JWPF in the News

Two JWPF supporters and this writer addressed the Ann Arbor City Council last Monday (7/7) on the topic of human rights violations and Israel. From the pages of AnnArborChronicle.com,

7:13 p.m. Public commentary. This portion of the meeting offers 10 three-minute slots that can be reserved in advance. Preference is given to speakers who want to address the council on an agenda item…Three people are signed up to talk about US-Israel foreign policy: Mozhgan Savabiehsfahani, Blaine Coleman and Henry Herskovitz…

7:21 p.m. Blaine Coleman says he was here a year and a half ago when Israel was bombing Gaza. He’d asked Chuck Warpehoski (Ward 5) to spearhead a resolution asking for a boycott Israel. Now he was back a year and a half later and Israel was bombing Gaza again, and he was asking again for a symbolic resolution boycotting Israel. He refers to the beating of school children. [By way of background, here’s a link to video posted by The Guardian, which reports the video was broadcast on a Palestinian TV station as showing the beating of Tariq Abu Khdeir, 15-year-old Floridian, who was visiting Israel.]

This boy was on the front page of the New York Times, Coleman says. He asks the council to pay for the boy’s airfare from Florida to come talk to the Ann Arbor city council.

7:28 p.m. Mozhgan Savabiehsfahani is also addressing the beating of the Floridian schoolboy. She’s also talking about other children who have been beaten up “on your watch.” She’s been coming to the Ann Arbor city council for 10 years, she says, telling the council that they need to act, and she’s seen no effect. “How many more dead bodies can you handle?” she asks. She tells them that they’re trying to make history, but “You ain’t gonna make no history, if you say nothing in the face of this kind of brutality,” she tells them. “You support this with your silence,” she says. She calls the bus stop slogans here in Ann Arbor – “Our Way of Life” – phony. She and Coleman are holding signs showing photographs of the beaten boy’s face. She tells the council they’re looking at her like she’s some kind of five-headed dragon. Boycotting Israel is their duty, she concludes.

7:34 p.m. Henry Herskovitz reminds the council that he’d told them last month how Israel had attacked the U.S.S. Liberty. Tonight he’s addressing the council on the topic of the Lavon Affair, which was a 1954 operation conducted by Israeli military intelligence that involved recruiting Egyptian Jews to strike U.S. and British civilian targets, which were then planned to be blamed on Muslim extremists. [Wikipedia link on Lavon Affair] Herskovitz traces the Lavon Affair to the policies of Eisenhower and Nasser. Lavon was an official who was forced to resign. Herskovitz quotes Malcom[sic] X, saying that the American public has been “bamboozled” on the issue of Israel.

Readers can view full speech after signature, and view the presentation here (forward to 00:22:47).

Comments?

5 vigilers
Denying Israel’s claim to legitimacy
Henry Herskovitz
Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends
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July 7, 2014 [ 386 words]
Topic: The Lavon Affair: When Israel Firebombed U.S. Installations

Good Evening,

Last month I explained how our supposed ally Israel intentionally attacked the USS Liberty, in international waters in an attack lasting longer than that at Pearl Harbor.

This month I’d like to relate to you another attack on US property by this same supposed ally. This event happened 13 years prior to the attack on the Liberty, and occurred in the cities of Alexandria and Cairo in Egypt, designed as false-flag operations. The targets were the U.S. Information Services libraries and consular offices. Egyptian Jews had been trained in Israel and returned to Egypt to await orders to carry out acts of sabotage in case of war between Egypt and Israel. They set off incendiary devices in these US offices, and also planned to bomb public arenas in these cities.

Part of the reason for these attacks lies in the budding relationship between two very popular, charismatic military men who became heads of state. President Dwight Eisenhower saw Gamal Abdel Nassar in his image and set out to create a relationship with him that would eventually enable a peace to be worked out between Egypt and Israel.

As is pretty evident by our recent news, Israel has never wanted peace, and in 1954 it was no different. Members of an IDF intelligence organization sent the Jewish sleeper cells into action and after they were arrested by Egyptian police, started the cover-up. State Founder David Ben Gurion blamed then Prime Minister Moshe Sharett for the bungled false-flag attack. General Moshe Dayan could not be implicated, neither would Dayan’s intelligence chief Benjamin Gibli. The only man unprotected in this chain of responsibility was Defense Minister Pinchas Lavon, from which the “Lavon Affair” got its name. He was forced to resign a half-year later.

To borrow a word from Malcolm X, the American people have been BAMBOOZLED by a pro-Israel press and the power of the pro-Israel Lobby. How many more eight million dollar days are we going to dole out to the very state which attacks, spies on and sabotages our county?

I’d like to conclude with the words attributed to Father John Sheehan of the Jesuit order: “Every time anyone says that Israel is our only friend in the Middle East, I can’t help but think that, before Israel, we had no enemies in the Middle East”.

Thank you