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On Eddie Vedder and Israel/Palestine
fuck
Posts: 4,069
Today I am more proud to be a Pearl Jam fan than ever before.
Being a Palestinian, I have been directly affected by the Israeli occupation and their ethnic cleansing of the land in 1948, when all my grandparents were forced out of their homes. One of my grandmothers, who was 9 years old at the time, watched her father - a police officer - get gunned down in front of her by Zionist paramilitary organizations. She then continued the rest of her journey on foot for several miles with the rest of her family - her father's recently killed body still lying on the floor of their now abandoned home.
Although I've only ever been able to visit Gaza, which is held under a tight siege by Israel and Egypt and barely a fly is able to make it in or out, and despite the fact that I was born and raised in the United States, the brutal Israeli occupation and oppression of Palestinians which has lasted for decades has followed me here.
But more than that, the sense of humanity, the obsession with justice and with equality that I was raised with, has made it impossible to view this "conflict", in which one side for the last several decades has possessed one of the largest military forces on the planet while the other has only been making homemade bottle rockets in recent years to try and maybe bother them a little, as a "conflict". It's not a conflict, it's one side occupying another and trying to take more and more land from them.
Which is why I was proud to see Eddie finally speak out on this issue. And let's be clear about something: he was talking about Israel/Palestine in that video. When he says "dropping bombs not so far away from here" from the UK, at a time when nearly 200 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by Israeli bombs in only a matter of days, and it is dominating the news, he is talking about Palestine. We know he's anti-war in general, but his anger in that video is real, it is a reaction to the biggest news story right now (headlining all major news outlets). When he talks about "taking land that is not theirs" he does not mean ALL conflicts because all conflicts are not about land - but Israel/Palestine is. When he says "they should mind their fucking business, and get out" (I'm paraphrasing here, but he said something along these lines), that "they" is not general - it refers to the country that has been occupying a people and land illegally for SIXTY YEARS now. When he mentions how our tax dollars are funding bombs being dropped on children, he is not talking about the US military here - he is talking about the fact that the US has been sending BILLIONS of dollars EACH YEAR to Israel in military and other aid. And the fact that dozens of Palestinian children have been murdered as a result. The fact that this is what Eddie was referring to is beyond question - anyone who has been following this issue closely knows beyond a doubt.
I find it fascinating that Israelis themselves are able to figure this out. Yes, he does not mention Israel specifically, but they know that's who he's talking about when he mentions "taking land that's not theirs" and "dropping bombs on children". At least now we know how they see their society, government and military.
Which brings me to another point. This is not simply one other government doing wrong "as all governments do". There is a difference when your country is a colonial entity - when it is made up of a society, in this case a Jewish Israeli society, that is and has been seeking to create a country for themselves at the expense of another people. This is not the story of a people that simply cannot learn to get along with another. This is the story of a systematic effort by one side since decades ago to dispossess another people and take their land for their own use. This has been documented in so many books, and even Zionist authors themselves like Benny Morris have finally admitted (although this was like 20 years ago, but people are finally starting to catch up) that this has been the goal. This isn't a religious conflict, it's not a conflict that has lasted centuries - it is less than 100 years old. When we situate Palestinian resistance within this context - especially given how ineffective armed resistance has been for the Palestinians - we can then identify the root of the conflict, and how to stop it once and for all. This is NOT a "two sided conflict".
We have seen conflicts based on colonialism play out in India (with the British), Algeria (with the French) and South Africa (with the Afrikaners), but people, particularly in America, have been conditioned due to large scale propaganda efforts to view this conflict differently. It is no different. This is therefore not simply an issue of the Israeli government, but Israeli society itself, which has supported in overwhelming majority the persecution of Palestinians, whether it be their dispossession, the laws within Israel that discriminate against them, or the several wars on Gaza.
I saw Pearl Jam in Berlin only a couple weeks ago and was able to make it 3rd row center after waiting all day. I took with me a Palestinian flag and held it up for Eddie to see - only a couple of columns to the left of a group of Israelis who had a Come Play Israel sign. We also wrote on our flag a call for Pearl Jam to publicly endorse the BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions), a movement based on the one that helped end apartheid in South Africa. Several artists, scholars and even companies and other institutions have endorsed this tactic as the best nonviolent method of combating Israeli oppression and occupation, which was called for by a large coalition of Palestinian civil society organizations. By applying this same international pressure, Israel will continue to feel isolated and be forced to change its policy, just as South Africa did.
Many have called for dialogue - but anyone who has followed this issue, who understands Zionism and Israeli tactics knows, we cannot have a dialogue when the power dynamic remains as is. When Israel can receive a blank check from the United States (under Obama they've gotten more military aid than all previous presidents combined), without repercussions, they will not change their policy. When they can continue to act again and again with impunity, they will not change their policy. This is the one of the last nonviolent methods we can employ to stop this. I hope with Eddie's statement, we now know where he stands on this.
There are some who say that the music should be separate from the politics. Picasso, the famous painter, once said: "What do you think an artist is? ...he is a political being, constantly aware of the heart breaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war." ART is an instrument of war. We cannot separate politics from life. We cannot separate our moral compass, and our principles and ethics, from life. Art does not exist in a vacuum, it is a response to the experiences we face in life, and that includes war and politics.
I am glad to see Eddie standing up for a cause that is right. I know many, perhaps most people here won't be able to understand this, but imagine something that has troubled you your whole life, something you care about deeply, something that has shaped your view of justice, being spoken out in favor of by Eddie, whose music has influenced you for years, and perhaps you can then relate.
I hope Eddie does not feel pressured by those groups seeking the whitewash Israeli war crimes. I hope he only gets more vocal for an issue that will judge where those stand in history: not whether you are pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli, but whether you are pro-equality and justice, or pro-colonialism and oppression based on your ethnicity.
Being a Palestinian, I have been directly affected by the Israeli occupation and their ethnic cleansing of the land in 1948, when all my grandparents were forced out of their homes. One of my grandmothers, who was 9 years old at the time, watched her father - a police officer - get gunned down in front of her by Zionist paramilitary organizations. She then continued the rest of her journey on foot for several miles with the rest of her family - her father's recently killed body still lying on the floor of their now abandoned home.
Although I've only ever been able to visit Gaza, which is held under a tight siege by Israel and Egypt and barely a fly is able to make it in or out, and despite the fact that I was born and raised in the United States, the brutal Israeli occupation and oppression of Palestinians which has lasted for decades has followed me here.
But more than that, the sense of humanity, the obsession with justice and with equality that I was raised with, has made it impossible to view this "conflict", in which one side for the last several decades has possessed one of the largest military forces on the planet while the other has only been making homemade bottle rockets in recent years to try and maybe bother them a little, as a "conflict". It's not a conflict, it's one side occupying another and trying to take more and more land from them.
Which is why I was proud to see Eddie finally speak out on this issue. And let's be clear about something: he was talking about Israel/Palestine in that video. When he says "dropping bombs not so far away from here" from the UK, at a time when nearly 200 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by Israeli bombs in only a matter of days, and it is dominating the news, he is talking about Palestine. We know he's anti-war in general, but his anger in that video is real, it is a reaction to the biggest news story right now (headlining all major news outlets). When he talks about "taking land that is not theirs" he does not mean ALL conflicts because all conflicts are not about land - but Israel/Palestine is. When he says "they should mind their fucking business, and get out" (I'm paraphrasing here, but he said something along these lines), that "they" is not general - it refers to the country that has been occupying a people and land illegally for SIXTY YEARS now. When he mentions how our tax dollars are funding bombs being dropped on children, he is not talking about the US military here - he is talking about the fact that the US has been sending BILLIONS of dollars EACH YEAR to Israel in military and other aid. And the fact that dozens of Palestinian children have been murdered as a result. The fact that this is what Eddie was referring to is beyond question - anyone who has been following this issue closely knows beyond a doubt.
I find it fascinating that Israelis themselves are able to figure this out. Yes, he does not mention Israel specifically, but they know that's who he's talking about when he mentions "taking land that's not theirs" and "dropping bombs on children". At least now we know how they see their society, government and military.
Which brings me to another point. This is not simply one other government doing wrong "as all governments do". There is a difference when your country is a colonial entity - when it is made up of a society, in this case a Jewish Israeli society, that is and has been seeking to create a country for themselves at the expense of another people. This is not the story of a people that simply cannot learn to get along with another. This is the story of a systematic effort by one side since decades ago to dispossess another people and take their land for their own use. This has been documented in so many books, and even Zionist authors themselves like Benny Morris have finally admitted (although this was like 20 years ago, but people are finally starting to catch up) that this has been the goal. This isn't a religious conflict, it's not a conflict that has lasted centuries - it is less than 100 years old. When we situate Palestinian resistance within this context - especially given how ineffective armed resistance has been for the Palestinians - we can then identify the root of the conflict, and how to stop it once and for all. This is NOT a "two sided conflict".
We have seen conflicts based on colonialism play out in India (with the British), Algeria (with the French) and South Africa (with the Afrikaners), but people, particularly in America, have been conditioned due to large scale propaganda efforts to view this conflict differently. It is no different. This is therefore not simply an issue of the Israeli government, but Israeli society itself, which has supported in overwhelming majority the persecution of Palestinians, whether it be their dispossession, the laws within Israel that discriminate against them, or the several wars on Gaza.
I saw Pearl Jam in Berlin only a couple weeks ago and was able to make it 3rd row center after waiting all day. I took with me a Palestinian flag and held it up for Eddie to see - only a couple of columns to the left of a group of Israelis who had a Come Play Israel sign. We also wrote on our flag a call for Pearl Jam to publicly endorse the BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions), a movement based on the one that helped end apartheid in South Africa. Several artists, scholars and even companies and other institutions have endorsed this tactic as the best nonviolent method of combating Israeli oppression and occupation, which was called for by a large coalition of Palestinian civil society organizations. By applying this same international pressure, Israel will continue to feel isolated and be forced to change its policy, just as South Africa did.
Many have called for dialogue - but anyone who has followed this issue, who understands Zionism and Israeli tactics knows, we cannot have a dialogue when the power dynamic remains as is. When Israel can receive a blank check from the United States (under Obama they've gotten more military aid than all previous presidents combined), without repercussions, they will not change their policy. When they can continue to act again and again with impunity, they will not change their policy. This is the one of the last nonviolent methods we can employ to stop this. I hope with Eddie's statement, we now know where he stands on this.
There are some who say that the music should be separate from the politics. Picasso, the famous painter, once said: "What do you think an artist is? ...he is a political being, constantly aware of the heart breaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war." ART is an instrument of war. We cannot separate politics from life. We cannot separate our moral compass, and our principles and ethics, from life. Art does not exist in a vacuum, it is a response to the experiences we face in life, and that includes war and politics.
I am glad to see Eddie standing up for a cause that is right. I know many, perhaps most people here won't be able to understand this, but imagine something that has troubled you your whole life, something you care about deeply, something that has shaped your view of justice, being spoken out in favor of by Eddie, whose music has influenced you for years, and perhaps you can then relate.
I hope Eddie does not feel pressured by those groups seeking the whitewash Israeli war crimes. I hope he only gets more vocal for an issue that will judge where those stand in history: not whether you are pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli, but whether you are pro-equality and justice, or pro-colonialism and oppression based on your ethnicity.
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EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
That was absolutely epic! You could tell that was real emotion pouring out. He's right. Regardless of the situation that he's talking about. It has to stop. The killing has to stop!
By the way - in true humanitarian form, Neil Young's statement, as taken from pollstar.com:
'Young also put out his own statement, saying, “I will be making donations to both the Louise Tillie Alpert Youth Music Centre of Israel, and Heartbeat, two organizations that teach music to Palestinian and Israeli youth simultaneously by enabling them to play music together.”'
Love this.
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
"NOW!!!" "NOW!!!" (Finger pointing)!
"Life Is What Happens To You When Your Busy Making Other Plans" John Lennon
bravo
miss seeing you around here, f-bomb..
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
In the Jerusalem Mourning Tent For a Murdered Teen
Hundreds of Israelis visit the family of a murdered Palestinian boy in Jerusalem that has been torn by rage.
Gershom Gorenberg
July 10, 2014
The air-raid silence sounded at three minutes to ten at night in Jerusalem. Two distant booms followed. Afterward, they seemed like an orchestral finale: abrupt, followed by silence, the only notes of a long day that were unmistakable in their meaning.
That afternoon, I'd gone with busloads of Israelis to Shuafat, a Palestinian neighborhood of East Jerusalem, to visit the family of Muhammad Abu-Khdeir. A huge mourners' tent had been set up: The ceiling was made of blue tarps; one side was open to the street; the other three sides walled with tapestries and printed banners showing pictures of Muhammad. In the pictures, Muhammad looked very young for 16, his age last week when, on his way to Ramadan prayers, he was pulled into a car and doused with gasoline, murdered by immolation. The suspects, now in custody, their names still under a gag order, are six young Israelis from the Jerusalem area. The motives were revenge and hatred—call it national, or ethnic, or tribal.
Here's the very brief timeline: On June 30, Israeli troops found the bodies of three Israeli teens—Eyal Yifrah, Gilad Shaar, and Naftali Fraenkel—who'd been kidnapped by Palestinian extremists while hitchhiking in the West Bank. The next afternoon, as their funerals were broadcast on national TV and radio, downtown West Jerusalem became a riot zone. Bands of angry Jews, most in their teens, virtually all male, chanted "Death to Arabs!" They tried to beat up Palestinian workers in the open market, and threw stones at cars, randomly, without any sign that they cared whether the driver was Jewish or Arab. Before dawn the next day, Abu-Khdeir was abducted and murdered.
The police, who responded too slowly to seething mobs in West Jerusalem, overreacted with rubber bullets and clubs to seething protests that broke out in East Jerusalem after the murder. A city divided by nationality and nationalism, half under occupation, which is also a city bound together by thin threads of human connections—a city much more lovely in its confusion of cultures, religions and languages than political reporters (including this one) ever get across—came undone.
Then, over the weekend, the police arrested six suspects in the Abu-Khdeir murder. According to official and unofficial leaks, they are not from ideological settlements but from the long-ignored fringe of ultra-Orthodox society, the dropouts from life-long religious study who have no job skills and not a sliver of a chance of fitting into any society outside the self-imposed ultra-Orthodox ghetto. A preliminary pathological report showed that Muhammad Abu-Khdeir had been burned alive.
The Israeli anti-racism coalition Tag Meir (translating the name would require a separate article) contacted the Abu-Khdeir family, which agreed to receive a group of Israelis in the mourning tent. There was room in the tent for 350 people. An announcement went out Monday; a few hours later, registration closed. Hundreds more wanted to come.
And so, on Tuesday afternoon, a dozen or so middle-aged men from Muhammad Abu-Khdeir's family, including his father, stood in a receiving line in the tent as the visitors filed by, shaking their hands. "God bless you," one of the relatives murmured in Arabic-accented English. "I am so sorry," a woman murmured in Hebrew-accented Hebrew. Mostly, the ceremony was silent. The statement by both sides, it seemed, was to be there.
The visitors did not fit Israeli political divisions or stereotypes. According to the signals, explicit or subtle, of how people dress, as many as half were Orthodox. I saw familiar left-wing activists, as well as Daniel Gordis, vice-president of Shalem College and a sharp critic of the pro-peace camp. A woman in her 20s named Goldie told me that she lived over the Green Line—that is, in a settlement. She'd come, she said, "because I simply felt terrible" about the murder. Rabbi David Bigman, one of the heads of the Ma'ale Gilboa yeshiva (Talmudic seminary) and a forceful liberal Orthodox voice, told me with blunt sadness: "Because we can't do anything else, we're doing this, mostly for ourselves." Of clergy and spokespeople for the right who have made vengeance a value, Bigman said, "There's no basis for that in Judaism."
We filed in and sat in the plastic chairs that filled the tent. A relative of the slain boy took a microphone, with an Israeli journalist translating from Arabic to Hebrew. "We thank you for your feelings for the martyr of dawn," the speaker said. A couple of sentences later, the translator began to squirm, as the speaker referred to the Israeli government as "the Satan in the Knesset that orders occupation and settlement." He went on: "We bless you and welcome you to the mourners' tent, but we have refused to receive any condolences from representatives of the Israeli government… whose feelings are false." The amplifier was turned up so that the voice echoed between the buildings. "We thank you for coming to comfort the [family of the] martyr and the Palestinian people… You stood with us against the crimes of the occupation and the settlements."
Later, as we left, a friend pointed to one of the banners hanging from a building across the street. It was from the students union at a college in Bethlehem, which "mourned for the martyr Muhammad Abu-Khdeir, who was kidnapped and murdered by the Zionist forces of treachery."
Let me unpack a fraction of this. The day before, the family had in fact welcomed three Knesset members to the tent, including Amir Peretz, a cabinet minister. Someone had decided since then that the visit needed to be denied. The Israelis who listened to the speech all came because they were horrified by murder; not all saw settlement as a crime. I doubt that even the sharpest critics of the Israeli government were happy at it being called "Satan."
"I feel like we were forced to bear a message that wasn't ours," someone told me as we boarded the buses that brought us. Someone else said: "When you go to console mourners, you don't judge what they say." The important message, he said, was the visit and the fact that men stood in the heat of a Ramadan afternoon to welcome the visitors. To both comments I'd add: Any meeting of Israelis and Palestinians will be bent by politics and anger. It was bright shining naiveté to imagine anything else, but the visit was still necessary.
While we were in the mourning tent in Shuafat, another war was escalating—the one between Israel and Hamas-ruled Gaza. It grew as a brawl does: Each blow provokes a stronger blow. It is a different kind of war. The enemy is elsewhere, faceless, across a border. Palestinians die in Israeli airstrikes. As of yet, no Israelis have been killed by rockets, but that is not for lack of trying by the crews launching the rockets. On both sides, the war appears straightforward: They are attacking, so we must fight back.
The air-raid siren at 10 p.m. and the two booms that followed seemed definite and simple: Distant people tried to kill us and failed. Finally, some clarity. But no one can remember just how this round began, or suggest how it will end. There is no clarity, and as yet no finality. For now, there is fire and mourning.
Nakba day:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba_Day
EDIT: I realized you haven't mentioned where you're from, my apologies for my assumption that you're living outside of Israel and the Palestinian zones.
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
Edit-just because I live outside of Palestine doesn't mean I dnt know what's going on. Funny how everyone thinks we have to live in area to know what's going on in that area. None of us live in Iraq or Afghanistan or Russia, yet we all have opinions on what to do or what's going on over there. Why is it that anyone who disagrees with Israel and it's government, must be uneducated or misinformed? Right Eddie?
I don't believe Israel or Palestinians are above smoke and mirrors to paint pretty pictures, I don't believe Israelis or Palestinians are inherently innocent in what's going on - I'm absolutely DISGUSTED and tremendously disturbed about what happened to the Palestinian kid. Do I think that visiting the dead child's parents is going to erase 60+ years of occupation? Nope, not at all. All I'm saying is that if you're expecting some sort of radical paradigm shift to happen overnight, you have bigger dreams and higher hopes than me. Baby steps are what are required, and a shift in mentality from BOTH sides, inherently in favour of peace - and publicly and loudly stated. It's very clear you're anti-oppression, and so am I. If Palestinians are being oppressed, you're damn right they ought to be liberated. I question how that will ever happen with each side passive aggressively going "hey, remember that time you bombed the shit out of us?"
Do you think that, maybe, Israelis might not feel so comfortable inviting Palestinians in with open arms if the predominant discussion ongoing is that of Israel's government inspired by Satan, and the people who remember being bombed and murdered by Israelis (neither of which can be denied have happened)? I'm just curious: what would you say if Israel backed away now and the Palestinian occupations revolted? And in your opinion, what's the likelihood and/or outcome of that?
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
Do you think that, maybe, Israelis might not feel so comfortable inviting Palestinians in with open arms if the predominant discussion ongoing is that of Israel's government inspired by Satan, and the people who remember being bombed and murdered by Israelis (neither of which can be denied have happened)? I'm just curious: what would you say if Israel backed away now and the Palestinian occupations revolted? And in your opinion, what's the likelihood and/or outcome of that?
First off, my question to you is WHY do the Palestinians feel that about satan inspiring their government? Secondly, for the irsraelis to leave they'd have to honestly leave and not sit there poking the Palestinians every chance it gets for them to respond and fire rockets so Israel can go back in AGAIN. Again, it's how this fucken mess started wether u want to admit it or not. Idf Shoot and kill 2 Palestinian teens protesting on Nakba day. (Poke) Palestinians respond with firecracker rockets, Israel has a reason to go back in. But this time it has the 3 dead Israeli teens as an excuse to broaden the attack. And they start the cycle AGAIN. Not really hard to see how it started. Well, unless u live in the states where the media is always anti-Israel
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
Edit- and Ben, I DO WANT peace their. More then anything. No one deserves to live how the Palestinians live and in fairness Israel shouldn't have to worry about missiles raining down on them too. But until the leaders are chosen with PEACE as their intentions, we're gonna have what eddie said, people who just want to kill.
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1