Taking on the lobby

By George McLeod

Professor Norman Finkelstein says his dismissal from a major US university was presaged by his willingness to speak the truth about the influence of pro-Israel groups on policies coming out of Washington

‘Ihave no regrets,” says Norman Finkelstein, after losing one of the most divisive and publicised campus battles in US history.

Despite student demonstrations and sit-ins, protests from some of the world’s most prominent academics and an outcry from free speech groups, Finkelstein was dismissed from DePaul University, the US’ largest Catholic university. The firing generated headlines around the world with many claiming it was an effort to gag his criticisms of the Israel lobby and Israel’s human rights record in Palestine.

One of the most well-known and outspoken commentators on Israeli policy, Finkelstein is the author of five noted books on the Israel-Palestine issue and is a popular speaker on the subject.

Finkelstein accuses the lobby of using the Holocaust to stifle debate on Israel and to embezzle funds earmarked for Holocaust victims. Much of Finkelstein’s research on Israel relies on mainstream human rights organisations, which he says universally condemn Israel for torture, illegal imprisonment and intentionally killing civilians.

Many suspect that his dismissal is part of a national house-cleaning against critics of Israel and the pro-Israel lobby. The alleged campaign has seen numerous academics fired or demoted, and high-profile speeches at US universities cancelled following pressure from pro-Israel groups.

Even mainstream activists like Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who was key in bringing down South Africa’s apartheid regime, have incurred the wrath of the lobby for criticising Israel.

According to Finkelstein, the furor over the Israel issue has everything to do with the lobby.

“There is nothing unusual about the Israel/Palestine issue, apart from the fact that there is a lobby here that prevents any kind of rational debate,” he said in a phone interview.

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Israel still a hotbed of human trafficking

By Raffi Berg

Marina rarely leaves her two-room home in northern Israel these days.

She is in hiding - wanted by the Israeli authorities for being an illegal immigrant, and by the criminal gangs who brought her here to sell her into prostitution.

Marina - not her real name - was lured to Israel by human traffickers.

During the height of the phenomenon, from the beginning of the 1990s to the early years of 2000, an estimated 3,000 women a year were brought to Israel on the false promise of jobs and a better way of life.

“When I was in the Ukraine, I had a difficult life,” said Marina, who came to Israel in 1999 at the age of 33 after answering a newspaper advertisement offering the opportunity to study abroad.

“I was taken to an apartment in Ashkelon, and other women there told me I was now in prostitution. I became hysterical, but a guy starting hitting me and then others there raped me.

“I was then taken to a place where they sold me - just sold me!” she said, recalling how she was locked in a windowless basement for a month, drank water from a toilet and was deprived of food.

That part of her ordeal only ended when she managed to escape, but the physical and mental scars remain.

Last year, the United Nations named Israel as one of the main destinations in the world for trafficked women; it has also consistently appeared as an offender in the annual US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons (Tip) report.

While this year’s report said Israel was making “significant efforts” to eliminate trafficking, it said it still does not “fully comply with the minimum standards” to do so.

Like Marina, some trafficked women are brought into the country legally, while others are smuggled by Bedouins across the border from Egypt.

In all cases, the traffickers - as many as 20 in the chain from recruitment to sale - take away the women’s passports before selling them on to pimps.

Sometimes the women are subjected to degrading human auctions, where they are stripped, examined and sold for $8,000-$10,000. (…Full Article)

 
Dr. William Pierce Discusses Israel’s White Slave Trade, mp3
        (Caution strong lanuage used)