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Announcement :: Civil & Human Rights |
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Wheels of Justice in Urbana-Champaign |
Current rating: 0 |
by David Green
Email: davegreen48 (nospam) yahoo.com (verified)
Phone: 840-3979 |
23 Apr 2005
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Nonviolent education and action against war and occupation in Iraq and Palestine for justice and universal human rights |
WHEELS OF JUSTICE IN URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
Nonviolent education and action against war and occupation in Iraq and Palestine for justice and universal human rights
www.justicewheels.org
“Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land” (not an official WOJ event)
A 90 minute DVD from the Media Education Foundation;
Post-film discussion led by Professor Robert McChesney, UIUC
McKinley Foundation, 5th and Daniel, Main Lounge,
Tuesday, April 26th, 7 p.m.
“School of the Americas: Terrorist Training Camp in our Own Back Yard”
Video: “Guns and Greed”
Ed Kinane speaks from experience on the role of the SOA in maintaining poverty and oppression in Latin America.
Channing-Murray Foundation, Oregon and Matthews, Red Herring Café
Wednesday, April 27th, 6 p.m.
(Afterwards, all are cordially invited to El Centro Benefit Dance, 8 p.m., upstairs)
Mazin Qumsiyeh on Focus 580 with David Inge
WILL-AM 580
Thursday, April 28th ,10 a.m.
“Palestinian Right of Return”
Mazin Qumsiyeh
Room 407 Illini Union, 1401 West Green Street, Urbana
Thursday, April 28th , 3 p.m.
“Witness to occupation, witness for peace: Deep Inside Iraq and Palestine”
Mazin Qumsiyeh and Ed Kinane
University YMCA, Wright and Chalmers, Latzer Hall
Thursday, April 28th ,7:30 p.m.
Student Activism
Urbana High School
Friday, April 29th , Morning classes
“Non-Violent Witness and Resistance”
Ed Kinane and Cal Carpenter
CIMIC (Central Illinois Mosque and Islamic Center)
Lincoln and Springfield
Friday, April 29th, 8 p.m.
Look for the Bus in Downtown Champaign
Saturday, April 30th
Mazin Qumsiyeh is a Palestinian American and an Associate Professor of Genetics Yale University School of Medicine. He is author of the widely acclaimed book Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human Rights and the Israeli-Palestinian Struggle. He is founder and president of the Holy Land Conservation Foundation. He is a cofounder of Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition.
Ed Kinane’s veteran activism led him to hot spots as Nicaragua, El Salvador, Haiti, and Guatemala to serve in the Peace Brigades International. In the 1990’s Kinane became very involved in the movement to close the School of the Americas or SOA in Fort Benning, Georgia. Ed spent 5 months in Iraq just prior to, during and after the bombardment of Baghdad in 2003. Currently Ed helps edit the Syracuse Peace Council's "Peace Newsletter."
Cal Carpenter has been in and out of the West Bank a number of times over the last couple of years as a member of Christian Peacemaker Teams in Hebron and At Tuwani, engaging in high-risk nonviolent witness and intervention. Much of his time is spent as a nonviolent presence to deter settler violence against native Palestinians.
Bill Hill served 6 months in federal prison for blocking the doors to the federal building in protest of the 1991Gulf War. Hill goes wherever his conscience demands to work on behalf of the poor, be it Casa Maria Catholic Worker community in Tucson, Chiapas, Mexico, Cuba, or Central America.
Events sponsored by: the Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort, University YMCA, McKinley Foundation, First Mennonite Church Peace and Justice Initiative, Channing-Murray Foundation, Muslim Students Association, Program in South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, El Centro Por Los Trabajadores, Central Illinois Mosque and Islamic Center, Illinois Disciples Foundation, Coordinated Effort for the Reporting of Rights Violations |
This work is in the public domain |
Comments
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Re: Wheels of Justice in Urbana-Champaign |
by beholder
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
23 Apr 2005
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Interesting approach to the fight for justice in Urbana -Champaign through the persistent pressure to ruin statehood of Israel in Palestine. There is the perfect proverb on the subject, " There are weeds in my backyard, and there is my uncle in Washington, who has been residing there since before I was born." The connection between two events in the proverb is exactly the same as the connection between Israel and Palestine's affairs and the justice in Champaign -Urbana. Besides, if Israel loses its statehood, and that is what exactly it is trying to preserve, preserving its current size, the justice in Champaign -Urbana wouldn't become even a bit better. The stream of lost their residence Israelis (possible refugees) from Israel can only increase the turmoil and subsequent injustice in any area, where they would be obligated to go. And Champaign-Urbana would be no exception. It is much better to fight the real source of the injustice in the USA -racial discrimination and racial inequality then to create such artificial and stupid distracter of the public attention, as David Green is presenting. |
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Re: Wheels of Justice in Urbana-Champaign |
by Born to the Tribe
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
03 May 2005
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Review
Anti-Semitism--and Not Very Good Anti-Semitism at That
There's Holocaust criticism that opens our eyes anew--and then there's cliche and paranoia
By David Greenberg
The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering
By Norman G. Finkelstein
Verso, 150 pp.
Two years ago, no one had heard of Norman Finkelstein. He was a lonely left-wing professor at the City University of New York, exercised over Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. Then he wrote an essay in a book called "A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth."
Finkelstein's essay excoriated Harvard historian Daniel Jonah Goldhagen and his best-seller, "Hitler's Willing Executioners" (1996). Goldhagen's thesis--that ordinary Germans, not just Nazis, readily complied in the slaughter of European Jewry--had already undergone withering criticism by respected historians such as Omer Bartov. But Finkelstein had his own critique, which he advanced in an inflammatory review of "Executioners" for a left-wing British journal. Goldhagen's book, Finkelstein claimed, was pure Zionist propaganda; his aim was to tar all gentiles as murderous so as to bolster support for an immoral Jewish state.
As Goldhagen rocketed to renown, Finkelstein clung to his coattails. He repackaged his book review for an American audience; Henry Holt published it in "A Nation on Trial." When a few American Jewish leaders criticized Holt for endorsing what they considered anti-Semitic cant, Finkelstein parlayed the ensuing controversy into his 15 minutes of fame.
Now Finkelstein returns with "The Holocaust Industry," a variation on his anti-Goldhagen broadside. Again he has recycled a book review into a book (though at 150 small pages, some blank, not much of one). This time he goes after "The Holocaust and American Life" (1999), by the esteemed University of Chicago historian Peter Novick.
Novick's book--itself more polemic than history--had serious shortcomings but made some important points. In a tone more mischievous than bitter, Novick suggested that the Holocaust has become dangerously central to American Jewish identity. He argued that in today's culture of victimology, where suffering confers virtue, Jews have interpreted the Holocaust as a claim to a share of the multicultural spoils. While his argument carried some unsavory overtones, Novick was clearly writing from a desire to protect the memory of the Holocaust, not to discount it.
Not so Finkelstein. As before, he attempts here to piggyback on another man's ideas and celebrity to vent his own extreme views. In "The Holocaust Industry," he has taken the parts of Novick's treatise that support his own ideology--mainly its assertion that the Holocaust has been used politically--recast them in less temperate language, and discarded the rest. The upshot: a hate-filled screed against powerful "Jewish elites" who connive to exploit the Holocaust in order to succor Israel and line their own pockets.
The book's defects appear on every page: misstatements of fact, faulty logic, abuse of evidence, and megalomania (Finkelstein dwells on the public reaction to his last book). To systematically vet this tirade would grant the book a legitimacy it doesn't deserve.
It's instructive, however, to examine the differences between Novick's work and Finkelstein's. Novick saw no malign motives in current attitudes toward the Holocaust. They stemmed organically, he suggested, from our era's emphasis on multiculturalism, changes in religious observance and Israel's security, the intensity of anti-Semitism in society, and much else. Rejecting this thoughtful argument, Finkelstein adopts a conspiratorial one: The Holocaust has assumed symbolic power because of the machinations of a coterie of sinister American Jews.
Finkelstein melds two strains of political paranoia. One, common to far-left thinkers, sees all global conflict as resulting from American imperialism. A second locates money-hungry Jews at the root of various international plots. The latter (uglier) conspiracy surfaces most blatantly during Finkelstein's discussion of the effort to win reparations for Holocaust survivors and reclaim assets Jews had deposited in Swiss banks before and during World War II. In his telling, the nefarious "Holocaust industry" runs an "outright extortion racket," shaking down innocent Swiss banks and German firms for loot.
Indeed, a conspiratorial worldview underpins this book. In trying to explain the rise in Holocaust writings after the Yom Kippur War, Finkelstein writes, in a typical sentence: "To increase Israel's negotiating leverage the Holocaust industry increased production quotas"--as if to change the political attitudes, scholarly interests, and everyday concerns of millions required just a signal from on high.
Likewise, he portrays the lawsuits against Swiss banks as the doings of the Jewish liquor tycoon Edgar Bronfman (eager to augment his $3 billion net worth) and New York Sen. Al D'Amato (courting Jewish money and votes). In Finkelstein's account, Bronfman's World Jewish Congress "working with...the gamut of Holocaust institutions mobilized the entire U.S. political establishment. From President Clinton, who buried the hatchet with D'Amato, ... through 11 agencies of the federal government as well as the House and Senate, down to state and local governments across the country, bipartisan pressures were brought to bear as one public official after another lined up to denounce the perfidious Swiss."
Jews call the tune, the world dances.
For good measure, Finkelstein quotes approvingly a critic of the lawsuits: "[I]t is easy to understand why many Swiss believe their country was the victim of an international conspiracy."
And so it goes, page after page. What this adds up to is pseudo-scholarship, extreme anti-Israel ideology and--there is no way around it--anti-Semitism. And it stinks. |
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The Little Bit of David Irving in Every Conservative |
by anon
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
03 May 2005
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Let's see now:
"Novick suggested that the Holocaust has become dangerously central to American Jewish identity. He argued that in today's culture of victimology, where suffering confers virtue, Jews have interpreted the Holocaust as a claim to a share of the multicultural spoils."
A Holocaust without victims? Mr. Irving's ideas seem to have real legs among conservatives, don't they? |
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