Anna Baltzer, is a Jewish-American, granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, Columbia University graduate, Fulbright scholar and volunteer with the International Women’s Peace Service (her photo is shown with a Palestinian child). As part of her peace activism against Israel’s 40 year military-occupation, she spends considerable time in the West Bank of Palestine. But she also tours the United States, speaking about her experiences, documenting human rights abuses in the West Bank, and supporting Palestinian and Israeli nonviolent resistance. Since 2005, Anna has toured the US and Europe giving presentations in places from Harvard and MIT to small church groups, anyone interested in learning the truth about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Her presentations cover her experiences with checkpoints, settlements, demonstrations, Israeli activism, environmental issues, the Separation Wall, and more. She also provides photographic documentation and critical information often misrepresented or ignored in the US media on her website, AnnaInTheMiddleEast. Anna all too well understands that the fight for justice is a propaganda war between right wing Zionist lies and fabrication and the truth. Anna’s presentations encourage dialogue towards taking informed action.
Anna’s book, Witness in Palestine, describes her personal experiences on the West Bank in her work to help Palestinians oppressed by Israel’s military occupation and to reveal the reality on the ground like only direct contact can teach.
About a week ago, Anna began sharing her writings at Daily Kos, a purportedly progressive and liberal Democrat blog, which has become hugely popular with left leaning Democrats on the presumption that its politics are different from the AIPAC/DLC moderate Democrats, who have pretty much sold American foreign policy down the river to AIPAC and the Israeli government. Hillary Clinton, for example, the most APIAC/DLC presidential candidate is the most disliked and least supported candidate among Daily Kos members. Hillary, for example, had no second thoughts about greeting and meeting last year with Israel’s most vile racist, Avigdor Lieberman, when he came to the United States to speak at the Saban Center in Washington, DC.
Yesterday, Anna Baltzer, after presenting a few of her articles, was BANNED FROM Daily Kos.
Although earlier in the day, two Palestinian peace activists were also banned, and a few days and weeks before that, two American peace activists were likewise banned, WITHOUT JUSTIFIABLE REASON, and a few months before that, three IP diarists (FairLeft, Curmudgiana, and Shergald (twice)) were also banned. Anna, it was claimed, was banned because she interviewed a “Palestinian terrorist,” who was on Israel’s hit list.
This is the portion of Anna’s diary was claimed to be contrary to Daily Kos rules, even though no such rule can be found in the Daily Kos FAQs. It is unclear at this point why a rule had to be found to ban this well known peace activist, since the previous bannings were based on the “no reason needed” philosophy Daily Kos recently instituted.
This is the portion of Anna’s diary that Daily Kos claimed was contrary to their rules.
I met some of the hunted the day before I left Nablus, including a leader of Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade, whom I’ll call Moussa. An acquaintance led a colleague and me to where a group of them were sitting and drinking juice in the Old City. They welcomed us and brought us sweet coffee. Moussa was a soft-spoken man not much older than forty, while most of the other wanted men were mere teenagers, curious and excited to meet foreigners. Moussa raised his voice just once during our conversation, to yell at one of the boys for trying to take my picture on his cell phone. He said it could be extremely dangerous for soldiers to find evidence of our meeting if/when the men were caught or killed, and refused my business card for the same reason.
After some time, I asked Moussa if he had a message to the people of America. He thanked me for the opportunity and began to speak:
(The original text was deleted)
Edited. Information being conveyed to Americans from designated recognized terrorist groups is not allowed on the site. Thus, it has been deleted and the user is banned.
We strongly disallow messages to be conveyed to the site from such groups. The writer has been banned and any user who does it in the future will be banned.
mcjoan
Anna’s diary was entitled,
Nablus Invasion Diary III: Resistance, Hypocrisy, and Dead Men Walking
This is the deleted text:
After some time, I asked Moussa if he had a message to the people of America. He thanked me for the opportunity and began to speak:
I am from the Palestinian armed resistance to the Occupation. I am opposed to violence against any civilians, whether they are Palestinian or Israeli, Muslim or Jewish. I hate fighting, but when soldiers invade our homes, our land, and our lives, it is our duty to resist them, to resist the theft of our water, our self determination, and our dignity. We are human just like you. We want to live, to have families, a normal life. But if we must fight to our death to protect what is ours, our land, the future of our children, we are ready to do so.
I invite you to look at maps and statistics of this conflict over time. I lament the killing of innocent people on both sides, but the tremendous disproportion of land and water rights, civil liberties, and civilian casualties on the two sides is undeniable. The international community calls us terrorists, but we would welcome any objective international presence to bear witness to what is happening here and come to their own conclusions. Is beating unarmed children, medical workers, and even internationals not terror? Is taking advantage of lulls in violence — when the press isn’t watching — to accelerate expansion of settlements in land and water rich areas not a crime?
Palestinians have coexisted harmoniously with Jews in the past, and we are ready to do so again. After all, Jews are our brothers and sisters, people of faith just like us. As our party Fatah has said many times before, we are ready to live in peace with Israel if there can be a just and viable resolution to the issues of borders, distribution of water, settlements, Jerusalem, and the refugees. These are our conditions, and they are also our rights.
(the article ended with these words)
Moussa is a dead man walking, but he will continue to resist as long as he can, as will all the people of Nablus in their own ways. I relay Moussa’s message not to defend violence, but because I believe his perspective has a right be heard. Different sides of any conflict deserve to have a voice, but the mainstream media is unlikely to pick up Moussa’s speech, just as they haven’t picked up anything but the most sensationalistic aspects of the invasion. They haven’t mentioned the way beautiful old houses were destroyed by soldiers looking for nonexistent tunnels. They haven’t mentioned the walls of the Old City broken down by Israeli hummers too wide to fit down the narrow streets, and the water pipes along the walls that were busted and sprayed throughout the curfew, costing the city tons of its precious clean water supply. They haven’t mentioned the 400-year-old Turkish baths that soldiers used as a military base between operations, and then destroyed from top to bottom. Several families were dependent on the cultural jewel, which we found in ruins, playing cards all over the floor left by soldiers next to the benches where they would have slept.
The media haven’t mentioned the house burned from the inside, or the families of wanted men who were beaten and detained, or the 15-year-old boy shot in the wrist with a rubber bullet while he was out buying bread for his family. They haven’t mentioned the way the jeeps returned every night, even after Israel announced that the operation was over. I would like to tell you about each of them in detail, but to be honest, with every passing hour there are new tragedies to report and attend to. I also know that this report is already longer than most busy Americans will have time in their daily lives to read. If you did make it this far, thank you, and until the world stops silencing Palestinian tragedies and voices, please help me let these stories be heard.
“Resistance to the occupation?” Does Moussa’s statement really lead us to believe that the West Bank is under military occupation and that Israel is involved? Can this be real? Well, if you don’t know that much, most people at least knew that during the second Intifada, Palestinians did engage in suicide bombings. Why would Palestinians do such a thing if they were not, as Daily Kos states, “terrorists?”
Here are some insights into this question from various sources, first from the website, If Americans Knew:
Before a single suicide bomber had entered Israel after the start of the Second Intifada, sometimes called, after Sharon’s provocative visit to the Temple Mount, the al Aqsa Intifada, during its first month, 27 Palestinian children had been killed by Israeli Defense Forces in the West Bank and Gaza, the youngest only four months of age, and the majority due to gunshots to the head. Numerous children were also wounded. In the first three months alone, 159 children lost an eye presumably to rubber bullets shot from IDF rifles. Clearly the IDF were intentionally targeting these children, aiming at their heads with either rubber bullets or real bullets in the case of the child kills. We are talking here about a trained, mechanized army versus civilians, children participating in the Intifada, the nonviolent resistance instituted by child and teenage Palestinian boys and girls.
Oh, yes. Let’s be fair. We did hear that an Israeli soldier lost his eye from a rock thrown by a Palestinian boy from a pretty IDF spokeswoman, but it was the only such incident reported in three years. long before the Palestinians engaged in it to any degree.
In addition to these children, many more innocent adult civilians were killed in the month before suicide bombings commenced. If terrorism is the intentional killing of civilians, then clearly, Israel’s armed forces were deep into terrorism, state sponsored terrorism, to be specific.
As a people fighting military occupation, it would seem that the ultimate cause of all of these horrors on both sides rests with Israel and the purpose for which it has continued its decades long occupation, namely, the stealing/confiscation/colonization of Palestinian lands.
See Alison Weir’s short documentary, Off The Charts: Media Bias and Censorship in America for the names, ages, places, and dates of these child killings. If you don’t like facts, don’t bother.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5600677940569035557&q=Alternate+Focus
To be accurate, there were sporadic bombing incidents engineered by Hamas extremists in Israel during the Oslo period. None at all occurred between 1998 and 2000. But the strong resumption of attacks after 2000, over fifty in the first year, was directly related to civilian and child killings by IDF, and it was not just Hamas, but Islamic Jihad and other Fatah associated organizations that were involved.
This Time.com article apprises of what motivated them:
“Until recently most Palestinians believed they had alternatives to the kind of militancy practiced by Hamas. For years after the 1993 Oslo peace accord, which brought limited self-rule to the Palestinians and the prospect of an independent state, polls showed a strong majority of Palestinians supporting the peace process with Israel and only a minority endorsing suicide
bombings. Thus, in their headhunting, the fundamentalists were limited to stalwart followers of their doctrine, which holds that any kind of peace with Israel is anathema. Even then, Hamas and Islamic Jihad had to cajole–some might say brainwash–young men into believing that the rewards of paradise outweighed the prospects of life on earth.
But with the breakdown of the peace process in the summer of 2000 and the start of the latest intifadeh that September, the martyr wannabes started coming to Hamas–and they didn’t require persuading. “We don’t need to make a big effort, as we used to do in the past,” Abdel Aziz Rantisi, one of Hamas’ senior leaders, told TIME last week. The TV news does that work for them. “When you see the funerals, the killing of Palestinian civilians, the feelings inside the Palestinians become very strong,” he explained.”
From the mouth of Rantisi, but it also motivated Fatah supporters, to exact revenge for the killing of Palestinian civilians. Revenge is not a formal use of terrorism. See Alison Weir’s film, Off The Charts, at Google Video.
(Why Suicide Bombing Is Now All The Rage)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101020415-227546,00.html
This commentary is from an article by Rami Khouri, editor of the Beirut newspaper, the Daily Star, which cynically denounced Olmert’s statements professing concern for the well-being of Palestinian children:
(Ehud Olmert’s Profound Ethics and Deep Lies)
For anyone interested in the facts about the impact of Israeli policies on Palestinian children, a good place to start is the carefully checked data disseminated by the Palestinian Nongovernmental Organization Network (www.palestinemonitor.org). Their data is compiled and verified on the ground by the Ramallah-based Health Development Information and Policy Institute, which has been honored by the World Health Organization for its work in promoting Palestinian health needs. So these people know what they are talking about when it comes to health conditions on the ground in Israeli-occupied Palestine. Some of the facts they provide are as follows.
In just the first two years of the second intifada, from September 2000 to November 2002:
- 383 Palestinian children (under the age of 18) were killed by the Israeli army and Israeli settlers, i.e. almost 19% of the total Palestinians killed; those figures have increased since then.
- Approximately 36% of total Palestinians injured (estimated at more than 41,000) are children; 86 of these children were under the age of ten; 21 infants under the age of 12 months have been killed.
- 245 Palestinian students and school children have been killed; 2,610 pupils have been wounded on their way to or from school.
- The Israeli policy of widespread closure has paralyzed the Palestinian health system, with children particularly vulnerable to this policy of collective punishment. Internal closures have severely disrupted health plans which affect over 500,000 children, including vaccination programs, dental examinations and early diagnosis for children when starting schools.
- During the first two months of the intifada, the rate of upper respiratory infections in children increased from 20% to 40%. Almost 60% of children in Gaza suffer parasitic infections.
- An overwhelming number of Palestinian children show symptoms of trauma such as sleep disorders, nervousness, decrease in appetite and weight, feelings of hopelessness and frustration, and abnormal thoughts of death.
* There have been 36 cases of Palestinian women in labor delayed at checkpoints and refused permission to reach medical facilities or for ambulances to reach them. At least 14 of these women gave birth at the checkpoint with eight of the births resulting in the death of the newborn infants.
The Israeli army killing of Palestinian children continues apace. In its annual report May 16, the respected global human rights organization Amnesty International accused the Israeli army of killing 190 Palestinians, including 50 children, last year (2005).”
To get up to date, since the beginning of the second Intifada, over 800 Palestinian children have now been killed by Israeli defense forces.
Here is some commentary from Jonathan Cook on a grandmother suicide bomber, which gives some additional insight into why Palestinians volunteer to become suicide bombers. Can an old grandmother be a terrorist?
If one thing offers a terrifying glimpse of where the experiment in human despair that is Gaza under Israeli siege is leading, it is the news that a Palestinian woman in her sixties — a grandmother — chose last week to strap on a suicide belt and explode herself next to a group of Israeli soldiers invading her refugee camp.
Despite the “Man bites dog” news value of the story, most of the Israeli media played down the incident. Not surprisingly — it is difficult to portray Fatma al-Najar as a crazed fanatic bent only the destruction of Israel.
It is equally difficult not to pause and wonder at the reasons for her suicide mission; according to her family, one of her grandsons was killed by the Israeli army, another is in a wheelchair after his leg had to be amputated, and her house had been demolished.
Or not to think of the years of trauma she and her family have suffered living in a open-air prison under brutal occupation, and now, since the “disengagement”, the agonising months of grinding poverty, slow starvation, repeated aerial bombardments, and the loss of essentials like water and electricity.
Or not to ponder at what it must have been like for her to spend every day under a cloud of fear, to be powerless against a largely unseen and malign force, and to never know when death and mutilation might strike her or her loved ones.
Or not to imagine that she had been longing for the moment when the soldiers who have been destroying her family’s lives might show themselves briefly, coming close enough that she could see and touch them, and wreak her revenge.
Yet Western observers, and the organizations that should represent the very best of their Enlightenment values, seem incapable of understanding what might drive a grandmother to become a suicide bomber. Their empathy fails them, and so does their humanity.
Just at the moment Fatma was choosing death and resistance over powerlessness and victimhood — and at a time when Gaza is struggling through one of the most oppressive and ugly periods of Israeli occupation in nearly four decades — Human Rights Watch published its latest statement on the conflict. It is document that shames the organization, complacent Western societies and Fatma’s memory.
(Human Rights Watch denying Palestinians the right to nonviolent resistance)
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6140.shtml
Reprinted with Jonathan Cook’s permission.
The question one must ask at this point is whether Daily Kos is just taking up the recent propaganda of the Israeli government in order to justify Anna Baltzer’s banning, or whether it is just simple duped by the propaganda? There is no reason to expect, after all, that Daily Kos administrators are not subject to, like anyone else, having their minds programmed about anything. So let me introduce them to a documentary that many people have now seen: Peace, Propaganda, & The Promised Land.
Here is a introduction to this documentary.
Through the voices of scholars, media critics, peace activists, religious figures, and Middle East experts, Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land carefully analyzes and explains how–through the use of language, framing and context–the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza remains hidden in the news media, and Israeli colonization of the occupied territories appears to be a defensive move rather than an offensive one. The documentary also explores the ways that U.S. journalists, for reasons ranging from intimidation to a lack of thorough investigation, have become complicit in carrying out Israel’s PR campaign. At its core, the documentary raises questions about the ethics and role of journalism, and the relationship between media and politics.
For those who might not have the time, let me just quote a few of its commentators on the notion that Palestinians are terrorists.
Regarding suicide bombings, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Founder & Executive Director of Tikkun Magazine, stated:
“When you have a population that is being occupied, when their fundamental human rights are systematically being denied, when they are not allowed to move from city to city and place to place, without a huge amount of harassment, when they are being subject to torture, when people are essentially in desperate conditions, it is not a surprise that they are going to be very, very angry. There is no undestand by the public media, or the American media, what creates this circumstance. Israel occupies, people strike at Israel against that occupation. They use means I think are wrong means, namely, the terror, and then Israel imposes punishment on the entire people, which creates a climate which makes it easier to recruit.”
Major Stav Adivi, IDF (Reserves) and Courage to Refuse and Board Member of Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, Israel stated:
“We have to understand that these (suicide bombings) are the effects of the occupation.”
Robert Jensen, Professor of Journalism at thje University of Texas, Austin said:
“In contrast to the international press, in the American media, there’s a reversal of cause and effect, in that the occupation is framed as a response to the suicide bombings. All of the Palestinian actions are attacks and Israel actions retaliation, is meaningful. Retaliation suggests a defensive stance against violence initiated by someone else. It places a responsibility for the violence on the party provoking the retaliation. In other words, Palestinian violence like suicide bombings is seen as cause and the origin of the conflict. Since the September 11 attack on the US, Israel’s PR strategy has been to frame all Palestinian actions, violent or not, as terrorism. To the extent that they can do that they have repackaged the illegal occupation as part of the war on terrorism.”
Many others testified to the same thing, Israeli propaganda.
Some news headlines quoted in the documentary during the second Intifada were:
“This is Israel’s war on terrorism. F16s hit a Palestinian in the Gaza Strip this morning.” “The case the Israelis are trying to make: this is no different than what the US is doing in Afganistan (air attacks in the West Bank).” “Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared on television tonight, that he was determined to root out what he called the terrorist infrastructure.” And so on.
So the notion of the Palestinian terrorist, who just happens to be fighting a long and incessant military occupation that the UN has called illegal, is a myth created by Israeli propaganda or hasbara services. These suicide bombers of the second Intifada were clearly avenging the deaths of other Palestinians killed long before any of them entered Israel. But few seem to appreciate that reality.
Anyone who is willing to repeat such a notion has clearly been duped. In the case of Anna Baltzer’s banning that would include Daily Kos administrators, who apparently have much to learn about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Alternately, they may simply be acquiescing to the right wing Zionists who now populate and apparently control the blog.