiane, since when is Switzerland in the EU?
To answer some of the hasbarista questions: Well, the Palestinians have built things in Gaza and the West Bank. Their main problem is that they have an insane neighbor that insists on attacking, murdering and robbing them, for no real reason, and refuses to make peace with them and accept their extraordinarily generous peace proposals. The insane neighbor has squandered the many billions it has received in aids in arms it uses to attack its neighbors in 1956, 1967, 1982, 2006 etc. and simply does not want to be a peaceful state. The insane neighbor has a propaganda arm centered in the USA dedicated to reversing the facts of the conflict and the identity of the victims and oppressors, fabricating a history of nonexistent peace offers from Israel and ignoring the real history of ones from the Palestinians and the Arab states. The antidote as always is simply education – assume that both sides are human beings, learn the history of the conflict from both sides, and it is quite clear that the rational thing is to oppose Israel’s deranged, immoral and suicidal designs.
Excellent JK! Still ready and eager to fight it
out from the comfort and safety of your living room until the last Palestinian falls! I can’t help but admire the wisdom and courage that you and Helena display!
Sock puppet. Adios. Snip.
Helena has in fact visited most, perhaps all of those places. I always enjoy reading about her travels.
Yes of course, Joe. She goes to egg on, flatter
and support her hosts, whether they be Syrian
autocrats or Hamas thugs. Never a word of criticism, never a whisper.
wow, hasbarista spittle in full gear. Obviously, you’ve not been reading Helena’s many detailed briefs from such diverse places — but you’re determined to keep repeating such lies, figuring the more you repeat ’em, the more true they’ll sound — faux news style.
Even if Helena was not a commentator on other regional subjects, her expertise and experience commenting on Palestinian, Lebanese, and Israeli matters is unmatched. Her reasoned, sober, informed voice is needed more than ever.
(and that’s what so infuriates and drives such vomit)
Putting this back into the positive, thank you Helena for alerting us to the Chicago Hearing. Got it on my schedule, 14 days, 17 hours, and 22 minutes from now.
In a simple answer to all those aggressive and biased questions :
despite all your fury you won’t be able to avoid the reversing of opinion in Europe : the Israelians are no more connected to the thousands of Shoah victimes, but they are finally seen for what they are : those who have taken up the role of the oppressors, those who have been condemned by the Goldstein UN report for breaching the Human Rights Laws during the Gaza war, etc.. etc..
This is a fact and this probably explain your fury.
It’s Passover. Always a good time to assess
the condition of Israel. The stock market
is doing very well and the overall economy is relatively strong. Unemployment is lower than in many other advanced economies. The technology and the science sectors of the economy are booming.
Poverty, unfortunately, is still high, especially among the Orthodox. Jewish migration to Israel is increasing, always a good sign for the future. The country is politically quarrelsome as usual, but solidly behind Netanyahu.
Recent funerals for two Israeli soldiers killed in action were attended by thousands of Israelis who exhibited the utmost solemnity, a sure sign that the country is toatally supportive of the army’s efforts to defend the country; and demonstates, at least to me, that the
country is as determined as ever to remain on guard against its enemies, most especially the soon-to-be, if not already nuclear-armed mullahs in Iran.
The political left has been totally decimated, probably never to rise again except on the op-pages of Haaretz. U.S. public opinion(made up, of course, largely by non-Jews) is strongly pro-Israel and highly unsympathetic to the Palestinians. Congressional support of Israel remains very high. President Obama professes strong support of Israel and is likely to
disappoint many of his supporters on the infantile-left by actually demonstrating his commitment to Israels’s security prior to the upcoming Congressional elections. (An Israeli strike against Iran’s bomb and missiles factories is surely coming soon, unless Iran’s
leaders finally wake up to the fact that Obama is quite serious about preventing them from acquiring nuclear weapons. The strikers
will be Israelis, but ultimate approval for the strike will come from Obama.)
European public opinion is continuing to shift away from support of Israel(particularly on the
political left where it is now practically non-existent), but among the general population a deep reservoir of anger and hostility directed toward Islamic terrorists and cultural changes brought about by Arab migration manages to hold
things in check. (Notwithstanding this, it is true that Europe, as it increasingly
turns into an economic basket case, will be falling more and more under the sway
of the Arab oil potentates, leading to negative consequences for Israel and Jews living in England
and France.)
As usual, Israel received many blessings from its enemies during the past year. The Palestinians sometimes pause for a breath while they are fighting Israel, but never stop fighting each other. Groups in the U.S.like J Street (and to a much lesser extent the American Friends Service Committee) actually end up increasing political and financial support for Israel. The same is probably true of the ongoing efforts now being made in the U.K. by The Guardian newspaper and the BBC to delegitimize the State of Israel.
Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran are
widely understood the world over as societies under the control of killers and thugs and broad
democratic support already exists for the eventual disappearance of these regimes,
even among people not overly sympathetic to Israel. Looking ahead at the next twelve months, it seems likely that the Palestinians (not including Hamas) — finally understanding that they have nowhere else to go — will actually sit down and talk with Netanyahu …. where they will probably end up getting a lot of what they want and could have had for the taking years ago … which will still be something far, far short of the total disappearance of Jews from Israel which they seek now and will continue to seek in the future.. This will make Helena Cobban and her friends deeply unhappy, but Israel, which survived the Pharaohs, will likely also survive a great disappointment such as this.
All in all, not a bad year. Next year, and with
G-d’s help, always and still in Jerusalem!
PLEASE NOTE: OUR PARTICIPATION ON THIS WEBSITE IS NOW CONCLUDED. WE NOW LEAVE FOR WHAT WE HOPE WILL BE GREENER FIELDS. THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR KIND ATTENTION. HAPPY PASSOVER AND LONG LIVE THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL AND THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!
I think the coming pannel is well balanced by the moderator and I wonder why all these fierce critiques against Ms. Helena Cobban. I am sorry to say it’s unfair to juge people just because they see the issue from another angle.
Hafid
“Why don’t the Palestinians live in Jordan, which is a part of historic Palestine? Why don’t they BUILD SOMETHING in Gaza, instead of shooting rockets from there? Why haven’t they made something out of the West Bank, instead of stealing and wasting the BILLIONS of dollars of aid — a lot of it on arms –they have received in the past sixty years?”
Uff, where to begin with this one…well, they do live in Jordan, in refugee camps, and are you honestly suggesting that all Palestinians should live in Jordan, even though they have the right to return to the land that was stolen from them in ’48? I guess by the logic that Zionists are using, Arabs should be able to go claim part of Spain as their own, since they have a “historic” connection there as well.
Secondly, I suppose they would build something in Gaza, but..OH YEAH Israel has not let building supplies in since the siege began, forcing 90% of industrial enterprises to cease. Shoes were let in for the first time a month ago..and paint is on the banned list. Pretty hard to build things when you don’t have anything to build with, huh? And I believe it is not the Palestinian people that were stealing aid money, but the corrupt PA led by Arafat, that the U.S. was supporting.
Furthermore, speaking of aid, let’s talk about the 100 billion dollars of aid Israel has received since ’67 and the $30 billion Obama has promised it over the next decade and then we can discuss wasting money. Especially when that money is being used for an occupation that is ILLEGAL under international law and that violates tons of articles of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
And while we’re at it, let’s talk about suicide bombers. Of course this violence is horrific and should be condemned, but why is it that only non-state actors are called terrorists. If Palestine was a recognized state with a military, violence would be deemed as legitimate defense. Why doesn’t Israel have suicide bombers? Maybe because they have F-16s and an extremely strong military, funded by the U.S. Suicide bombing is the weapon of the weak. You want the suicide bombings and rockets to end? END THE OCCUPATION.