Sunday, April 7, 2019

The Scum Also Rises

THE ABSURD TIMES

Just as we orbit around the Sun, the Sun orbits around the core of the Milky Way. Relative to the center of the galaxy, we're moving at an average speed of 143 miles per second—even at that breakneck speed though, it still takes 225 to 250 million terrestrial years to complete one trip around.

THE SCUM ALSO RISES

CZAR DONIC

The title is a combination of a tribute to both bald Gonza and Hemmingway to whome Gertrude Stein once said "Earnest, You're always wearing a wig on your chest. He was so poor in Paris that he sat of park benches waiting for stray pigeons stupid enough to get close him, grabbed them, wrung their necks, and too them home to feed his family. One assumes the parts given to his family, at least, were cooked. But we are trying to write about the train of recent events over the last week or so and not go insane without the aid of alcohol.

So first we got hit with the idea of bribery to get kids into "prestige" schools like UMC and Yale (a strange combination). Yale is more famous for a learning ground for suit-wearing preps who study how to become government agents and overthrow foreign governments, any foreign government. Clean cut and pure and skull and crossbones. Yeah, true Amerikans.

Which reminds us to look up tuition history. At one time in Chicago, under Dick Daley, Junior College tuition was free (one-half by the state and half by the city), just as long as you took PE. (In Champaign Urbana it was just half). That explains why I could play semi-pro baseball (once shutout a AAA minor league baseball team in Eau Claire Wisconsin belonging to the Cubs). That way, I could forget about the stupid baseball scholarship and free room and board at an all-jock dormitory that would have been Hell. Stupidity strutted down the halls with a badge of honor. Now, of course, the legislators found out that people actually learn some things in higher education, so they kept raising the tuition until only the mindless children of the wealthy could afford to go.

Next? We have to cover international stuff and also have a few snippets from Daffy Don here and there.

Turkey: Erdogan made some remark about rising eggplant prices causing his political defeats and therefore he will buy his weapons from Russia.

France: An inspiration to all of us to wear yellow anywhere. France had the same choice as we did in the last election, either an insane fascist or a well-dressed austerity junkie. They chose the latter. We choose the former. Oh,hey, civil war in Libya, but Looney John Bolton still wants to use the Libya model for North Korea. That's why fat and jolly guy from Kansas is now secretary of State. I assume the President or Supreme Leader of North Korea still sends love letters to Trump.

Boeing is angry, which makes absolutely no difference to me as I will not get on an airplane and haven't since 9/11, not for fear of terrorists, but the driving to and from the airport and trying to get through the checkout line, all of which makes it much easier and more efficient to drive. "Take you shoes off, bend over, let's search you anal cavity, you have more than 2 ounces of liquid with you, and batteries?" It's damn nuts! And we still have idiots saying "Better safe than sorry." Why is that a choice? Or rather why isn't that a choice? Let's have an airline that doesn't give a damn, says fly at your own risks, and bombs welcome? Before that, it was still strange. People would get on planes and hijack them to Cuba as it was a safer place for them. It was so strange that once Marlon Brando was arrested for saying, joking, but not letting on, "Is the plane to Cuba?"

Trumps Tax Returns – you almost only have to mention them to get a laugh. It is about as funny as a headline I saw: THE LEFT CAN'T MEME! Yes, it's funny until you find out it is supposedly a serious article about politics. So, tax returns – aren't we the only country that subjects its people to that ritual to the extent that anyone who can afford it has to hire a tax attorney or a CPA? If you can't, you probably don't have to file. Now 10 years of Tax returns made public? Give it up, folks, give it up.

Have you heard that windmills cause cancer? Trump says so. Also, the United States is like a cheap motel: NO VACANCIES if you try to cross the border with a coyote? Don Quixote!

Where are you when we need you. Attack those windmills before we all get cancer and the giants come. Wehat giants? Where did that come from?" Who cares, it's there now.

Let's heard it for the Jewish Republicans for Trump! Democrats are anti-Semitic. We know that because they use tropes. Yeah, whatch out for the wild tropes coming from the evil Democrats. Better safe than sorry. No more holocausts! If the Democrats had their way, they'd put windmills in your back yard, giving you cancer and reducing your home's value by 75%. The reason he knows this is because he lowered the value of everything he owns when it was time to file taxes, and then killed the windmills as soon as the filing was over and he applied for a bank loan. How does one go bankrupt running a casino?

Hey, we need a head of the Federal Reserve. Remember that strange black guy who used to run Godfathers Pizza and said 9,9,9 was his tax solution? He will by Daffy Don's nominee for head of the Fed. Why the hell not? He can fight it out in the alley with John Bolton.

The secret is out from England and it makes the whole Brexit nightmare seem insignificant: Details emerged that Margaret Thatcher used to spank Christopher Hitchens. We have that detail from none other that Salmon Rushdie who, I assume, is no longer under a Fatwah for his death from writing SATANIC VERSES. I don't know – he may be getting into deep mud here in exposing Maggie as a sexual predator – much worse than Pizza gate from the twisted mind of Steve Bannon.

I'm tired and you just have to take the rest as if I covered it.

The Scum Also Rises

THE ABSURD TIMES

THE SCUM ALSO RISES

CZAR DONIC

Next? We have to cover international stuff and also have a few snippets from Daffy Don here and there.

Turkey: Erdogan made some remark about rising eggplant prices causing his political defeats and therefore he will buy his weapons from Russia.

Have you heard that windmills cause cancer? Trump says so. Also, the United States is like a cheap motel: NO VACANCIES if you try to cross the border with a coyote? Don Quixote!

Where are you when we need you. Attack those windmills before we all get cancer and the giants come. Wehat giants? Where did that come from?" Who cares, it's there now.

I'm tired and you just have to take the rest as if I covered it.

Tuesday, April 2, 2019

Insane campaign

THE ABSURD TIMES

Insanity

Czar Donic

I think I've hit the limit of acceptance. Let's go back to Trump.

During his campaign, he boasts of grabbing women by the Pussy. He also gets a porn star to spank him with a magazine and then screw him and she thinks he has a "mushroom" shaped dick. His fixer pays her $130,000 to keep quiet. Another affair with a Playboy model of the year and another payoff, this time to the National Enquirer and it's recorded. During his Moscow visit he walks into the Miss Universe girls dressing room and then brags about it on the Howard Stern show. This we all know. An Evangelical base and a Hell's Angels backbone elect him. Now we suspect stuff, but Barr won't release it? Right. That's ok, because, I guess, Jesus wants it that way.

Next, we hear about Biden. Well, the main one I just saw. It was from 2014 and he was in Vegas to indorse her. She waited for him as he approached timidly, I thought, after introducing him, grabbed his shoulders, and went to kiss him, seeming to kiss him on the neck, but her head obscured the whole thing. There was talk about Obama's Secretary of Defense and his swearing in where biden put his hands on her shoulders and whispered in his ear. It was offered as more proof of his predator like action, but she spoke out and said he was being very helpful and knew we were having a bad day. That got me though it. Others have mentioned that he "Invaded" their space. Well, it is a far cry from having a mushroom shaped dick and walking into a locker room of nearly naked teenagers and the like at the Miss Universe contest in Moscow. Really, I've had enough of this.

It reminds me of the accusations against Al Franken and the push by the blonde ex-conservative 'now liberal Senator from New York hounding him (Gilibrand). I think he pretty much said something like "screw this. I asked for an investigation and now this? I quit. I don't need this gig." Goodbye, I'm Al Franken.

I'm wondering who would "invade the personal space" of someone like Cortez. I think it's time to be a bit less meek or less enjoying to play the victim. I realize that this will make me less popular (I'm about as less popular as it gets anyway), but I don't care. And about the only woman candidate I like is Elizabeth Warren. There.

Actually, there are only two candidates right now that I think much of, Sanders and O'Rourke. Sanders had the current professor who occup[ies the Edward Said Chair as his Mideast Advisor, and I saw O''Rourke give the only sane response to a question for a Palestinian woman after the appropriation of the Golan Heights by Israel.

* * *

Here is the latest slaughter carried out IN YOUR NAME, by Israel:

Israeli forces killed four Palestinians, including three teenagers, at a mass demonstration Saturday on the first anniversary of the Great March of Return in Gaza. Israeli soldiers used live ammunition, tear gas and rubber bullets on the protesters. As tens of thousands of Palestinians came out to demand an end to the ongoing siege of Gaza and the right to return to their ancestral land, we speak with Ahmed Abu Artema, the Palestinian poet, journalist and peace activist who inspired the Great March of Return and helped organize it as a cry for help. Artema was frustrated by Israel's more than decade-long land, sea and air blockade of the Gaza Strip, upon which it has waged three wars in the past 10 years.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. At a mass demonstration Saturday on the first anniversary of the Great March of Return in Gaza, Israeli forces killed four Palestinians, including three teenagers. Israeli soldiers used live ammunition, tear gas and rubber bullets on the protesters. Tens of thousands of Palestinians came out to demand an end to the ongoing siege of Gaza and the right to return.

Well, for more, we go to Ahmed Abu Artema, the Palestinian poet, journalist, peace activist who inspired the Great March of Return and helped organize it as a cry for help. The former student of nonviolent resistance wanted the movement to follow the examples of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi. Artema was frustrated by Israelis' more than decade-long land, sea and air blockade of the Gaza Strip, upon which it has waged three wars in the past 10 years. I interviewed Artema recently when he came to New York City, after he traveled around the United States talking about the situation in Gaza. I asked him about the Palestinian nonviolent movement and the massive weekly protest marches.

AHMED ABU ARTEMA: When I and some of my friends invited to the March of Return, a lot of people answered this call, because it was a scream for life. It expressed the will of life in our hearts, Palestinians'. The Palestinians in Gaza are actually in a real prison. They live in a real prison. And they are without any of the basic conditions of the human life. And before that, 75% of the Palestinians inside Gaza, they are refugees. That means their origin villages and towns are beyond the fence, the Israeli fence. So, when tens of thousands of Palestinians share in the March of Return, they want to say that we never gave up our right to return. This is our normal right, and this right based on the United Nations Resolution 194.

And from other side, they wanted to say that we want life and nothing but life. We are actually here inside Gaza prison. We are dying. We are dying because of no medicine, no food, no work, no jobs, no factories. Hundreds of factories were destroyed in the last 10 years by Israeli attacks. So, these people search of hope. They want hope. They want dignified life. The March of Return is a scream of life. It's a knock on the door. When there is a person inside a prison without food, without medicine, then he hasn't any choice but to knock the door, to try to escape towards the life. This is exactly what the Palestinians made in Gaza. They said to Israel, our will of life is stronger than despair. So we continue. We want to struggle. And we struggle for life. We struggle for humanity. We struggle for justice.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain what the siege is.

AHMED ABU ARTEMA: Yeah. Gaza Strip is a very narrow place. There are 2.2 million Palestinians live inside Gaza. Seventy-five percent of them are refugees. This fence separated us from our villages and towns, where Israel expelled us out from there in 1948. So, the Palestinians believe in their right to return to their homes. They never gave up this right since 70 years. Until now, the Palestinian refugees kept their keys, the keys of their homes in their origin cities and towns. And they are waiting for that day that the justice will be achieved and they can return to their homes.

When I went there, near the Israeli separation fence, with my friend Hasan, then my friend Hasan pointed to the fence and said to me, "Ahmed, look, this is the fence, separated us from returning to our homes." And that night I posted on my Facebook that the birds can—I saw the birds can cross freely and can move freely between the two sides of the fence. What if we, as humans, decide to move freely? The why is Israeli soldier will shoot us as if we commit a crime? It's our normal right, our human right, to move freely. So, we should break this fence. Then, after that, I wrote another post that I suggest 200,000 of Palestinians share in unarmed protest to demand their normal right to return to their homes and to live with dignity like the other peoples. This fence symbolized—this Israeli fence symbolized for the occupation and the prison and for the killing our normal rights to move, to live normally.

AMY GOODMAN: Describe the situation on the ground in Gaza, how it's affected by the siege, by the blockade, which, by the way, Israel insists it's not engaged in.

AHMED ABU ARTEMA: Yeah. The life inside Gaza is very hard. According to the United Nations reports, Gaza is unlivable place in 2020, just next year. So, imagine inside Gaza the people live without electricity for 16 continuous hours. And the youth live there. The majority of the youth inside Gaza, they never traveled even one time all their lives. So, I'm lucky compared to the rest of my people, that I finally was able to leave Gaza and to travel. The majority—

AMY GOODMAN: This is your—this trip to the United States, this is your first time in the United States?

AHMED ABU ARTEMA: Yeah, it's my first time.

AMY GOODMAN: You've been trying for years?

AHMED ABU ARTEMA: Yeah. I just traveled one time, in 2012, after the Egyptian revolution, from Rafah crossing, for Egypt. But this is my first time to board a flight and come here to United States. And the majority of Palestinians inside Gaza, they never saw a plane in the sky, a plane which carry passengers. Yeah, we see a lot of planes, but it's the Israeli warplanes. That means to us as a symbol of killing and horror. We don't see the planes which symbolize to the life and to the human progress.

And the people inside Gaza without medicine, without medical services, without jobs, because the Israeli occupation forces destroyed completely hundreds of industrial factories in 2008, 2012, then 2014. The youth inside Gaza, they cannot be able to see the hope, to see the future. So, what can we expect from these people? These people, when they protest, they protest because they want to make their voices heard to the world, that we want life, that it's our normal life, to live normally.

AMY GOODMAN: And so people are protesting. They're engaging in this weekly mass protest. And you've been met by massive response of the Israeli military.

AHMED ABU ARTEMA: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about what happens in these Friday protests around the fence.

AHMED ABU ARTEMA: Yeah, yeah. Some people asked me, and some journalists asked me, "Why the Palestinians continue their protesting despite the high—the high price of victims and injured people?" I answer them, the Palestinians are continuing their protesting, because this is their only choice. They haven't other choices. They try to escape towards the life. So, the people—when the people shared in the March of Return, in this protest, they came near the fence that separated them from their villages and cities, and the people collect peacefully.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Ahmed Abu Artema, the Palestinian poet, journalist and peace activist who inspired the Great March of Return. Israeli forces have killed more than 200,000 Palestinians, and according to the UNHCR, as many as 26,000 Palestinians have been wounded in this year of the march. The U.N. says Israeli forces may have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity by targeting protesters in Gaza with lethal force during this year, including children, journalists and the disabled.

That does it for our broadcast. Democracy Now! has an immediate job opening, full-time junior systems administrator here in New York. Details at democracynow.org.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Monday, March 25, 2019

Golan Gone?

THE ABSURD TIMES

Our last commentator. When asked how he decides to vote for, he said "I always vote against, never for." This is the same situation we find ourselves in today.

Well, we've never mentioned the Mueller report, and now you know why. It is essentially meaningless and not even absurd.

Too much Trump stuff these past few weeks. We are really growing weary of this. If there is any interference in our elections by a foreign power, think about Israel.

Well, there has been an obsession over Russia now for a long time to the exception of Yemen, Palestine, Gaza, etc. Putin was upset, understandably, over Crimea. The best reaction to that I've heard is Crimea River.

This time around, Nitwit Yahoo has become so much of a problem, that in addition to giving him Jerusalem, Trump just gave him the Golan Heights. Enjoy yourself, Bebe! (Or is it Bi Bi?)

Anyway, time to look at the Golan Heights:

* * *

Just weeks before major elections in Israel that could determine the future of embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Trump declares the U.S. will recognize Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights, in defiance of international law and decades of U.S. policy. The announcement comes as he is set to host Netanyahu at the White House next week amid the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, where Vice President Mike Pence will speak, along with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, among others. A growing number of Democrats—including at least eight presidential candidates—say they will skip the summit. We get reaction from Palestinian human rights attorney Noura Erakat, author of the new book "Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine."

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Just weeks before major elections in Israel that could determine the future of the embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Trump has bowed to his pressure by declaring the U.S. will recognize Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights, in defiance of international law and decades of U.S. policy. Trump announced the move via Twitter Thursday, writing, "After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel's Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability!" exclamation point.

Netanyahu responded to the news during a joint news conference with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: President Trump has just made history. I called him. I thanked him on behalf of the people of Israel. He did it again. First he recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital and moved the U.S. Embassy here. Then he pulled out of the disastrous Iran treaty and reimposed sanctions. But now he did something of equal historic importance: He recognized Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights. And he did so at a time when Iran is trying to use Syria as a platform to attack and destroy Israel. And the message that President Trump has given the world is that America stands by Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: The Golan Heights area covers less than 500 square miles along Israel's northeastern border with Syria. Israel annexed the Golan Heights in 1981 after capturing the territory from Syria during the 1967 war, but the international community does not recognize its sovereignty. In November, the U.S. said it planned to vote against a U.N. resolution calling for Israel to end its occupation of the Golan Heights.

The Syrian state news agency responded to Trump's vow to overturn decades of U.S. policy by saying it showed the, quote, "blind bias" of the U.S. towards Israel and that his comments had shown "contempt" for international law and that they would not change the reality, quote, "that the Golan was and will remain Syrian, Arab," unquote.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat tweeted Thursday, "Yesterday president Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Today for regional stability he wants to make sure that the occupied Syrian Golan Heights be under Israel's sovereignty. What shall tomorrow bring? Certain destabilisation and bloodshed in our region," he tweeted.

Trump's announcement comes as he's set to host Netanyahu at the White House next week [amid] the annual conference of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, where Vice President Mike Pence will speak, along with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and others. This comes as a growing number of Democrats, including at least eight presidential candidates, have said they will be skipping the summit, including Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Beto O'Rourke and Pete Buttigieg.

For more, we go to D.C., where we're joined by Noura Erakat, Palestinian human rights attorney, legal scholar. She's an assistant professor at George Mason University. Her new book, Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine.

Professor Erakat, welcome back to Democracy Now! Can you respond to Trump's tweet?

NOURA ERAKAT: I think when Netanyahu says that Trump did it again, he's absolutely right. Trump has been moving in lockstep in an imperial policy, U.S. imperial policy, in the Middle East which seeks to establish its hegemony, undermine democratic governance and certainly continue the systematic violations of human rights.

Israel is not interested in the Golan Heights for security. If it were interested in that, then it wouldn't be settling its civilians there. It has 34 settlements, 20,000 settlers. To put civilians into a place that's known as a military zone is, one, either to belie that there's actually a military threat or, two, to be using Israeli citizens as human shields. In both instances, it's incredibly problematic and discounts the fact that there is no military threat to Israel from that border. Syria last launched a military attack on Israel in October 1973. Egypt and Jordan have established permanent peace with Israel. Iraq and Libya, which might pose a threat rhetorically, have been completely gutted and destabilized. There has been no threat. Even Hezbollah from the south of Lebanon, where Israel withdrew its forces in 2000, have not launched war against Israel. In fact, it was Israel that launched war against Lebanon in 2006. This framework of security is a cover and a veneer for Israel as an aggressor. It is not the David, it is the Goliath in the region. And Israel's continuing warfare is what's destabilizing the region.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who spoke at Thursday's news conference with the Israeli prime minister, Netanyahu.

VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE: Tonight President Trump made the decision to recognize that that hard-fought real estate, that important place, is proper to be a sovereign part of the state of Israel. President Trump made a bold decision to recognize that, an important decision for the people of Israel, will truly be historic. And the people of Israel should know that the battles they fought, the lives that they lost, on that very ground, were worthy.

AMY GOODMAN: Noura Erakat, can you respond to Secretary of State Pompeo?

NOURA ERAKAT: I think it's so irresponsible for a secretary of state to be describing occupied territory, recognized under international law, including U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 and 338, as "hard-fought real estate." This violates a long-held principle that decries the acquisition of territory by force. And so, I would say to Pompeo, "You're doing an incredible disservice to your job. You're an embarrassment to yourself."

This is not the message that we should be sending. The principle opposing the acquisition of territory by force isn't just relevant to the Middle East but is relevant to the world. If we are going to say this in the Middle East, then we might as well tell Russia, "You can stay as long as you want in Crimea, because you also won that territory, won that real estate, by warfare." And so, this is an embarrassment, to the United States, to Pompeo, and certainly a bad signal for the entire world.

AMY GOODMAN: And what exactly does it mean, Noura? I mean, Trump tweeted this, that he plans to do this. What would have to happen to make it real?

NOURA ERAKAT: You're absolutely right to question: What is the value of a tweet? This is about the U.S. Now, it's within the presidential authority to recognize territory as sovereign, even if it violates international law. What will be consequential is how the international community responds. The U.N. has already decried this. Turkey has decried this. Egypt has decried this. Jordan has. Ironically, Russia has, as well. And so, if we see the international community stand in opposition, then the U.S.'s declaration will be merely that, a declaration, where the U.S. is a lone figure in the rest of the world. Consider that when it moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, in similar contravention of long-held principles, 128 states at the U.N. voted against the U.S., and there been very few countries that have followed suit. So, in fact, what this demonstrates is the weakness of the United States and its waning influence.

And it says more about domestic concerns in the U.S. and in Israel than it does for the region. This is about Netanyahu deflecting attention from corruption charges three weeks ahead of elections. This is about the United States and Trump speaking to an evangelical base, rather, that doesn't care for regional stability and international law, but is more concerned with seeing Israel establishing itself as a hegemon, within an Islamophobic framework that positions Israel as the easternmost front of the U.S.'s war on terror.

AMY GOODMAN: So, this clearly is something that the embattled Prime Minister Netanyahu has been pushing Trump very hard for. The Israeli attorney general has said he's about to indict Netanyahu for corruption. The election is just weeks away in Israel. Can you talk about the significance of this, what it will mean for the Israeli elections, Noura?

NOURA ERAKAT: So, one can only speculate what it's going to mean, but what we know about Israeli society is that it has a position in regards to the Golan Heights that signifies that the Golan Heights is part of Israel. It's similar to the mythologies that are created. They have a slogan, "Ramat Hagolan zeh ani," that "the Golan Heights are me." And so, this is speaking to a base that would be more concerned with establishing Israel's expansionist policies than it is with the corruption of a particular politician.

It's a deflection tactic, similar to Pompeo's visit right now. Secretary of State Pompeo is the first U.S. official to visit the Western Wall in occupied East Jerusalem, in a similar bid to establish that if you work with Netanyahu, you will be in lockstep with an imperial power that—where might makes right in the Middle East, where there is no accountability and where Israel will be able to trample Palestinian human rights, will continue to act as an aggressor in the Middle East and continue to benefit from the U.S.'s unequivocal financial, military and diplomatic support, that frames that aggression as self-defense.

AMY GOODMAN: And what does this mean for the—if you can call it the Israel-Palestine peace process, if there even is one? But what does this mean for any kind of pursuit of peace?

NOURA ERAKAT: Well, I think if we just pay attention to what Israeli leaders have told us, they don't want peace. They don't want a two-state solution. What they're offering to Palestinians is a situation of permanent subjugation and derivative sovereignty, where they don't control Jerusalem, where they can't access their water, where they can't access free movement, where there is no human rights.

And now if we thought that Palestinians, who are a stateless people, had any chance of achieving some sort of equitable resolution with the U.S. as broker, we can see that the fact that the U.S. is willing to declare Israel's sovereignty over Syrian territory, which is not—you know, in Palestine, the West Bank and Gaza has been subject to a really silly and basically indefensible legal argument that says that there is no Palestinian sovereign, and so the territories are disputed. But there is no dispute over the Golan Heights. That is Syrian sovereign territory. If the U.S. is willing to stand by Israel to declare that sovereign territory as no longer occupied, by decree, then what chances do Palestinians have of achieving any kind of equitable resolution for themselves?

This just adds more imperative to a grassroots campaign, in the form of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, in the form of legal cases, in the form of grassroots movements that are aligning in an anti-racist global movement and a global anti-fascist movement, in order to overcome diplomatic intransigence and the fact that their governments do not represent them. This is more fuel to the fire for people's movements. And as we've seen, people do overcome.

AMY GOODMAN: Earlier this month, Senator Lindsey Graham visited the Golan Heights with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman. He said he would lobby the Trump administration to recognize the occupied Golan Heights as Israeli territory.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM: There is no construct I can imagine, now or anytime in the future, for the state of Israel to give the Golan up. … The Golan is not in dispute. The Golan is in the hands of Israel and will always remain in the hands of Israel.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: I agree.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM: So, we will be talking to President Trump, when I get back, about the necessity of recognizing the Golan as part of Israel, that it is inconceivable that Israel could ever give it to anyone, given the threats Israel faces.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Lindsey Graham was standing next to David Friedman, the U.S. ambassador to Israel. Friedman has no diplomatic experience, worked as a bankruptcy lawyer for Donald Trump for 15 years, longtime supporter of illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, who's called President Barack Obama an anti-Semite. Friedman also compared liberal American Jews to Nazi collaborators. Noura Erakat?

NOURA ERAKAT: I mean, I think what we see in the Middle East is—you know, we might be saying that the Trump administration doesn't know what it's doing and is actually appointing these ill-qualified officials to represent them, but I think that's precisely the plan. It's a plan of recklessness. It's a plan of might makes right. It's a plan of destroying what they can as they go, in order to, one, shrink government in the United States, but also establish U.S. hegemony through military force.

What we see between the U.S. and Israel, in terms of supporting Israel at all costs, is not unique just to Israel but also in alignment with the U.S.'s policies to other authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, including its relationship to—excuse me—Sisi in Egypt, including the relationship to MBS in Saudi Arabia, as well as the UAE. This is not just about the U.S.'s relationship to Israel. This is about U.S. imperial policy in the Middle East. It's about establishing itself as a hegemon. It's about destabilizing the region. It's about undermining democratic rule. It's about being able to control access to natural resources, like gas and petrol. It's about being able to proliferate U.S. military bases in the region, that will have access and control to the rest of the world. And we do that under the veneer of liberation and democracy and peacemaking. And so it's really imperative upon a critical audience to understand that endless war in the Middle East cannot possibly be for the sake of stability or democracy, but is actually in pursuit of U.S. national, imperial interests.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Noura Erakat, I wanted to ask you about the elections in Israel and a campaign ad. A member of parliament seeking re-election on April 9th is under fire over a campaign advertisement depicting him shooting and killing a Palestinian colleague. In the ad, Oren Hazan, a lawmaker with the ruling Likud party, who represents a Jewish-only West Bank settlement, is depicted as a character in the Clint Eastwood film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Hazan's face is superimposed over a character who shoots and kills Jamal Zahalka, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and member of Israel's Knesset. Zahalka has called for police to arrest Hazan over the ad. This comes after another prominent Israeli politician, ex-General Benny Gantz, released a campaign video showing a counter marking a rising death toll of Palestinians superimposed over a video of a funeral. A second campaign ad promised that, if elected, Gantz would bomb Gaza back to the Stone Age. Your response?

NOURA ERAKAT: Yeah, welcome to Israel. Welcome to Palestinian lives, of being literally dehumanized, killed, ridiculed, accused and blamed for their own deaths, for the sake of domestic politics, for the sake of international politics, while the rest of the world watches. When Israel massacred 58 Palestinians on May 15th last year, when the embassy was moved and when Palestinians continued their Gaza Great March of Return, you know what U.S. headlines ran? They said, "How dare Hamas ruin and spoil Israeli celebrations!" The level of dehumanization that is at play is astounding, absolutely astounding.

And it's what should make us support more forcefully brave lawmakers, like Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, like Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, who are actually using—who have ridden into Congress on the power of the people who have brought them into Congress, on campaigns that support human rights and a complete anti-racist platform, who are actually calling out the U.S.'s policy for what it is.

Now, it should not be surprising that the U.S., which is a settler colony and also maintains a racial caste system, would also frame what Israel is doing as somehow forgivable. But there's something to be said about media that fails to let Israel speak for themself and take them at face value. Here are campaign ads where they are promoting the murder and the killing and the death of Palestinians, even elected lawmakers, in order to get more votes. Can you imagine how precarious Palestinian life is? And when Zahalka called out Hazan for the ad, Hazan turned around and called him the—literally said, "This is not anti-Arab racism, you terrorist." I mean, we're talking about a doublespeak. And if you didn't see it, you wouldn't believe it.

And so, the only thing that I would encourage is for more people to pay attention, for more people to see it, for more people to take Israelis seriously when they use this racist discourse, and to understand that the people who pay the highest price are Palestinians.

AMY GOODMAN: Noura Erakat, I want to thank you for being with us, Palestinian human rights attorney, legal scholar, assistant professor at George Mason University. Her new book, Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine.

This is Democracy Now! Coming up, it has been called the worst weather event in the Southern Hemisphere. We're going to talk about what's happening right now in Mozambique, in Zimbabwe, in Malawi and other places. Then to Nebraska and, finally, the Lakota historian Nick Estes on Our History Is the Future. Stay with us.