MRN
The aspiration of the Media Review Network is to dispel the myths and stereotypes about Islam and Muslims and to foster bridges of understanding among the diverse people of our country. The Media Review Network believes that Muslim perspectives on issues impacting on South Africans are a prerequisite to a better appreciation of Islam.
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March to Gaza
Norman Finkelstein – (interview on Press TV)
‘Several weeks ago, I guess about six weeks ago, I joined a US delegation to Gaza to see the aftermath of the Israeli massacre and also to get some sense of what we can do. I met with people at all levels of Gazan society; people in orphanages, in schools, hospitals and I also had several meetings with senior officials in the government in Gaza and there was a consensus from the top to the bottom of Gazan society that the main obstacle they are now facing is the siege.
The devastation was horrific enough, but beyond the devastation, the problem now is they can’t rebuild anything. The whole place is just rubble because even six months after the Gaza massacre, no cement is allowed in, no glass is allowed in and everything is exactly as it was on January 18th when the Israeli assault ended…I then proposed, when we were meeting with the parliamentary representatives that we should attempt to break the siege non-violently with a march. And the idea was enthusiastically received both by the members of the government and by the people in Gaza.
So, we began to organize, in the US initially, an international coalition to end the siege of Gaza. We now have a European branch, in Lisbon and chapters in several countries in Europe. And the main challenge now is twofold: number one to enlist prominent moral authorities internationally in support of the march – and that is one of the reasons I am here, because South Africa has a high concentration of internationally prominent moral authorities; everybody ranging from Nelson Mandela to Bishop Tutu to Ela Ghandi and others.
The second thing is, we have to bring over bodies. The more people we bring over, the more likelihood that when we march, Israel won’t be able to shoot and we’ll be able to lift the siege. So we are hoping for several thousand people, including from the Arab world and from South Africa.’
Gaza freedom march
Why Isaraeli jew Dri Davis joined fatah to save Palestine
The first Jewish member of the Revolutionary Council of Fatah talks about a unique political journey
By Peter Beaumont
(source: Guardian.UK – The Observer)
Uri Davis is used to denunciations. A "traitor", "scum", "mentally unstable": those are just some of the condemnations that have been posted in the Israeli blogosphere in recent days. As the first person of Jewish origin to be elected to the Revolutionary Council of the Palestinian Fatah movement, an organisation once dominated by Yasser Arafat, Davis has tapped a deep reserve of Israeli resentment. Some have even called for him to be deported.
He has been here before, not least as the man who first proposed the critique of Israel as an "apartheid state" in the late 1980s. Davis’s involvement in the first UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban in 2001 was condemned by the Anti-Defamation League. During a career of protest he has been described – inevitably – as a "self-hating Jew". He calls himself an "anti-Zionist". And his personal history is a fascinating testimony to the troubled history of the postwar Israeli left and forgotten trajectories in the story of Israel itself.
The man elected to the Revolutionary Council in 31st place from a field of 600 has been as much shaped by the tidal forces of recent Jewish history – not least his own family’s sufferings in the Holocaust – as any fellow citizen of Israel. But he disputes a largely manufactured account of that experience that he believes has been used deliberately "to camouflage" its "apartheid programme". Now he enjoys an extraordinary mandate to explain his own views. And he hopes, too, that just as the small number of white members of the ANC widened its legitimacy during the apartheid era in South Africa, other Jews can be attracted to participate in Fatah, transforming it into a broader-based movement that stands for equal rights for both Arabs and Jews in a federated state.
So what does Davis believe, and why? His father was a British Jew who met his mother, a Czech, in British Mandatory Palestine in the mid-1930s, where they married in 1939, four years before his birth. While his mother escaped the transports to the gas chambers at Auschwitz, many in her family did not. It is a familiar story in Israel. But the lesson that Davis learnt from it was different from the vast majority of Jews who concluded that never again could Jews depend on others to guarantee their security from persecution.
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