text:
A Tacit Admission that Israel is Ethnically Cleansing Palestinians
By Paul Larudee and Beth Daoud | Dissident Voice | October 25, 2013
On April 8, 2009, ten billboards went up in the Albuquerque area saying "Tell Congress: Stop Killing Children. No More Military Aid to Israel." On April 28, Lamar Advertising, with whom the ads had been placed by the Coalition to stop $30 Billion, tore down the ads due to pressure, presumably from other clients with larger accounts.
In June, 2012, twenty-three billboards went up in the Los Angeles area, also calling for an end to US aid to Israel. One week later, the billboard company, CBS Outdoor, also took down the ads.
We have come a long way since then. Ads that are critical of giving billions of US tax dollars to Israel, of Israeli human rights violations and of the creation of the Jewish state at Palestinian expense have appeared in Detroit, Seattle, New York, San Francisco, Sacramento, Albuquerque, and other locations.
In Denver, another free speech struggle has achieved its objective. A partnership of NoTaxDollarsToIsrael.com and ColoradoBDSCampaign.com initially failed twice to get approval for a billboard. First, CBS Outdoor placed the restriction that the ad must not use the words Jew and Israel, so the coalition offered the wording "Want peace? Stop ethnic cleansing in Palestine." CBS Outdoor rejected it without explanation.
The groups then tried Lamar Advertising, with the same result. Finally, they borrowed a technique tried and tested by an anti-Muslim group, the Freedom Defense Institute. FDI chose public transit advertising space to place anti-Muslim ads in New York and San Francisco. After initial rejection in New York, FDI's Pamela Geller sued and won a court order to permit her ads, based on the fact that the ad space was publicly owned and therefore subject to constitutional free speech principles. While the use of privately owned ad space is largely at the discretion of the owner, publicly owned space is not, and must conform to First Amendment principles. The court also decided that in the absence of clear evidence that the ad used hate speech, it could also not be restricted by such criteria.
The Denver groups pursued the same strategy. They resubmitted the ad to Lamar, but this time for space on the public transit system (inside the Denver light rail vehicles and outside the 16th street mall buses). After a long delay, the ads were approved, with no change at all in the message or graphics. As of this writing, the ads are available for all to see, both Denver residents and visitors to the city, like the hundreds of delegates to the convention of the Jewish National Fund, 1½ blocks from the 16th street mall.
What was going on during the delay? One may speculate that much deliberation was taking place, possibly in consultation with lawyers from the ADL (Anti-Discrimination League) and AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee). The only possible challenge would be that the ad constituted hate speech or was libelous. In both cases, however, the challenge would depend upon proving the falsity of the "ethnic cleansing" label.
Apparently, these august jurists decided that a discussion of "ethnic cleansing" as a description of Israel's actions was potentially far more dangerous to Israel than the placement of an ad to that effect. After all, there was no assurance that the court would rule in their favor, in which case a terrible precedent would be set. Better to allow a bit of uncomfortable truth to appear in public than a legal ruling certifying such a truth. How Palestinians disappeared from much of Palestine is a question that the Israel lobby would prefer to leave unanswered.
Paul Larudee and Beth Daoud are organizers with No Tax Dollars to Israel and Colorado BDS Campaign, respectively.
October 26, 2013 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism	| American Israel Public Affairs Committee, CBS Outdoor, Jewish National Fund, Palestine, Pamela Geller, Paul Larudee, Zionism | Leave a comment
Israel: A great place to be white!
By Charles Davis | False Dichotomy | June 29, 2013
Not everyone who lives in Israel is of pasty white European heritage, but you wouldn't know it from the Israeli government's outreach. For reasons only fully understood by the gods and the person trolling me, I was recently subscribed to the newsletter of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), a quasi-governmental organization that seeks to replace brown people in Israel with Jews and trees.
An explicitly racist organization (Israel's second largest property owner, it refuses to rent land to Arabs), it was not surprising to find that JNF's printed propaganda featured almost exclusively smiling white people. On one page, smiling white college kids whose trip to the Holy Land totally rocked. On another page, a smiling white foodie dishing the inside scoop on Israeli cuisine. Here a white person; there a white person; everywhere a white person. The reader at home's takeaway: Go to Israel and you won't have to mix with the coloreds, unless of course you book the 4 day / 3 night Ethnic Immersion tour package.
What's a little weird is that when I tweeted something snarky about the awful lot of white folk in JNF's newsletter, the CEO of JNF, seemingly awful white person Russell Robinson, saw fit to retweet it. Judging by the rest of his tweets — yes, older friends, I too find my generation's language insufferable — it does not appear this was an act of passive aggression, though I probably shouldn't jump to any conclusions. Perhaps he was just distracted by how pasty white I am and hit the wrong button.
June 30, 2013 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism	| Israel, Jewish National Fund, Jews, JNF, Russell Robinson | 2 Comments
Israel's dirty little secret: the 'internally displaced persons' it continues to deny basic rights
By Dr. Daud Abdullah | MEMO | May 17, 2013
Inevitably, the 65th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba – Catastrophe – was overshadowed by calls to exercise refugees' right of return. Although the vast majority of Palestinians live in forced exile and the focus tends to dwell on their plight, there are now an estimated 370,000 'internally displaced persons' (IDPs) within the Israeli state. They are also denied the right to return to their homes and villages. No Nakba anniversary can pass without remembering them.
Unlike their compatriots in the wider Diaspora, the displaced Palestinians in Israel enjoy little international assistance and far less protection. Ever since the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) stopped providing services for them in 1952, they have remained refugees in their own land and second-class citizens in the state established around them.
From the very first, Israel never intended to accord equal rights to the 150,000 Palestinians who remained on their land as 750,000 of their compatriots were being driven into exile, despite an undertaking given in its 'declaration of independence' to 'uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of religion, race or sex'. The Palestinians have always been regarded as a 'fifth column' and a threat to the security of the state. As such, they were subjected to military rule from 1948 until 1966.
Under Israeli law, the IDPs are present in so far as they are obliged to pay taxes but absent in terms of their rights to employment, health care, water and education. They were assigned the absurd legal designation, unique to Israel, of 'present-absentees'.
With no regard for their rights to ownership, the state has used its Absentee Property Law of 1950 to confiscate some 97 per cent of Palestinian land, leaving 1.5 million Palestinian citizens' access to the remaining three per cent. These are either administered by the state or allocated to Zionist institutions such as the Jewish National Fund (JNF) for the exclusive use of Jews. Priority is given routinely to American Jews, followed by Europeans, Russians and others in that order.
While Palestinian villages which pre-date the state of Israel are denied basic services, newly-established Jewish settlements are granted them unconditionally. In 1992, the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled that the Palestinian villages should be connected to the Israeli national water system. That has still not been done.
On another level, the Regulation and Construction Law prohibits Palestinians from repairing let alone building their homes on land which Israel classifies as 'agricultural land' or 'closed military zones'. Their villages, mostly in the Negev and the Galilee, are 'unrecognised' by the state and, therefore, by definition 'illegal'. The underlying purpose of all these classifications by Israel is to force its Palestinians citizens to leave; it is, in other words, ethnic cleansing by stealth.
If Palestinian homes in the West Bank, including Ramallah, are destroyed with impunity on the pretext that they have no proper licence, one can only imagine what is done to the 'unrecognised villages' in what Israel regards as its sovereign territory. Using the Emergency Laws inherited from the British Mandatory government, officials often post notices on homes earmarked for demolition, which are thereafter destroyed within forty-eight hours.
In the Negev, the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel – Adalah – reported the destruction of 2,200 homes and the forced displacement of more than 14,000 people between 2008 and 2011. In these villages women and children die in childbirth because they have no access to basic medical care of a kind accessible by Jewish immigrants the moment they land at Tel Aviv airport.
Nevertheless, the fact that Palestinians in Israel marked this year's Nakba anniversary across the country demonstrates that after 65 years Israel has failed to erase their sense of identity and link to their land. Nor has it succeeded with its discriminatory laws to break the bonds between them and the rest of the Palestinian people; in fact, this has grown stronger. They all, to this day, share the common aspiration to return to their homes. After all the sacrifices they have made over the past 65 years it is inconceivable that the displaced Palestinians in Israel will submit to further ethnic cleansing.
The problem of the IDPs in Israel differs only marginally from that of the refugees in the Diaspora. Without doubt, they all share the common experience of dispossession and dislocation but because the IDPs didn't cross international borders they have no access to humanitarian aid from the UNHCR or UNRWA. Though initially recognised and served by UNRWA, that came to an abrupt end in 1952 when Israel assumed responsibility for them not, it transpired, in order to provide for all of its citizens. Quite simply, and very cynically, the Israeli government wanted to divert attention from their officially-sanctioned maltreatment of its Palestinian citizens and prevent them from having access to international legal protection.
The full story of the IDPs in Israel is yet to be told. After 65 years their dream of return remains unfulfilled. Like the generation who were forcibly evicted in 1948 they also have a right to return to their homes. Their living, striving and dying over the past six decades were all with this objective in mind. Israel may delay it for some time but cannot prevent it in the long-term, because no people in history have ever accepted completely the loss of their homeland. The Palestinians' day will come, with or without the approval of the Israeli government.
Palestinian Nakba: The Young Will Never Forget (alethonews.wordpress.com)
May 18, 2013 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular	| Internally displaced person, International Court of Justice, Israel, Jewish National Fund, Nakba, Palestine, Zionism | Leave a comment
Securing the ethnic cleansing of Silwan: Settlements in Wadi Hilweh using Pelco security equipment
Pelco camera system being used by illegal settlement in Silwan
Corporate Watch | February 10, 2013
The Palestinian neighbourhood of Silwan is experiencing harassment and home demolitions at the hands of the Israeli state and settler organisations. This ethnic cleansing is enforced by security companies and surveillance technology and facilitated by revenue from international donors and from tourism. Corporate Watch will be writing a series of articles over the coming months exposing the companies and charities carrying out this ethnic cleansing and those organisations who are funding it and profiting from it.
The communities of Wadi Hilweh and Al Bustan in Silwan in East Jerusalem are watched over by hundreds of Closed Circuit Surveillance (CCTV) cameras installed by settlers and the settler/colonial organisation El Ad.
These cameras watch over the creeping colonisation of the area which has been going on since the 1990s. Much of this has centred around the seizing of Palestinian property by the El Ad organisation and the undermining of the Palestinian community through archaeological excavations carried out by the same organisation with the complicity of the Israeli National Parks Authority and the Israeli antiquities Authority (read more about El Ad and the excavations here).
During the 1990s the Israeli state and the Jewish National Fund gave one third of the land of Wadi Hilweh to El Ad. Since then settlers have moved in and El Ad has used a series of dirty tricks to acquire more and more properties in Wadi Hilweh. At the same time Palestinian homes are subject to demolitions under planning regulations, such as the demolitions that took place on 2nd February 2013.
On Wednesday 23rd and Thursday 24th January 2012 Corporate Watch researchers photographed dozens of Pelco security cameras being used by the settlements in Silwan including those at the El Ad compound close to the 'City of David' Visitors Centre in Wadi Hilweh.
The cameras included those in use at the Tirah House settlement, a Palestinian home occupied by Israeli settlers.
Pelco is a manufacturer and supplier of security cameras based in Clovis, California. The company has 2,200 employees worldwide and resellers in 130 coutries.
Since 2007 Pelco has been part of Schneider-Electric, a French multinational company headquartered in Rueil-Malmaison. Schneider-Electric has 130,000 employees and 2011 sales totaling 22.4 billion Euros. It operates in 190 countries.
Schneider-Electric is one of the only companies to have shown interest in the joint French-Palestinian Authority (PA) industrial zone in Bethlehem, the Bethlehem Multidisciplinary Industrial Park. It seems the PA have chosen poor partners for its flagship industrial zone.
Schneider-Electrics global operations are listed here
To contact Pelco click here
For more information on Silwan click here.
Photos taken by Corporate Watch researchers
VIDEO | Demolition in Wadi al-Arababe – Bulldozers and attack dogs in Silwan Jerusalem (occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com)
Attacks Continue Against Silwan (imemc.org)
Report: Israeli escalation in detaining children and house demolitions (altahrir.wordpress.com)
Undercover Forces Kidnap Children, Youths, In Silwan (imemc.org)
February 10, 2013 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Illegal Occupation	| East Jerusalem, Human rights, Jewish National Fund, Palestine, Palestinian National Authority, Rueil-Malmaison, Schneider-Electric, Silwan, Wadi Hilweh, Zionism | Comments Off on Securing the ethnic cleansing of Silwan: Settlements in Wadi Hilweh using Pelco security equipment
Good old Israel?
By Georgina Reeves | Palestine: a journal of everyday occupation | August 5, 2012
In his latest piece written for the New York Times, Avraham Burg asks: "Where is the good old Israel?" Assuming he is not being tongue-in-cheek, and there is no suggestion in the rest of the article that he is, he continues to peddle the same old clichés that liberal Zionists are so fond of. Propaganda is a powerful tool, but so is the truth.
He talks of the early days of Israel's foundation: "It was an age of dreamers and builders who sought to create a new world, one without prejudice, racism or discrimination." He neglects to mention, though, the Palestinians who remained in what became Israel, and how the new state treated them.
From 1948 until 1966, Palestinians lived under martial law. They required permits issued by the military governor to leave their villages or towns. Palestinians were subject to curfews, administrative detention – detention without charge or trial – and expulsions were common. As Palestinians were concentrated mainly in the Galilee, the Negev and the Triangle, subjecting them to such strict measures of control was simple for the authorities.
Alongside the physical restrictions on Palestinians, the newly-created state of Israel also enacted laws designed to dispossess Palestinians of their land and their rights to their land. The Absentees Property Law aimed to take ownership of property and land belonging to Palestinians. The term "absentee" was carefully applied and targeted Palestinians who had been expelled from their homes during the war of 1948.
This law applied to Palestinians who had been made refugees and were now outside Israel, and also to those who were now in Israel but living as internally displaced persons. Israel calls these Palestinians "present absentees", an Orwellian state of being which denies them access to their homes, even though many live in the same area and their homes are still standing (unlike the 500-plus towns and villages razed to remove the evidence of Palestinians' existence on the land for many hundreds of years before).
Burg goes on to say "But something went wrong in the operating system of Jewish democracy. We never gave much thought to the Palestinian Israeli citizens within the Jewish-democratic equation." But that is just not true. A lot of thought went in to how to treat the non-Jewish citizens of Israel. Even before 1948 the Zionists were planning how to gain as much land with as few Palestinians as possible: for the Zionist plan of the Jewish state to become reality, Arabs had to be removed.
Yossef Weitz, director of the Jewish National Fund played a major role in acquiring land for the Yishuv (pre-1948 Jewish community). He stated: "Transfer does not serve only one aim—to reduce the Arab population—it also serves a second purpose by no means less important, which is to evict land now cultivated by Arabs and to free it for Jewish settlement. The only solution is to transfer the Arabs to neighbouring countries. Not a single village or a single tribe must be let off."
The Dalet plan was devised during February 1948 by the Haganah – the Jewish paramilitary organisation succeeded by the Israeli Defence Forces upon Israel's establishment. The plan was simple: the systematic expulsion of the Arab communities. The expulsions were conducted by the Palmach (elite Haganah fighters), the Irgun and the Stern (Lehi) gang. Villages and towns were attacked, depopulated and destroyed.
The men who designed and fought the war of 1948 were the same men who designed and created Israel after that war. Prejudice, racism and discrimination characterise the Israel they built and the Israel that exists today. The truth is there never was a "good old Israel".
Palestinian voice from Susiya, a Palestinian village that existed before the establishment of the State of Israel (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Samah Sabawi responds to Liberal Zionists (alethonews.wordpress.com)
August 6, 2012 Posted by aletho | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering	| Avraham Burg, Israel, Jewish National Fund, Yishuv, Zionism | 1 Comment
Why Jason Kenney getting an award for 'diversity' only reinforces discrimination
By David Heap | Rabble| June 23, 2012
Conservative minister Jason Kenney is to receive an award for "diversity" from the Jewish National Fund (JNF) in London, Ontario this Sunday. It is hard to say which does more harm to the true values of diversity: the "honouring" organization or the politician being "honoured."
The JNF covenant reserves the 13 per cent of Israeli land it owns for the exclusive benefit of Jews. It plays the same discriminatory role in the Israeli Lands Authority: together, these two interlocking institutions control 93 per cent of land in Israel, which (with a few short-lease exceptions) is not available to Palestinians. Many of these lands, originally belonging to Palestinians expelled in 1948, were expropriated and then sold to the JNF.
In 1998, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights reported that the "large-scale and systematic confiscation of Palestinian land and property by the State and the transfer of that property to these agencies constitute an institutionalized form of discrimination because these agencies by definition would deny the use of these properties by non-Jews."
Segregation and exclusion are incompatible with diversity, but fine with Minister Kenney. Since the robo-call election of 2011, Ottawa Conservatives have pushed through measures that discriminate against migrants and refugees. Last November they completely halted applications for immigration sponsorships of parents and grandparents until 2014.
The JNF creates forests and parks on the ruins of destroyed Palestinian villages to hide the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and to prevent Palestinian refugees from returning. Canada Park, built on top of the ruins of the Palestinian villages of Imwas, Yalu and Beit Nuba (deliberately destroyed by Israel in 1967), was funded through Canadian tax-deductible donations to the JNF Canada.
The destruction of the Palestinian villages and the denial of the villagers' right to return to their homes are grave violations of the 4th Geneva Convention. Former Israeli Knesset member Uri Avnery calls this destruction a "war crime under international law."
War crimes (even those subsidized through our tax system) do not promote diversity but they are OK with Kenney and other Conservatives, whose unconditional support for Israeli crimes matches their complete disdain for our own national obligations under international humanitarian law. Just last week, they passed Bill C-31, a law that will result in the arbitrary detention, intimidation and re-victimization of highly vulnerable asylum-seekers in Canada, especially women and children. As of next week, refugees in this country will be denied vital medical services by the same Conservative government.
Like Indigenous peoples elsewhere, Palestinians Bedouins in the Negev have been and continue to be dispossessed of their land, their resources and their livelihoods by occupying populations. While countries like Canada move slowly towards reconciliation with aboriginal peoples through land settlements and compensation, funds raised through JNF dinners and Canadian tax deductions contribute to further dispossession of Bedouins and other Palestinians.
Indigenous dispossession does not help foster diversity, but that doesn't bother Conservatives like Kenney. In April 2012, they pushed through a policy allowing employers pay "temporary" foreign workers up to 15 per cent less than the prevailing local wage.
The JNF's exclusionary practices and policies in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories are not well known in North America, but recently in the U.K. major political party leaders (including the current Prime Minister) have begun distancing themselves from this discriminatory organization.
It is time more Canadians demanded the JNF's charitable status be revoked – in the name of diversity (and international law), while we work to reverse the damage done to vulnerable migrants by Kenney and other Conservatives.
We may not get any awards for "diversity," but we will be helping build a more just world for all.
UWO Faculty for Palestine member David Heap is a Steering Committee member of works with community groups including People for Peace and No One is Illegal in London. He gratefully acknowledges help from allies and colleagues in preparing this column.
Protests against racist group's participation in 'Earth Summit' (bdsmovement.net)
Jason Kenney, sociopath (yayacanada.blogspot.com)
JNF to forest-depopulate Bedouin village in Naqab on Wednesday (altahrir.wordpress.com)
June 23, 2012 Posted by aletho | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular	| Canada, Canada Park, Israel, Israeli-occupied territories, Jason Kenney, Jewish National Fund, JNF | Comments Off on Why Jason Kenney getting an award for 'diversity' only reinforces discrimination
State of Israel Dispossesses Negev Bedouin
By Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam | May 6, 2012
Not content with dispossessing nearly 1 million Israeli Palestinians during the Nakba through exile and theft of their land, Israel is repeating this Original Sin against the Negev Bedouin, who've lived in their homes for decades. The State now intends to expel the Bedouin from these settlements, where they've lived for several generations, and to appropriate the land for itself. In many cases, there are plans hatched with the Jewish National Fund and Israel Lands Authority to Judaize the Negev by creating new Jewish settlements to replace the Bedouin.
There are indigenous tribal members who are fighting back with every means at their disposal. But the odds and long and the deck is stacked. Every legal appeal has been repelled by a judiciary that many liberal Zionists like to claim stands as a bulwark against the worst excesses of rampant Israeli nationalism. This particular issue shows the limits of such optimism.
Nuri el Okbi, Negev indigenous activist, imprisoned for 'being Bedouin without a license'
Ben Gurion University Prof. Oren Yiftachel provides historical background to this struggle:
Since its foundation, the State of Israel refuses to recognize Bedouin ownership over ancestral lands in the Negev. Most of the Bedouins did not register their lands in 1921, as was required by one of the British laws; but neither did most other residents of Mandatory Palestine, including Jewish ones, carry out such registration. Sixty years later, the State of Israel made cynical use of this lack of registration to order to register most Bedouin lands as "State Lands", thus making the Bedouins into "invaders" or "squatters" on their own ancestral land.
Some of the Bedouins have tried to challenge the system of dispossession. Notable among them is Nuri el-Okbi, long-time dedicated human rights activist. In recent years, Nuri and his brothers are conducting a series of law suits against the state, demanding restoration of the lands taken from them in the fifties.
A few weeks ago, a ruling rejecting the claims of the el-Okbis was made in an important case – one in which for the first time a professional support team was involved, including attorney Michael Sfard, geographer Oren Yiftachel and other experts. The proceeding lasted three years, during which dozens of witnesses testified and hundreds of documents and expert reports [were] submitted, attesting to the el-Okbis' ownership of the land.
The judge, however, chose to render a harsh, confrontational ruling, sticking to earlier precedents and concluding that any land which had not been registered in 1921 is ipso facto the property of the state. The court relied mainly on legal precedents, hardly referring to the evidence presented. Therefore, it is very important to lodge an appeal to the Supreme Court – the only body which is empowered to overturn precedents and strike out in a new direction.
At such a hearing, the judges would not be able to ignore the rich materials submitted by the el-Okbi Tribe, and the new legal arguments presented. In addition, such an appeal would strengthen the struggle of tens of thousands of Bedouins, who at this very moment are struggling against government plans to evict them to existing townships.
The government's plan is based on the wrong assumption that Bedouins have no land ownership rights, and a Supreme Court appeal is now the only way to stop these draconian plans. Therefore, it is highly important to lodge an appeal on the el-Okbi Land Case, and make it clear that the Bedouin community is determined to struggle for their basic human rights – specifically to change a legal ruling which causes severe and completely undeserved damage to a large section of Israel's citizen body.
Gush Shalom adds:
After a legal struggle lasting three years, the Be'er Sheba District Court rejected the appeal of Nuri al-Okbi, veteran activist for the rights of the Negev Bedouins. El-Okbi's plea for recognition of ownership over the Al-Araqib lands, from which he and his family were evicted in 1951, was rejected out of hand by Judge Sarah Dovrat. The ruling has wide implications for Negev Bedouins in general, implying an overall denial of their rights over ancestral lands.
ISRAEL: Water being used to coerce Bedouin villagers, says NGO (alethonews.wordpress.com)
May 6, 2012 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism	| Bedouin, Israel, Jewish National Fund, Negev, Negev Bedouin, Nuri el-Okbi, Oren Yiftachel, Zionism | Comments Off on State of Israel Dispossesses Negev Bedouin
Scottish TUC delegates join Palestine freedom struggle – unanimously!
Scottish PSC | April 25, 2012
The delegates to the Annual Conference of the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC), the umbrella group for every trade union in Scotland, today voted unanimously and repeatedly against Israeli apartheid. The 450 delegates voted to:
campaign to expose the role of the racist JNF (Jewish National Fund) in the Israeli apartheid system
support the participants in the Welcome to Palestine initiative who tried to travel peacefully to Palestine via Tel Aviv Airport
fully support the Palestinian-Brazilian call for the World Social Forum-Free Palestine in Brazil in November
support the Palestinian hunger strikers and the work of Addameer, the Palestinian prisoner support organisation.
Congress delegates congratulated the students for their work organising Israeli Apartheid Week 2012 events, who initiated action in support of the Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike and called for support for the Scottish demonstration this Saturday 28th April in Edinburgh.
These decisions of the Scottish TUC in support of the Palestinian freedom struggle, by a union confederation representing half a million organised workers in every sector of the economy, will be widely seen as a continuation of the international solidarity the STUC also provided to the liberation struggle in South Africa. Glasgow, Scotland's biggest city, named a city centre street after Mandela in 1986 while he was still on Robben Island. How long till there is a Palestine Square or Palestine Street in our major cities?
The full text of the resolutions – all passed unanimously – is given below.
The Jewish National Fund
That this Congress notes that the Jewish National Fund acquisition and control of land in Israel and the occupied territories actively discriminates against Palestinians.
Congress calls on the General Council to:
endorse the international call for action against the Jewish National Fund;
campaign to expose the role of the Jewish National Fund in the oppression of Palestinians; and
campaign to have the charitable status of the Jewish National Fund revoked.
(Mover: Midlothian TUC)
Emergency Motion – Palestine
Congress:
notes that despite prisoner releases, over 4,600 Palestinian political prisoners remain in detention, including 203 children.
applauds the steadfastness of 1,200 Palestinian political prisoners who began an open-ended hunger strike on 17 April to protest against 'administrative detention', where detainees are held without charge or trial for up to six months and which can be renewed repeatedly.
congratulates the student Palestine solidarity network for organising the biggest ever 'Israeli Apartheid Week' of educational and solidarity events and for their mobilisation across Scotland in support of Palestinian political prisoners.
believes that the engagement of students, trade unionists and others with Palestinian civil society can only strengthen the current human-rights based approach to Palestinian self-determination and is essential to building a future of peace and democracy in the Middle East.
therefore welcomes the January call by the Palestinian National Committee and the Brazilian National preparatory committee for the 2012 'World Social Forum: Free Palestine' to be held at Porto Alegre, Brazil in November. Conference believes that this "Global Meeting of Solidarity with Palestine" will underline the strength and diversity of the support for the Palestinian call for justice.
therefore instructs the General Council to:
Support the work of Addameer, Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, by distributing information and updates to affiliates and by supporting appeals for action where appropriate;
Endorse the Scottish demonstration, called by students in support Palestinian political prisoners and the hunger strikers, taking place in Edinburgh on Saturday 28th April;
Endorse the WSF Free Palestine as part of the internationalist activities promoted by the STUC and fully support the appeal from the Secretariat of the Palestinian National Committee for the World Social Forum "Free Palestine" to mobilise the Scottish trade union movement towards WSF Free Palestine.
(Mover: Dundee Trades Union Council)
Emergency Motion – 'Welcome to Palestine 2012′
This Congress notes that there is no way into the Occupied Palestinian territories except through Israeli controlled airports or checkpoints.
Congress applauds the 'Welcome to Palestine 2012′ initiative which highlighted Israel's oppressive and abhorrent policy of restricting free and unopposed movement to, from and within the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Congress condemns:
the actions of the Israeli government in blacklisting activists from around the world and denying them access to the Palestinian territories.
the detention of those activists who reached Tel Aviv wishing to visit Bethlehem at the invitation of the Mayor in order to attend the launch of an educational project to build new schools.
Congress asks the General Council to call upon the Israeli government:
to allow unrestricted passage to and from the Occupied Palestinian Territories for those wishing to visit.
to end the continued, illegal siege by air, land and sea of the Palestinian Territories.
That this Congress applauds the successful delivery of humanitarian aid by the Scottish FBU to the Nablus Municipality Fire Department. Congress calls for continued trade union support for Palestinian projects, and for the exploration of a Scottish Trade Union Palestinian Support Group, and report back to Congress in 2013 any progress on this matter.
(Mover: Fire Brigades Union)
President's Address to Congress (Mike Kirby, UNISON):
"There is a growing apartheid elsewhere, in Palestine. There have been many changes since my first official visit with Bill Speirs, Eddie Reilly and Malcolm Burns in 2001, during the Second Intifada. We were challenged by different militia, as we were escorted throughout the Occupied Lands by PGFTU, our hosts. On leaving, at the last stop at Jerusalem, we met members of the British Press Corps, who challenged us that we had only visited one place, met with one people. Eddie Reilly's reply still pertains "We met many Israelis on our travels in Palestine. They were all armed and wearing uniforms." Order may have been restored in many parts under the control of democratically elected representation of Fatah, democratically elected Hamas, and other political organisations. But that order is still enforced by a circle of unlawful Occupation, and the Apartheid Wall divides communities from their lands and work, and families are split apart." Read full President's address
Israel student society attacks peaceful Palestine protest with water bombs at London School of Economics (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Apartheid is a crime, not an analogy (alethonews.wordpress.com)
National Demonstration: March for the Hunger Strikers – March for Palestine (altahrir.wordpress.com)
Ex-Palestinian prisoner: captivity in Israel, living in graves (alethonews.wordpress.com)
April 27, 2012 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture	| Israel, Jewish National Fund, Palestine, Palestinian prisoners in Israel, Scottish Trades Union Congress | 1 Comment
Green Party conference calls for revocation of JNF UK charitable status
By Asa Winstanley – The Electronic Intifada – 02/27/2012
The annual conference of the Green Party of England and Wales this weekend passed a motion endorsing the Stop the JNF campaign and calling for the Jewish National Fund to have its charitable status revoked in the UK.
Motion passed at the Green Party of England and Wales Spring conference on 26th February 2012
The Green Party of England and Wales condemns the Jewish National Fund for its activities in excluding non-Jews from Israeli land and denounces the organisation for claiming to be an ecological agency.
The GPEW endorses the international call for action against the JNF and supports efforts to revoke its charitable status in the UK.
The GPEW will add its name to the list of signatories of the 'Stop the JNF Campaign'.(http://www.stopthejnf.org/).
As I reported last week, the campaign against the JNF (led by the Palestinian BDS National Committee, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network and Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign) has been making impressive gains recently.
The Green Party has now followed the lead of the Scottish Green Party who made a similar move in October last year. The move is the latest blow to the JNF, which is accused by Palestinian citizens of Israel of ethnic cleansing and maintaining a system of land-apartheid that discriminates against non-Jews. The JNF describes itself as "the caretaker of the land of Israel, on behalf of its owners — Jewish people everywhere".
Read the full Stop the JNF press release for more details.
Stop the JNF campaign makes steady gains as Israel charity goes "on the retreat" in UK (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Israel's war of attrition, waged on non-Jews (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Make the world a better place: Sign these two petitions. (emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com)
February 27, 2012 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism	| Green Party of England and Wales, Israel, Jewish National Fund, JNF, Scottish Greens | Comments Off on Green Party conference calls for revocation of JNF UK charitable status
Stop the JNF campaign makes steady gains as Israel charity goes "on the retreat" in UK
By Asa Winstanley | The Electronic Intifada | 22 February 2012
London – Palestinian activists and their supporters have condemned a recent fundraising campaign by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) as a "greenwashing" cover for ethnic cleansing.
The JNF "Green Sunday" fundraiser took place in several countries on 5 February. In publicity materials, JNF UK asked volunteers to "give two hours of your time to help turn the Negev green" and "make the Negev a livable place."
But Palestinian citizens of Israel who already live in the southern Naqab desert (Negev in Hebrew) say the JNF has a colonialist agenda.
Usama Uqbi, head of the Naqab Bedouin Committee, told The Electronic Intifada that the impression of an empty desert the JNF portrayed was "a big lie." Palestinian Arabs have been living on their land in the Naqab for hundreds of years, he said. He mocked the JNF flyer giving the impression of an empty land as "empty words."
The JNF's real goal is to demolish the homes of Palestinians who already live there, and bring Jewish settlers from the center of Israel to live on the expropriated land, he said.
The Electronic Intifada asked the JNF UK for their response to Uqbi's criticisms.
A spokesperson replied: "You're asking do we have a secret agenda to Judaize the desert and steal Palestinian homes?" The word "Judaize" was not used in The Electronic Intifada's question. He said he would send an official response via email, but failed to follow up on this promise.
The Bedouin in the Naqab
The JNF has been directly implicated in the destruction of Palestinian communities in the Naqab. On 8 March 2011, the Alternative Information Center published a photo of a bulldozer that was involved in one of the destructions of the village of al-Araqib, emblazoned with Israeli and JNF flags ("El Araqib Destroyed for 21st time, JNF Changing Facts on Ground").
Uqbi said that the Bedouin style of life in the Naqab has been eroded by Israel over the years. Bedouins have been forced to sell their cattle, as Israel has confiscated more and more of their land. The state established seven Bedouin resettlement projects in the Naqab in exchange for abandoning our land, he said. The houses offered in these modern-day reservations are rented, and the Palestinian citizens resettled there are stripped of land rights, he said.
Uqbi himself lives in an "unrecognized village," which the state refuses to connect to even the most basic public utilities such as water, roads, electricity or schools. Uqbi said this was a deliberate policy to force him to abandon his home.
Sofiah MacLeod from the campaign group Stop the JNF told The Electronic Intifada that Green Sunday was a "propaganda exercise" to cover-up JNF involvement in establishment of "Jewish-only settlements" which are an attempt to "exclude the Palestinian population."
MacLeod says she visited al-Araqib in December. The now-famous Naqab Bedouin village has been destroyed by the Israelis approximately thirty times since July 2010. Each time the villagers insist on rebuilding.
MacLeod says the villagers were left only with the graveyard in December. Their olive trees have been uprooted and replaced with eucalyptus trees, she says, but despite this, olive tree saplings had started to grow back.
The JNF says it wants to "develop" the area as part of its "Blueprint Negev" initiative.
In a recent press release, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network condemned "Green Sunday," saying the JNF "shamelessly exploits Tu B'shvat [the Jewish holiday that celebrates fruiting trees] as an opportunity to raise money to fund their ongoing colonization of Palestine and displacement of Palestinians … As Jews of conscience, we stand against the ethnic cleansing of Palestine" ("Jewish Call: Stop the JNF – Trees should be sacred, not profane").
Palestine solidarity groups should start thinking more about the JNF, says MacLeod. A March 2011 parliamentary motion — called an Early Day Motion (EDM) — signed by more than sixty members of British parliament has helped raise awareness, she says. Initiated by left wing Labor Party MP Jeremy Corbyn, the EDM welcomed the Stop the JNF campaign and condemned the JNF for "its ongoing illegal expropriation of Palestinian land" while calling for its charitable status to be revoked ("Early Day Motion 1677").
Top British politicians desert the the JNF
The EDM also expressed opposition to Prime Minister David Cameron's status as an honorary JNF patron. In May, Stop the JNF wrote to Cameron asking him to cut his ties. News that the prime minister quietly dropped the charity broke soon after.
Speaking to The Electronic Intifada at the time, a spokesperson for Cameron downplayed the move as "not a particularly recent decision" and that the JNF had been one of a "number of charities" dropped. But in June, this line shifted when a spokesperson told The Jewish Chronicle that the JNF's ties to Israel had in fact been the issue. The Zionist paper reported the spokesperson as saying it was "nothing to do with a policy issue and was based around the fact he is now prime minister rather than leader of the opposition" ("Cameron's JNF split: it was Israel," 2 June 2011).
In a 31 May 2011 letter to The Jerusalem Post, former JNF president Gail Seal wrote that "a British prime minister has been an honorary trustee since" 1901 when the JNF was founded. "How sad it is that, whatever the reason, David Cameron has broken this chain," she lamented.
Writing in The Jewish Chronicle, JNF Chairman Samuel Hayek criticized Cameron more robustly: "The Prime Minister's words of support for Israel to Jewish audiences are too often contradicted by those said in front of more hostile crowds. Actions speak louder than words. The decision to resign from JNF has reverberated around the world" ("Why David Cameron – and the community – got it so wrong," 10 June 2011).
The Liberal Democrat deputy prime minister and the leader of the Labour Party opposition have also declined to become JNF honorary patrons, said MacLeod. Stop the JNF wrote to both Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband asking about the issue and both replied that they had no plans to associate themselves with the JNF, although they gave no reasons, says MacLeod.
Both Scottish Friends of the Earth and the Scottish Green Party have now condemned the JNF and endorsed the campaign against it, says MacLeod. In a statement, The Scottish Greens condemned the JNF "for using the 'green label to practice crimes against the Palestinian people" ("Scottish Green Party reject 'green' claims of charity involved in ethnic cleansing of Palestinians," 31 October 2011).
MacLeod also says that the Green Party of England and Wales is set to discuss the issue at the upcoming conference.
JNF worried about campaign's gains
Although parliamentary Early Day Motions are often criticized as impotent, a leaked document shows that JNF chief executive David Goodman is worried about the "legitimacy granted to this campaign by the EDM." In a December letter sent to most of the MPs signed onto the EDM, Goodman smeared Stop the JNF, asking to meet each MP in private to "discuss the issues."
Stop the JNF responded to Goodman's letter by publishing it on their website, refuting its accusations point by point and challenging Goodman to a debate in an "open forum" in Westminster, the seat of the UK parliament ("JNF denies it works to dispossess Palestinians, smears critics," 2 January 2012).
MacLeod points out that the EDM has yet to lose the signature of a single MP, despite this JNF counter-lobbying.
Goodman's letter denies treating Palestinian citizens of Israel in a racist way, but admits the "Israeli state has made extensive efforts to encourage the permanent settlement of the Bedouin in recent years" in "additional towns in the Negev to smooth the transition to permanent settlement."
Stop the JNF is optimistic about the future of the campaign, saying in a recent press release that 2012 could be "perhaps its last year holding charity status in the UK" for the JNF.
According to the Charity Commission, the JNF's last reported annual income was over £12 million ($7.6 million) in the UK alone. Loss of UK charity status would be a massive political blow to Israel as well as a significant financial blow. Registered charities have significant exemptions from UK taxes.
Over the years, many groups and activists have written to the Charity Commission to complain about the JNF, says MacLeod. Through freedom of information requests, Stop the JNF has learned about some of the internal thinking on the issue. The campaign is currently working on putting together a more solid case that it hopes to submit towards the second half of year, she says.
Although the JNF held "Green Sundays" in the UK, France, Australia, the US and Israel this month, there were no public event in the UK, says MacLeod. A few years ago they were very proud to hold public events, even bringing famous names like former US President Bill Clinton and actress Goldie Hawn. But in recent years they are now "on the retreat," the campaign argues. Their events are held in full or partial secrecy, with publicity often containing vague directions like "London venue" — presumably to throw off potential protests.
MacLeod says the JNF are planning a "charity shoot" event on 11 May, very close to Nakba Day, the annual Palestinian commemoration of the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Stop the JNF will protest the Glasgow event and is also holding a conference in Edinburgh on 12 May.
JNF's long historical connection to Israeli colonialism
The JNF has quasi-governmental status in Israel, and describes itself on its website as "the caretaker of the land of Israel, on behalf of its owners — Jewish people everywhere" (Jewish National Fund, Essence of Life Campaign).
After Israel was established in 1948, the JNF purchased expropriated Palestinian land from the state, and since then has played a key role in an exclusionary land regime that discriminates against Palestinian citizens.
According to Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination, and Democracy, a new book by Ben White: "Since 1948, over 700 Jewish communities have been established in Israel's pre-1967 borders. In the same period, not one new city, town or village for the Palestinian minority has been created, except for seven townships in the Negev intended to 'concentrate' the Bedouin population" (p. 38).
In the last accounts and annual report document filed with the Charity Commission (December 2010) JNF UK said it had "supported Israel since 1901, helping to build a country out of nothing" (my emphasis).
This kind of language invokes the old pre-state Zionist slogan "a land without a people for a people without a land," suggesting the JNF's agenda in 2012 has changed little since those days.
In his book Expulsion of the Palestinians, Palestinian scholar Nur Masalha wrote of this infamous slogan that it was not intended as a literal demographic assessment: "[Zionists] did not mean that there were no people in Palestine, but that there were no people worth considering within the framework of the notions of European supremacy that then held sway" (p. 6).
In a 2005 US diplomatic cable revealed by WikiLeaks, current Israeli President Shimon Peres is reported as saying Israel had "lost one million dunams [a dunam is the equivalent of 1,000 square meters] of Negev land to the Bedouin" (i.e. supposedly equal Palestinian citizens of Israel). Peres slurred the "Arab sector in both the Negev and the Galilee" as a "demographic threat," reported the cable ("05TELAVIV1847, Shimon Peres on disengagement, Palestinian social").
Uqbi emphasized to The Electronic Intifada that Peres went on to play a key role in the confiscation of Palestinian land in the Naqab from his time as development minister between 2006 and 2007.
Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist who has lived and worked in occupied Palestine. His website is www.winstanleys.org.
Professor of Hate: Israeli "scholar" urges ethnic cleansing of Bedouins (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Tell JNF to Cease its Practice of Ethnic Cleansing (rabbibrant.com)
Jewish Agency: goal of Israeli government plan to block Bedouin "incursion" (alethonews.wordpress.com)
2,600 Bedouins threatened with displacement as Israeli settlements expand (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Delegitimizing discrimination: struggle of Palestinians in Israel focus of new book (alethonews.wordpress.com)
February 22, 2012 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular	| Bedouin, Jewish National Fund, JNF, Negev | Comments Off on Stop the JNF campaign makes steady gains as Israel charity goes "on the retreat" in UK
Ethnic Cleansing in a Zionist Fairyland
By Vacy Vlazna | Palestine Chronicle | February 10, 2012
'De-Arabizing the history of Palestine is another crucial element of the ethnic cleansing. 1500 years of Arab and Muslim rule and culture in Palestine are trivialized, evidence of its existence is being destroyed and all this is done to make the absurd connection between the ancient Hebrew civilization and today's Israel. The most glaring example of this today is in Silwan, (Wadi Hilwe) a town adjacent to the Old City of Jerusalem with some 50,000 residents. Israel is expelling families from Silwan and destroying their homes because it claims that king David built a city there some 3000 years ago. Thousands of families will be made homeless so that Israel can build a park to commemorate a king that may or may not have lived 3000 years ago. Not a shred of historical evidence exists that can prove King David ever lived yet Palestinian men, women, children and the elderly along with their schools and mosques, churches and ancient cemeteries and any evidence of their existence must be destroyed and then denied so that Zionist claims to exclusive rights to the land may be substantiated.' — Miko Peled, Israeli dissident.
Indeed, archaeology has become a state apparatus for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the Zionist fairyland aka the City of David Archaeological Park located in the Palestinian village of Silwan in East Jerusalem.
East Jerusalem is the proclaimed capital of the proposed Palestine state. It was illegally annexed by Israel in the 1967 war. Prohibiting annexation of territories gained by military conquest is one of the major principles of international law. The international community does not recognise Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem nevertheless over 50,000 illegal premises have been built for 250,000 illegal Israeli colonists.
The goal of the archaeological judaisation of Jerusalem is to transform Jerusalem into the City of David, the capital of Greater Israel by eradicating the mixed ethnic composition of the Palestinian and Jewish population of East Jerusalem to a solely Jewish identity and unifying East and West Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty.
This judaising in Silwan is executed by the Israeli government, the Municipality of Jerusalem, and the rightwing colonist (settler) organisation, Elad, through the revocation of residency rights, absentee property laws, discriminatory taxation policies, home demolitions, transfer of Palestinian residents, replacing Arabic place names with Hebrew names and the expansion of settlements which Richard Falk, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, describes 'as a form of ethnic cleansing ' which is defined as a crime against humanity under the statutes of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Furthermore Article 53 of the Geneva Convention states: "Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons.is prohibited."
Financial support for judaising programmes comes from hundreds of moneyed Zionist organisations and foundations worldwide. In 2005, archaeologist Eilat Mazar announced she had discovered the palace of King David circa 10 Century BCE. The excavations in Silwan were funded by the Shalem Center whose Zionist neocons have invested heavily in the judaisation efforts to give historicity to the David myth. Shalem's founder, Ron Lauder of the Estee Lauder empire, is an uncompromising Zionist extremist, a Likudnik and a major shareholder in Israeli TV Channel 10 as well as the current Chairman of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) and President of the World Jewish Congress (JWC) which normalises the Israeli occupation. Curiously, in January, Abbas and Erekat had a closed meeting with Lauder in London even though the Palestinian team refused to meet with Netanyahu.
The Shalem Center has association with Sheldon Adelson, the casino billionaire who is a Likud supporter and a key financial backer of the Newt Gingrich campaign and Newt's 'Palestinians are an invented people' idiocy. From 2007-9 the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies in the Shalem Center was directed by Natan Sharansky who is now Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, a quasi-governmental organisation advancing Jewish immigration to Israel including the illegal colonies. Its 2008 the core budget was $314,760,000. The Jewish Agency was established by the World Zionist Organization (WZO) in 1929 founded on the commitment to warrant "The unity of the Jewish people, its bond to its historic homeland Eretz Yisrael, and the centrality of the State of Israel and Jerusalem, its capital "It acts as agent of the government in assigning land to Jewish colonists in the Israeli-occupied territories. Its new chairman is religious Zionist Avraham Duvdevani who served as head of the WZO's Settlement Division, co-chairman of the board of the Jewish National Fund and a member of the Jewish Agency's Executive. Over a quarter of WZO delegates are from Orthodox Zionists attesting to their sinister rising influence.
The Shalem Centre works closely with Elad the right-wing hardline colonist organization and militia that advocates illegal Jewish colonial settlement in East Jerusalem acquiring, in cahoots with the Jewish National Fund and its subsidiary Hemanuta, Palestinian properties often through threats, false depositions, forged documents, posthumous witness signatures and militant house takeovers.
Elad is mainly funded by the tax-exempt 'charities' Ir David Incorporated and the Irving Moskowitz Foundation which illegally funnel monies to Zionist political objectives. Moskowitz, the casino magnate, is a hardcore Zionist and founder of the Friends of Ateret Cohanim which finances Jews to live in East Jerusalem and owns about 70 properties in the Muslim Quarter. Daniel Luria, its chief fund-raiser commented "Our [fund-raising] activity in New York goes solely toward land redemption." In 2005, Ateret Cohanim instigated, without license, an archaeological project tunneling 20 meters toward the Al-Aqsa compound causing damage to Palestinian homes in violation of the law.
Elad was given, without tender, exclusive control over the City of David Archaeological Park including a tunnel network that is being dug around and under the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Elad's lucrative tours of the historic sites, although there is no historical evidence of David or Solomon's existence, spout historical fabrications from the Jewish biblical narrative such as the Byzantine water pit that is falsified as Jeremiah's pit. The 8000 year old Palestinian-Canaanite narrative is glossed over.
In December 2011, Australian listeners were treated to a fantasy tour of the so-called Palace of David by ABC presenter Rachael Kohn and archaeologist Avner Goren both of whom gushed forth fairytales about the mythical king absurdly comparing him to George Washington and sidestepping his dubious authenticity by urging trust in the Bible.
In archaeological circles there is an ongoing controversy about whether Biblical texts can be equated to history. In the 70s William Dever suggested that rather than Biblical Archaeology, the term Syro-Palestinian Archaeology (note not Syro-Israeli) was more appropriate and is used in academic circles.
Archaeologists who follow the Minimalist or Copenhagen school "conclude that the books of the Hebrew Bible were written during the Persian (or Hellenistic) period. The historical books actually contain made-up stories (that may have exploited some vague, ancient legends) through which the local organized refugee population provided itself with a mythic cover-(hi)story that linked it to the land and to a religion. This conclusion has two important corollaries: (1) Bible narratives about the political, social, and intellectual world of ancient Israel from Abraham to the temple's destruction lack probative value. (2) Any narrative about what actually happened to the real people living in the central mountain areas of ancient Israel during what archaeologists call the Iron Age must, accordingly, be based on archaeological data alone. No other authentic sources for their history are available."
It is widely accepted that the Bible originated in the 7th Century BCE, 300 years after David and other historical aberrations encompass the palaces officially ascribed to Solomon in Megiddo which are dated long after Solomon's time. Cities conquered by Joshua in the 14th century BCE were destroyed well before that era. Daniel Gavron comments that "The story of Abraham's journey from Ur of the Chaldees, the Patriarchs, the Exodus, Sinai, and the conquest of Canaan, all these were apparently based on legends…" In 2004, Yuval Goren admitted he examined " a seemingly endless line of fake biblical texts of various kinds. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of such forgeries referring especially to the time of the First Temple. It will not be an exaggeration to say that the disciplines of biblical history and archaeology have been contaminated to such an extent that no unprovenanced written source seems to be reliable anymore."
Proof of David's existence rests on a piece of stone found at Tel Dan in northern Galilee (not Jerusalem) inscribed with the words 'Beit David' which could mean House of 'David' or 'Beloved' but not King David conclusively as with the sherd found at Tel Safi with the name 'Goliath' which "almost certainly did not belong to David's Goliath, if it does say "Goliath" then it shows that there was such a personal name used in the region at approximately the correct chronological period." The first ancient reference to an Israelite king is found in an 8th Century BCE Assyrian document recording "King Ahab of Israel sent 2,000 chariots and 10,000 soldiers."
Sumud (steadfastness) life and land are synonymous in the Palestinian soul. King David may be a myth but it is the modern indigenous Palestinians, outcasts in their own land, who stand alone with the stone of sumud in their hands daily facing off the militant aliyah hordes backed by the Zionist Goliaths of multi-billion dollar empires, by Christian Zionist offerings, by the servile US Congress, by a depraved UK and EU and by a contemptibly inadequate United Nations.
– Dr. Vacy Vlazna is Coordinator of Justice for Palestine Matters. She was Human Rights Advisor to the GAM team in the second round of the Acheh peace talks, Helsinki, February 2005 and was coordinator of the East Timor Justice Lobby as well as serving in East Timor with UNAMET and UNTAET from 1999-2001.
Family of 12 faces eviction in East Jerusalem (alethonews.wordpress.com)
The Origins of Imperial Israel- Part II (middleeastatemporal.wordpress.com)
World Civilian Coalition Gathers for Global March to Jerusalem (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Communique No. 1 of "The Global March to Jerusalem" (alethonews.wordpress.com)
February 11, 2012 Posted by aletho | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular	| Al-Aqsa Mosque, Jerusalem, Jewish National Fund, Palestine, Shalem Center, Silwan | Comments Off on Ethnic Cleansing in a Zionist Fairyland


text:
TRAYF at The Geffen Playhouse Puts Friendship To The Test — Review
Ilan Eskenazi and Ben Hirschhorn in Trayf | Photo: Jeff Lorch
Alan Koolik
A dark stage, with only the charismatic voice of the Lubavitcher Rebbe emanating from a stereo, is slowly illuminated for the audience to see Shmuel (Ben Hirschhorn) and Zalmy (Ilan Eskenazi), two young men in their Mitzvah Tank, listening and jamming out to the Rabbi's words like a rock concert. Their mission in the Tank is to drive through Manhattan and help Jews do Mitzvahs, good deeds, and in Lindsay Joelle's Trayf, currently playing at the Geffen Playhouse's Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater, they are put through tests of faith and friendship.
One day, a stranger named Jonathan (Garret Young) approaches them, inquisitive about the way they practice and preach Judaism. The audience learns that his father recently died, and Jonathan discovered he was Jewish. Zalmy and Shmuel are divided on how to proceed: the headstrong Zalmy is willing to take Jonathan under his wing even though, because his mother is not Jewish, he is considered a gentile by Jewish law, whereas Shmuel is at the same time concerned about bringing Jonathan into Judaism and losing Zalmy to a new best friend. They disagree not only about the role Judaism is newly playing in Jonathan's life, but how it factors into their own lives.
Louisa Jacobson | Photo: Jeff Lorch
Hirschhorn and Eskenazi are perfectly cast as the two young Chabadniks, with the requisite patchy facial hair and jewfros. Eskenazi, in his role as Zalmy, drove most of the plot, with decisive choices about his character's hesitancy toward his background bringing that struggle to the fore. Hirschhorn, as Shmuel, is the earnest, emotional heart of the play; the empathy he brings to his role invariably invites the audience into his world, and onto his journey. Young plays Jonathan, an aspiring convert, with a shifty mien that leaves Zalmy and Shmuel often uneasy with him. The cast is rounded out by Louisa Jacobson, who makes her Los Angeles stage debut in a small but meaty role, playing Leah, Jonathan's girlfriend. Her explosive encounter with Shmuel springs the play's action into high gear.
Directed with a deft touch by Maggie Burrows, the show's movement never stagnates, with the boundless energy and vivacity of its two main characters driving the action throughout. The seemingly utilitarian set, done by Tim Mackabee, proves that there is always room for surprises. Denitsa Bliznakova's costumes firmly set the play in the early '90s, and her timeless baggy black Chabad suits are perfect. The lighting and sound, by Lap Chi Chu and Everett Elton Bradman serve to highlight the text, especially as music plays a large role in the characters' journeys.
Trayf, however, is not a look into Chabad culture; it merely uses it as a backdrop to explore the lives of its two main characters. Their struggles between community and individuality are universal, and this play highlights that rift. Led by a superb cast, Trayf is not one to be missed.
Trayf is now in performance at the Geffen Playhouse's Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater through April 10 in Los Angeles, California. For tickets and more information, visit here.
Alan is currently a student at UCLA School of Law. Prior to this, he was an analyst for Jujamcyn Theaters and an off-Broadway producer. While an undergraduate at Columbia University, he was on staff for the student newspaper, the Spectator.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Home 2019 Elections The Dangers of Medicare for All and the Benefits of Community Paramedicine:...
The Dangers of Medicare for All and the Benefits of Community Paramedicine: Moving Toward Universal Healthcare in Virginia
by Kellen Squire
I'm sure I don't have to belabor the point on the need for healthcare reform in the United States of America. While things seemed to be improving throughout the last decade, the past two years have seen a dramatic reversal of the meager successes the Affordable Care Act (ACA) brought. The most prominent of these reversals has been in decreasing the rate of uninsured Americans through both private health insurance managed with subsidies, as well as through programs like Medicaid expansion, which aimed to address the "doughnut hole" where working families were penalized for working too much to qualify for Medicaid, while not making enough to qualify for subsidized premiums.
While a segment of politicians has cheered the calculated sabotage of these programs, usually under the guise of fiscal concern, this has always been nothing more than a charade, an epic gaslighting of taxpayers for the sole purpose of political expediency. This is because of a law called the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA), passed in 1986, that has, for the last thirty plus years, meant that the United States of America has effectively required that universal healthcare be provided to every single person within its borders. However, it's just been mandated to provide that care in the least efficient and most costly way possible.
EMTALA ensures public access to emergency services regardless of ability to pay, with severe repercussions for institutions that do not comply with the law (up to and including forfeiture of all reimbursement from Medicare funds). While certainly well meaning- to stop the epidemic of people dying or giving birth in the streets, since pre-EMTALA hospitals could turn away anyone without the ability to pay- most estimates suggest EMTALA has cost taxpayers and consumers literally trillions of dollars since it was signed into law by the bipartisan 99th Congress (Democratic House, Republican Senate and President Ronald Reagan) due to both the provision of unreimbursed care and because of patient decompensation (as health conditions deteriorate until they become an emergency).
If you've ever heard the example "a Tylenol costs $900 in the hospital," EMTALA is the reason why.
But you've never heard a politician suggest we should eliminate EMTALA and go back to the pre-EMTALA time when patients were turned away after being denied treatment at hospitals for inability to pay. Instead, they count on buzzwords and voters who are too busy or unfamiliar with arcane medical laws that even most healthcare providers struggle with understanding fully. They know that repealing EMTALA is not only impossible, but would be political suicide. Instead, as mentioned before, people who seek care and cannot pay for it simply have their costs shifted to everyone else instead via the axiom "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch."
This was actually the genesis for the "no free rider" caveat to "Romneycare," the cutting-edge solution crafted by the Heritage Foundation to address healthcare reform. Mitt Romney famously pioneered this approach in Massachusetts in the mid-2000s. It was heralded widely as a forward-thinking piece of legislation, which ended up not being too far removed from the truth. Romneycare was effectively made a centerpiece of the healthcare reform package that became the Affordable Care Act. This happened, even though in many ways the ACA was actually more conservative than Romneycare, as Democrats tried desperately to purchase Republican support for the bill during the 111th Congress.
While that is all pertinent information, it's there merely to give you some background on EMTALA and the discussion around healthcare reform related to it. What matters is that nationally in 2016, almost $40 billion in uncompensated healthcare was charged in the United States of America ($38.3 billion), and while exact numbers are hard to come by, Virginia's slice of that was something in the range of $1.1 to $1.5 billion.
But again, that billion-dollar amount doesn't evaporate into thin air- it's still paid. It's just paid for by everyone else who accesses the system. This is something that should be emphasized: the genesis of that $11,000-per-capita healthcare cost for every American.
To put it bluntly: We're paying for universal healthcare, RIGHT NOW, and getting screwed in doing so. I don't know about you, but I hate getting screwed.
I hate paying more for care than any other country in the world, by a LOT, and having worse outcomes! I hate that we're forced into this situation by legislators who don't have to worry about things like co-pays, the instability of losing coverage, or wondering how much of a visit might be covered if something goes wrong. I hate, as a nurse, that politicians count on my colleagues and me to hold the line, taking care of people who can only truly seek care once they reach crisis status, instead of well before that. If we want to fix it, if we want to pay less and get more, we need to work toward comprehensive healthcare reform.
But there are dangers herein that we need to be aware of.
THE DANGERS OF MEDICARE FOR ALL
Medicare for All (M4A) is probably the best way to fix our broken system. I say "probably," because while I've yet to hear a compelling alternative. As a medical professional, I'm driven by peer-reviewed, evidence-based research. Both Romneycare and the Affordable Care Act were far from perfect, but they established solid progress in extending healthcare coverage to Americans. And, as a nurse, I want to see my patients served the best way we can possibly get. With all that in mind, I am open to hearing anyone's ideas on how to address this. That being said, Medicare for All is by far the best idea I've heard to date on how to address this.
However, although M4A is the most commonly spoken of plan to address this – and while the details of what would be in a "final" bill that gets passed differ somewhat from proposal to proposal – there's a bottom line that we're not paying enough attention to:
If something like Medicare for All gets passed tomorrow, the Commonwealth of Virginia simply does not have enough providers – doctors, nurses, NPs, PAs, psychiatrists, EMTs, etc., etc. – to provide the backlog of care that will suddenly be covered and requested.
As my good friend Rebecca Wood, healthcare activist extraordinaire, likes to say: "Insurance is not access."
What this means is that places like emergency rooms across the Commonwealth will be slammed indefinitely until we get it fixed- which isn't an answer, of course. Although these people will finally be receiving care, it will be in the place that provides the most inefficient care of almost anywhere in the healthcare system. The emergency department is supposed to be primarily concerned with saving lives, and, as such, it will almost always be more inefficient and expensive than other modalities of care.
We have a crisis right now, with staffing levels amongst medical providers at all levels a fraction of what they ought to be. That is something that needs to be addressed regardless of what happens nationally with healthcare reform. So there is no way to discuss reform without discussing how to fix that
We need to be working in our state legislature now so that those providers (or the mechanisms to find those providers) are in place, allowing Virginia to be one of the few states ready for this new reality. Because, while the funding and organization has to come from the federal level, the majority of the preparatory work has to be done at the state level; that's where the primary power for legislating and licensing arises.
Which is where community paramedicine comes in.
What do we need to do to fix this? Well, there are a number of things we need to do- but one of the things we can do right now is to pass laws that enshrine community paramedicine as a care modality in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It's something that we need to do regardless of what happens in Washington, so we can better serve communities from Virginia Beach to Winchester, and Alexandria to Bristol.
Right now, in Virginia, things generally work like this:
You're having a medical emergency, or some sort of incident that compels you to call 9-1-1 and summon an ambulance. This may end up being your local county or city fire and rescue department. It may be local volunteer EMTs from the local volunteer EMS group. It may be a private service that's employed by your locality to provide medical services. Aside from a few dynamics at play – for instance, while a majority of Virginia volunteer EMS agencies attempt to bill for services, they rarely pursue those costs if a patient cannot pay – these agencies are only able to even seek reimbursement for a call if they take somebody all the way to the emergency department.
But let's say you called 9-1-1, an EMS crew shows up, and it turns out you don't need to go to the ER for whatever reason. If that's indeed the case… they don't get paid. They can't seek reimbursement for doing "nothing." But that doesn't mean nothing gets done, or no costs were incurred. Far more often than not, the professionals staffing these units will do what's right by the patient. So if you just needed something minor and you're OK now, they'll just do what they have to do and eat the cost.
There are a couple of problems here. One, clearly, is that we all are actually the ones eating the cost- remember the principle of There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
Two, there's no in-between there; if the patient doesn't need to go to the emergency department, but does need medical treatment beyond what the EMS crew can offer, there's really no choice but to take the patient to the ER anyway. If they arrive on scene and the patient has a medical condition that requires them to be seen urgently, but is not life threatening, EMS has no ability to take the patient to somewhere like an urgent care center or the patient's primary care physician (PCP).
Last, EMS really has no good options for the superusers in our system, who take up an enormous amount of time, money, resources. "Super-users" with complex medical needs make up a small fraction of U.S. patients, but they account for half of the nation's overall healthcare spending- and Virginia is no different. There was a patient known to a regional Virginia EMS and hospital group that called 9-1-1 three times a week every week for over 30 years (since the year they became eligible for Medicare) for transport to a number of emergency departments. The patient obviously often called for non-acute reasons, but EMS largely lacked the ability to do anything else about it until the local and state office of EMS and local hospitals got together in a working group specifically for that patient's needs. Thus, there is a strong case to be made for investment in community services and mental health programs alongside this, but that is for another time.
But what if a patient with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease called 9-1-1 because they were having difficulty breathing, and a paramedic could come on site, administer a breathing treatment, and determine if the patient was now well enough to not require emergent transport, helped them set up an appointment with their primary care provider, AND get reimbursed for that interaction?
What if EMS could be reimbursed for transporting that patient to his or her PCP or an urgent care center instead of having to take the patient all the way to the ER?
What if we could make a serious dent in the critically under-supported mental health field, recognizing that there should be no difference between mental and physical health?
What if a patient ended up only having problems with their medications, and a nurse practitioner in a chase car showed up with the ambulance, determined they didn't need an ER trip today, helped set the patient straight, assisted them with making an appointment with their primary care provider, and then logged the entire interaction into the patient's electronic health record so that every provider in the patient's healthcare network could access it?
What if we could help keep aging Virginians in their own homes, instead of forcing them into nursing homes?
What if allowances could be made for someone with chronic medical problems just needing reassurance they were OK- literally just reassurance and medical clearance- and both they and EMS could go on with their day?
Right now- right this very minute!- we have paramedics, advance practice EMTs, and providers like nurse practitioners and physician assistants with the training and scope of practice through their licenses to do just that. They can help provide public health and primary healthcare and preventive services to underserved populations in the community.
And that's what community paramedicine- and the entire aegis of mobile integrated healthcare- is all about.
Community paramedicine generally focuses on:
Providing and connecting patients to primary care services.
Completing post-hospital follow-up care.
Integration with local public health agencies, home health agencies, health systems, and other providers.
Providing education and health promotion programs.
Not duplicating available services in the community.
Paramedics and EMTs in rural communities are trusted and respected for their medical expertise, the emergency care they provide, and are generally welcome in patients' homes. These professionals are often consulted for healthcare advice by their friends and neighbors. Their skill set can be equally useful to them in addressing unmet needs for primary care services in the community. For example, the technique used to administer an injection in an emergency situation is the same used for routine inoculations
And we can have that right now. All we need is the legislature to back us up.
ALLIES IN ENACTING
Both county medical agencies (such as fire and rescue departments, community health departments, etc.) and healthcare institutions, public and private, are almost universally supportive of community paramedicine programs and willing to invest in making them successful. Healthcare institutions have a huge incentive to participate in and help fund and organize them, because otherwise they have to eat the cost for that unreimbursed emergency department care (or, at the very least, have to pass those costs on to their other patients).
This is in the same vein as every hospital in Virginia (INOVA, UVA, Sentara, Carilion, Centra, etc.) begging the Virginia legislature to pass Medicaid expansion from 2012 to 2017, even going so far to say they would voluntarily pay the Commonwealth's costs for enacting it in perpetuity if only the legislature would agree to pass the expansion. Hospitals have enormous incentive to not only cooperate with this program, but to help fund and enact it, because (as noted previously) it's much less expensive for them to help fund community paramedicine initiatives than have to take on the cost of an emergency department visit. We can instead help them focus their emergency department staff on doing what they do best. So there exists a supreme potential for a public/private partnership to make this program work in every corner of the Commonwealth.
SUCCESS ELSEWHERE
Pilot programs across the country have proven that this program works no matter in what sort of area it has been implemented. Localities as different as Birmingham, Boston, and Wake County, North Carolina have all run successful pilot programs for community paramedicine, which shows its potential for rural, urban, and suburban populations.
Here's a few links for your perusal on those subjects:
Paramedics and medical providers are literally dying while we ask them to save the world with no support. But it doesn't have to be this way.
The growing guerilla healthcare movement- community paramedicine.
Community paramedics hit the road.
"The Wake County EMS 6-year-old pilot project saved Medicaid about $500,000 in hospital and related costs during a recent 12-month period."
Again, this doesn't require changing any licensing or training laws. Paramedics, nurse practitioners and physician assistants have the ability to do everything clinically that is required for this program to work right now. It is within what the Commonwealth of Virginia already grants them for scope of practice. It just needs to be formalized, allowing them to seek reimbursement from sources such as Medicaid.
Perhaps the biggest challenge, regardless of whether or not we pass legislation in support of community paramedicine, is to make sure we have enough providers available. That means incentives for more EMTs, paramedics, nurses, nurse practitioners, PAs, MDs, etc. We already have a dramatic shortage of providers as it is, so we need to address this anyway; it just has the potential to get much worse without action.
Right now, apropos of nothing, physicians in primary care are retiring at a rate that is utterly irreplaceable. I often tell the story about my kids' doctor. He not only delivered both of my boys, but 30 years ago, when he was a brand-new family practice doc, he also delivered my wife. He has something just short of 10,000 patients in the Free Union, Virginia area. When he retires, which will be soon, who's going to replace him?
Right now, the honest answer is probably: nobody. And so those patients will have to try and seek care with another physician; some may have to drive all the way to Charlottesville to do that. There are parts of Free Union where it's easily a 45-minute drive minimum, one way to Charlottesville.
What that means is that people are much more likely to let care go unsought, which obviously is not a solution. Putting things off and ignoring them ends up costing more in the end when you have to be rushed to the emergency department. Which gets us back to where we started with inefficient care provision that we ALL end up paying more for, but most pertinently, is far worse for the patient.
SO WHAT DO WE NEED TO DO LEGISLATIVELY?
So, the big question is, what sort of legislation can you advocate for to go into making this work?
Here's a list of some potential legislative solutions you can discuss doing when we talk about making community paramedicine work:
– Give county fire and rescue departments the legislative clearance to run these programs, and work to set up private/public partnerships among them and local healthcare systems to make it work.
– Allow Virginia Medicaid to reimburse community paramedicine initiatives.
– Empower/fund efforts for Virginia public colleges to significantly increase enrollment in medical provider programs (i.e., EMT, Paramedic, RN/BSN, NP, PA, etc.).
– Empower the Office of Emergency Medical Services to work with both public and private agencies to make these programs work for every community in Virginia.
– Carve an exception in the Dillon Rule for county fire and rescue departments empowering them to help find a local solution to local problems. An example of this was Albemarle County Fire and Rescue's attempt to push a .5% increase in sales tax on cigarettes, which they calculated would pay for all of their training and equipment, later blocked by the General Assembly (and Altria-backed politicians).
– Exempt from state income taxes critically-needed medical professionals (like dentists, psychiatrists, nurses, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, etc.) who agree to live and work in "medical deserts" (rural/underserved locales) .
– Provide tax credits for employers who hire/retain volunteer emergency services personnel, including tax credits for giving paid time off, with special benefits to those (especially small businesses) who do so in medical deserts.
– Give fiscally-strapped Virginia counties a credit to send county citizen providers (emergency services and healthcare related) to a Virginia school for free training if they'll agree to work/volunteer for a certain period of time.
– Shorten the amount of time required for nurse practitioner autonomous practice from the most onerous in the country (currently at 10,000 hours) to standards in-line with those of the U.S. Military and Department of Health and Human Services.
– Make it easier, not harder, for you to find a job helping people in the Commonwealth of Virginia if you're a returning U.S. Army medic, U.S. Navy corpsman, or have held another equivalent position in the U.S. military. We need to team up with the Board of Health Professions and learning institutions in the Commonwealth to build programs specifically tailored for returning veterans to turn their already extensive training into a degree to become a medical professional. And if they go to a medically underserved part of the Commonwealth to practice? Then the Commonwealth should stand up for the men and women who've stood up for us and pick up the tab.
Healthcare is an issue that touches every single Virginian- we will all access the healthcare system at some point in time- and community paramedicine is a great way to help provide that access for all Virginians in a comprehensive, high-quality, cost-effective way. If we want to prove that we're speaking to the kitchen table issues of working Virginia families, fighting for community paramedicine is a great way to do just that, while simultaneously preparing our state for the challenges on the very near horizon.
Single Payer Healthcare
Previous articleCNU Professor Rachel Bitecofer on Trump's "Authoritarian Tendencies" and the Dangerous "Othering" of People in Trumps' America
Next articleVideo, Photos: Ceremonial Swearing-In of Newly Elected Virginia House of Delegates Members


Harland was born Mary Virginia Hawes in Dennisville, Virginia, in Amelia County, in 1830 and spent her early years in rural areas before moving to Richmond when she was in her early teens. She married Edward Payson Terhune in 1856 and moved to Newark, New Jersey, in 1859, when her husband, a Presbyterian minister, was given a pastorate there. She spent most of the rest of her life in the North, and died in New York in 1922.
Harland began to write as a child, and at age fifteen, using a male pseudonym, she submitted stories to The Watchman and Observer, a religious magazine published in Richmond. She sent other stories to different magazines, eventually choosing the name "Marion Harland," under which she wrote for the rest of her life. Her first novel, Alone (1854), was privately published when she was twenty-four; the book was instantly popular. She went on to publish more than seventy-five volumes, and her short stories were published in some of the leading magazines of her day, earning her an award for her writing as early as 1853. She wrote a syndicated newspaper column for women for more than eighteen years, and edited several publications for short periods. Harland's last novel, The Carringtons of High Hill, was published in 1919, when she was eighty-eight.
Harland's novels were written over the course of more than sixty-five years, including the turbulent period before, during, and after the American Civil War (1861–1865). As a native Southerner who followed her husband to live in the North, Harland's loyalties were sorely divided during the war, though she emphatically disapproved of secession. These inner conflicts were often expressed in her fiction. Her earlier novels portrayed Virginia as an idyllic place, and its inhabitants as paragons of virtue and conduct, coexisting peacefully in a near utopia. A later novel, Sunnybank (1866), describes the many privations and dangers of wartime Virginia, and begins to explore the conflicts in Southern society at that time. In some of her later novels, which are set in the North, she continued to focus on providing good moral lessons through her fiction.
During Harland's first months in Newark, struggling for the first time with household tasks such as cooking and cleaning, she realized there was a serious need for detailed, practical manuals for maintaining a household. Her response to that need, published in 1871, was Common Sense in the Household: A Manual of Practical Housewifery. Described by one author as "enlivened with pungent commentary," the book sold more than a million copies and was kept in print for the next fifty years. Through this book and others of its kind that followed, Marion Harland became a household name.
Her works on cooking, housekeeping, and etiquette all celebrate "the talent of home-making, precious and incommunicable," as she described it in The Secret of a Happy Home (1896). Though Harland made it clear that women were duty-bound to keep a well-ordered home, she also recognized and lamented the limitations placed on women. "It must be a fine thing," she wrote, "to be a man on some accounts;—to be emancipated forever-and-a-day from the thralldom of skirts for instance, and to push through a crowd to read the interjectional headlines upon a bulletin board, instead of going meekly and unenlightened home." In the face of these challenges, however, Harland urged her readers to develop their other talents and their intellects.
Eminently practical, witty, sarcastic, encouraging and kind, Harland's manuals were a boon to women throughout the country. Common Sense, for instance, includes instructions for common household problems, such as removing stains or making a wound stop bleeding ("cobwebs and brown sugar, pressed on like lint"), as well as scores of recipes.
Some of Harland's other works include books based on extensive travel in Europe and the Middle East, biographies of Mary Washington and British novelist Charlotte Brontë, and histories of colonial America. She also collaborated on various writing projects with each of her three surviving children, including her son, Albert Payson Terhune, best known as the author of Lad: A Dog (1957), and other works.
1830 - Marion Harland is born Mary Virginia Hawes in Dennisville.
1854 - Marion Harland's first novel, Alone, is privately published and achieves immediate success.
1856 - Marion Harland marries Edward Payson Terhune, a Presbyterian minister.
1859 - Marion Harland moves to Newark, New Jersey, when her husband is given a pastorate.
1871 - Marion Harland publishes Common Sense in the Household: A Manual of Practical Housewifery, her response to a need for literature offering detailed tips on maintaining a household as a young wife. The book sells more than a million copies and is kept in print for the next fifty years.
1919 - Marion Harland's last novel, The Carringtons of High Hill, is published. She is eighty-eight.
Moss, Elizabeth. Domestic Novelists in the Old South: Defenders of Southern Culture. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992.
Smith, Karen Manners. "Mary Virginia Hawes Terhune." In vol. 21, American National Biography, ed. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. New York: Oxford, 1999.
Crawford, M. Marion Harland (1830–1922). (2017, June 29). In Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved from http://www.EncyclopediaVirginia.org/Harland_Marion_1830-1922.
Crawford, M. "Marion Harland (1830–1922)." Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, 29 Jun. 2017. Web. READ_DATE.
Contributed by Meriah Crawford, an adjunct instructor of English and mass communications at Virginia Commonwealth University.


You can add and update awards for individual scouts from the Individual Advancement page.
But you can also display a list of awards for all scouts in your troop by selecting Special Awards - Scouts from the Maintain Advancement submenu on the Advancement menu.
This page allows to maintain awards for individual scouts. It also allows you to quickly enter an award that was earned by a group of scouts.
Use the Search button to filter the list for a particular award or scout.
Note: if you can't find the award you're looking for, you can add it from the Special Awards page on the Site Configuration menu.
The Add and Update buttons will take you to a page where you can manage one award for one scout, as shown below. If requirements have been defined for the award, you can sign off individual requirements. Or you can ignore the requirements and simply mark the award completed by entering the Date Earned.
Click Update Award For Group on the main page to enter an award for a group of scouts.
This will take you to a page that lists all available awards as shown at right. Use the Search button to quickly find the award you are interested in.
Once you've found the award, click the Update button on that row to update the status for all of your scouts on that award, as shown below.
Click the checkbox in front of a scout's name to indicate he is working on this award.
Enter the date he started the award. If he has completed the award, enter the completion date in the Date Earned column.
Use your browser's Copy and Paste function to quickly fill in the dates for scouts who completed the badge on the same day.
Be sure to click Save & Exit to save your work!


That's what night #1 of a 3 night bender looks like. Taylor and I talked about being old and not being able to deal with hangovers as well anymore. We knew we'd be drinking both Friday & Saturday because of celebrations, so somehow we decided to just get it started right away.
Today's my first day back at work and I feel terrible. Last weekend was very, very fun. But, yes, I'm officially too old.