After Annapolis
"The Tumult and the Shouting Dies ... "

"THE TUMULT and the shouting dies, / The captains and the kings depart" Rudyard Kipling wrote in his unforgettable poem "Lest We Forget" ("Recessional") King George departed even before the tumult had died. His helicopter carried him away over the horizon, just as his trusty steed carries the cowboy into the sunset at the end of the movie. At that moment, the speeches in the assembly hall were still going ahead at full blast. This summed up the whole event. The final statement announced that the United States will supervise the negotiations, act as a referee of the implementation and as a judge throughout. Everything depends on her. If she wants it - much will happen. If she does not want it - nothing will happen. That bodes ill. There is no indication that George Bush will really intervene to achieve anything, apart from nice photos. Some people believe that the whole show was put on to make poor Condoleezza Rice feel good, after all her efforts as Secretary of State have come to nought. Even if Bush wanted to, could he do anything? Is he capable of putting pressure on Israel, in the face of vigorous opposition from the pro-Israel lobby, and especially from the Christian-Evangelist public, to which he himself belongs? A friend told me that during the conference he watched the televised proceedings with the sound turned off, just observing the body language of the principal actors. That way he noticed an interesting detail: Bush and Olmert touched each other many times, but there was almost no physical contact between Bush and Mahmoud Abbas. More than that: during all the joint events, the distance between Bush and Olmert was smaller than the distance between Bush and Abbas. Several times Bush and Olmert walked ahead together, with Abbas trailing behind. That's the whole story.

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Omar Barghouti: "No State Has the Right to Exist as a Racist State"

Silvia Cattori: The fact remains that «anti-Semite» has a much stronger impact than «racist», because in many countries of Europe, there legal are consequences for those who are accused of being « anti-Semitic ». Should we not be considered equal, Jews and non-Jews? Why should we accept this biased way of making people feel guilty about something that does not exist any more, but proves to be very useful for pro-Israeli war propaganda purposes? Omar Barghouti: Yes, we should fight that, too. There has to be a struggle to reject all racism equally and not to accept current European laws that treat anti-Semitism as a separate class of crime, far worse than any other form of racism, including Islamophobia or anti-black racism, arguably the most prevalent expressions of white racism nowadays. These laws are themselves discriminatory. Anti-Semitism is just another form of racism, no more, no less; it should be treated as one branch of racism, not a super branch. But, in any case, it does not justify Israel’s racist nature; it cannot justify Israel’s crimes. We should decouple anti-Semitism from anti-Zionism. While the former is a form of racism; the latter is a moral stance against racism. Silvia Cattori: But this will not be possible as long as Palestinians find themselves in a situation of inequality, and that the oppressed people can’t tell us how they live. Instead, those who play the game of «normalization» have the stage, which is a kind of collaboration! Omar Barghouti: Palestinian representatives ought to respect and unite behind our civil society’s BDS call for a struggle against the three key forms of Israeli injustice, not just one – occupation and colonisation of the 1967 territory is just one form of injustice. The core of the question of Palestine remains the much larger injustice, the denial of the basic rights of the refugees, who constitute the majority of the Palestinian people. And there is a third form of injustice, which is often overlooked – the regime of institutionalized racism against Palestinian citizens of Israel. Even if Israel ended the occupation tomorrow, it will not end this colonial conflict. The solidarity movement in Europe and the rest of the world has to respect the genuine voice of Palestinian civil society, rather than promote Palestinian quislings or little bureaucrats who tour the world to say anything as long as they are paid well. They do not represent the Palestinian people; they do not speak on behalf of the Palestinians.

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My god, what did we do?

One night, Tamar Yarom was awakened by one of the soldiers in her unit. He said he wanted to show her something in the basement of the abandoned building where they were staying. "Before we opened the door, I heard this awful noise from a generator and there was a strong smell of diesel fuel. I saw a middle-aged Palestinian detainee lying with his head on the generator. His ear was pressed against the generator that was vibrating, and the guy's head was vibrating with it. His face was completely messed up. It amazed me that through all the blood and horror, you could still see the guy's expression and that's what stayed with me for years after - the look on his face."

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