Stanley L. Cohen reminds readers of Joe Biden's cheerleader role in Israel's war of terror on the Palestinians.  
 
 
Thou are not conquered yet, dear land,
Thy spirit still is free.
Though long the Saxon’s ruthless hand,
Has triumphed over thee.
Though oft obscured by clouds of woe,
The sun has never set,
Twill blaze again in golden glow,
Thou art not conquered yet […]

Through ages long of war and strife,
Of rapine and of woe,
We fought the bitter fight of life,
Against the Saxon foe,
Our fairst hopes to break thy chains,
Have died in vain regret,
But still the glorious truth remains,
Though art not conquered yet.

Thou art not conquered yet, dear land,
Thy sons must not forget,
The day will be when all can see,
Thou art not conquered yet

Michael O’Rahilly penned these words. Known simply as “The O’Rahilly” he was a republican and founding member of the Irish Volunteers. With some 64 other rebels, he gladly offered up his life to Irish freedom in the Easter Sunday uprising of 1916. Joe Biden would never know that.


Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Joe Biden takes pride in his Irish roots, as well he should. He finds comfortable repose in the romantic words of Irish tradition. He speaks of Irish bonds… words of warmth and love and hope. Irish is all that … but it is so much more. It is a journey of 800 years of occupation, of resistance at its finest, resistance at its purest, resistance at its deadliest. It is a chronicle Joe Biden has never lived nor learned.

Education is, for some, a privilege, for others a right, for more than a few a selective tailored read. Joe Biden is one such browser; a head-note sort of guy. Like his ignore of the necessarily militant, fierce chronicle of the Irish journey, Joe Biden prefers the packaged, heavily redacted narrative of another occupied people… Palestinians.

To Joe Biden, Palestinians are essentially little more than gate-keepers; visitors tasked by some biblical assign to safeguard the land awaiting the rightful return of relics from an Old Testament psalm long rewritten to serve the geopolitical needs of a Euro/Western colonial project. Of course, when it comes to Palestinians, like so many other political theists across the aisle, Joe Biden typically says all the right things: “except for Hamas terrorists, Palestinians are decent people… good people… honest people who must be treated with dignity and respect.” As for Israeli Jews, Biden’s cerebral tattoo is an echo of the crude international talisman that they are “entitled to live in peace and security.” How profound and deflective. And on those all too familiar occasions when the perpetual victim becomes the ever-lurking victimizer… by burning to death a Palestinian family, or running over a Palestinian toddler, or attacking farmers, damaging chicken coops and killing over 300 chickens or through “settler’ pogroms that ravage entire Palestinian communities… Joe Biden is among the first to denounce the deadly targeted assaults with the all too convenient preach “there are very fine people on both sides.”

It’s not difficult to discern Joe Biden’s myopic cheer for Israel over the course of almost half a century of his legislative applause. Anything but nuanced, or disguised, time and time again he voted aye for all pro-Israeli resolutions and nay for any that might begin to temper the systemic corrupt imbalance between the occupier and the occupied. To Biden and his generation of legislative pander, votes which might suggest, let alone facilitate, any modicum of equity or justice between Palestine and Israel were viewed as political surrender… if not suicide.

Yet, in the United States, political drive of legislative prerogative is far less indicative of one’s theological thirst than what they pursue when they wield the executive gavel of largely unfettered, unitary power. Here, eight years as vice president speaks volumes of Joe Biden’s heretofore zeal to protect Israel at all cost and to deny Palestine any safeguard of consequence whatsoever.

In the often uncomfortable world of reality, executive political power must be measured not by the echo of appealing words but, rather, the pound of deeds. Who better to measure the reach of Joe Biden when he reigned as the second most powerful man in the United States than Barack Obama. According to Obama, for eight years Biden was the last to leave the room of tough decisions and among the most active in shaping what they were to be and just where they were to go. And what were those decisions regarding Palestine?

With, by then, settled norm, Obama/Biden refused to accept the Israeli drive to annex land seized from the West Bank of Palestine. Likewise, the Zionist remake of al Quds into the recognized capital of a European implant went no further than their long standing holiday wish list… as did the transplant of the US Embassy to there from Tel Aviv. There was nothing remarkable about this political “intransigence,” nor did it slow the rapacious Zionist appetite to steal more and more occupied land in rank violation of settled international law. Indeed, in the half century since the on-set of Israel’s second wave of land snatch begun in 1967, American presidents have followed a fairly rote policy of “freeze” and wait while Israel, imbued with blanket U.S. legislative cover and a limitless checkbook, found little reason to pause in increasing its “settler’’ population in the occupied territories from the 10,000 of 1967 to more than 600,000 by 2016.

What, then, deciphers the political rhetoric of Obama/Biden to display the true nature of their largely unbounded support of a European colonial project committed to the eradication of an age-old indigenous population… whether by siege, violence, or categorical expulsion? During the eight years of Obama/Biden, that translate was not at all hard to find. There was, after-all, nothing subtle about Israel’s drive to punish Palestinians, for little more than their mere existence, during the time that Joe Biden readied himself to move from front row seat to oval office desk. Just several weeks before taking power in 2008, the future President got a primer on Israeli brutality through the lens of “Operation Cast Lead.”

With an opening salvo of war crimes on December 27, 2008, the first day of the operation, Israel bombed the main police headquarters in Gaza City, killing 42 police cadets standing in formation without weapons. Later that day, it bombed some 18 other police stations throughout the Gaza Strip. In total, 248 police officers were killed that day having not fired a single round at Israeli forces. Over the twenty one days of the Israeli onslaught that followed, it deliberately targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure and made widespread use of prohibited weapons, such a white phosphorous, in highly populated areas in clear violation of international law. During the attack Israeli fire targeted 23 U.N. buildings and/or compounds killing numerous civilians who had taken shelter there. In the most deadly case, 43 Palestinian civilians were killed by an Israeli shelling in one such compound.

Palestinian schools were also targeted. On January 5, an aerial strike killed three men who had sought shelter at the Asma Elementary Co-Ed A School. On January 17, a military ordinance struck the Beit Lahia Elementary School while it was being used as an emergency shelter… killing two young boys and injuring 13 others. Human Rights Watch documented at least seven instances where Israeli soldiers shot and killed civilians… including five women and four children who were in groups waving white flags to convey their civilian status. In one such incident, Israeli soldiers shot and killed several members of the al-Najar family in Khuza’a village, east of Khan Yunis. Following orders from soldiers to leave their neighborhood, and while waving white flags, Rawiya al-Najjar and her family were gunned down.

When the carnage ended, some 1440 Palestinians were killed and more than 5,000 injured… most of them civilians. According to the Israeli Human Right s group B’Tselem, 252 minors under age 16 (boys and girls) who did not take part in any fighting were killed along with 111 women and girls over 16. Nine Israeli soldiers were killed and 340 wounded.

Five years later, in the summer of 2014, Joe Biden got another stark, deadly reminder of just what it is to be a Palestinian in the cross hairs of a colonial fiend hell bent on relegating them en masse to the history of the disappeared. During Israel’s unhinged six week rampage on Gaza it dropped 40,000 tons of explosives on more than 5200 “targets”. At its end, some 2200 were slaughtered, including 550 children, and some 10,000 injured. Almost all the victims were civilians. More than 1900 children were orphaned, hundreds of thousands of civilians internally displaced with 20,000 homes, 26 NGO service providers, a half-dozen UNRWA facilities, 23 hospitals and health-care facilities, 133 schools, 360 factories, 50,000 acres of crop lands and half of Gaza’s poultry stock targeted and destroyed or damaged by Israel.

In the years since “Operation Protective Edge”, as so much a brazen dare to the rest of the world, Israel’s assault upon Palestinians has been as public as it has been relentless and diverse. In its 21 month-long attacks on tens of thousands of Palestinians during the Great March of Return, it met peaceful demonstrators in Gaza with tear gas canisters, some of them dropped from drones, or rubber bullets and live ammunition, mostly fired by positioned, hilltop snipers. The Israeli carnage resulted in the murder of 217 civilian protestors, including 48 children, 2 women and 9 persons with disabilities. Another 36,100 demonstrators were injured… including 8800 children. Of the 7,000 injured by live fire, 207 became permanently disabled with 156 requiring amputations. Among those killed and wounded were dozens of prominently identified journalists and medical staff.

Throughout Gaza, soon entering its fifteenth year of a choking siege, life remains a daily suffer for those living in one of the most densely populated areas of the world …all the while denied the minimal, essential guideposts of a healthy society. With large swaths of its infrastructure still in ruins and Israeli air attacks very much the norm, its two million residents live lives of isolated deprivation and despair subject to Israeli and Egyptian embargos of food stuffs, clean water, electricity and crucial medical supplies. For many in need of sophisticated medical treatment or equipment, the wait to exit the shuttered civilian prison becomes too little too late as they pass awaiting their turn. Others, including children, take their final breath alone in Israeli hospitals with families but 50 miles away denied passage with their loved ones not knowing if they will again see them alive.

In the West Bank armed “settlers” rampage daily attacking the young, the elderly, the frail, or those who dare to go for a walk or a drive. Not a day goes by without a report of another farm or grove attacked with century old olive trees destroyed for no reason but to tatter local economies and to devastate often elderly tree tenders, tasked with the protection of an age old tradition. According to the United Nations, 11,000 olive trees have been damaged or destroyed in a calculated settler strategy for dispossessing Palestinians of their land.

On November 3, 2020, the Israeli Civil Administration arrived suddenly at the Khirbet Humsah community, in the Northern Jordan Valley, with a military escort and two bulldozers and diggers. With but a few moments notice, they destroyed dozens of tents, sheds and livestock pens, water containers, solar panels, feeding troughs and tractors, and 30 tons of livestock fodder. By the time they moved on to the next village, they had smashed a community that was home to 74 people including 41 minors and numerous sheep and newborn lambs. Its destruction was ordered as one of 38 such villages that sit on land the Israeli military wants for training… training to destroy countless other villages, homes, lives with greater speed and proficiency.

Several day before Israel destroyed a water supply line in Masafer Yatta, South Hebron Hills, which provided water supply to the communities of Maghayir al-‘Abid and Khirbet al-Majaz. In late September of this year, Israeli bulldozers descended upon the community of She’b al-Batem, in the Masafer area of the South Hebron Hills. Before they left, they destroyed the home of two families… leaving 14 people homeless, including 10 children… one of them with a physical disability. Later that day, they proceeded to the community of Khirbet a-Rakeez where they demolished the homes of four families, leaving 17 people, including 10 minors and a woman with special needs, without any shelter. The week before, Israeli Civil Administration arrived at the community of Khalet Taha, in the Hebron District, accompanied by a military escort and Border Police. When they left, the homes of three families had been destroyed along with a large water reservoir, a well under construction, a power grid that stretched over 600 meters and razed land intended for building another water reservoir and a cattle pen.

These demolitions are by no means an anomaly. They occur daily throughout Palestinian Bedouin districts leaving countless families homeless, modern infrastructure destroyed, international development and improvement grants wasted and a tradition of the millennium struggling to see but another tomorrow. Yet they are not limited to distant desert outposts.

Very much the quiet, public face of an unbroken tear of ethnic cleansing, civil Israeli society aspires to undertake, in relative silence, what its military has long accomplished by unleashed bomb and bullet. Indeed, in its rush to erase generations of cultural and religious diversity, over the last few years Israeli demolitions in the greater East Jerusalem area have caused the destruction of several hundred residential and commercial structures… leaving hundreds of Palestinians homeless and dozens of businesses in ruins. This drive to turn Jerusalem into one huge Euro/American synagogue is but a continuum of the last fifteen years during which more than one thousand- five hundred residential and commercial units have been demolished by Israel… leaving more than three-thousand Palestinians homeless… including some one thousand- five hundred minors. But, then again, with history, at times, a precursor of what is yet to come and almost 10,000 Palestinian children detained… largely uncharged, unprosecuted and unrepresented over the last two decades… Zionists might argue, with straight face and determined purge, in Palestine there’s really no need for permanent housing.

Joe Biden has spent 50 years fleeing necessary friction; slapping backs trying in the name of some useless call for collegiality, to be all things to all people… that is, to those like him who find comfort in the myth of labor but, in reality, the privilege of birth. And now, Joe Biden, it is your time. What will you do? You are 77 years old, surely but a one term president who owes nothing to anyone or anything but to history. But for you that is a debt long overdue and riddled with the liberty and life of others. To get a flavor of your crossing, it would be easy to walk down the lane of history and stop at the headstones of your Criminal Justice Act of 1996, your pillage of Anita Hill, your support of an Iraqi sanction that starved the final breath from half a million children. These were your personal gold stars to own… ones that forged a political pathway which took a true believer to the apex of power… and, now, you are there.

To millions of Palestinians, their nightmare is a parallel travel in time to that of yours. Though you have felt the unfortunate sting of personal pain and suffer, imagine that of a stateless people, long abandoned, left to fend for themselves against an unbroken volley of Israeli violence and world indifference. You have played a role in that tragedy. Your votes have enabled and your silence empowered unspeakable and undeniable crimes. It is not enough to say “no” to Israeli plans to annex lands that are not theirs… and never have been. Money, once again, for UNRWA will be but crumbs on a table long smashed by an occupation now in its seventh decade. To reopen the shuttered Palestinian consulate in Washington D.C. will surely help thousands of Palestinians to navigate a world of documents yet do nothing to unfold a state that is no less legitimate, than the one you are about to lead.

Be daring, be bold, be decent, be humane. Israel must understand that until the siege on Gaza ends, the theft of Palestinian lands done, and political prisons shuttered, the US checkbook remains closed.

You speak often of your faith… one that welcomes all; a community of love, compassion and embrace. Words can become reality if only you dare.

In moving closer to the sage in action, as well toward a personal end of days, keep an eye and mind on Ecclesiastes for guidance.

“Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute,” (Psalm 82:3). “Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, and please the widow’s cause,” (Isaiah 1:17). 

Stanley L Cohen is a lawyer and human rights
activist in New York City. 
He has done extensive work in the Middle East
and Africa. 
Follow Stanley Cohen on Twitter @StanleyCohenLaw

Hey Joe ➖ A Memo To Biden On Palestine

Stanley L. Cohen reminds readers of Joe Biden's cheerleader role in Israel's war of terror on the Palestinians.  
 
 
Thou are not conquered yet, dear land,
Thy spirit still is free.
Though long the Saxon’s ruthless hand,
Has triumphed over thee.
Though oft obscured by clouds of woe,
The sun has never set,
Twill blaze again in golden glow,
Thou art not conquered yet […]

Through ages long of war and strife,
Of rapine and of woe,
We fought the bitter fight of life,
Against the Saxon foe,
Our fairst hopes to break thy chains,
Have died in vain regret,
But still the glorious truth remains,
Though art not conquered yet.

Thou art not conquered yet, dear land,
Thy sons must not forget,
The day will be when all can see,
Thou art not conquered yet

Michael O’Rahilly penned these words. Known simply as “The O’Rahilly” he was a republican and founding member of the Irish Volunteers. With some 64 other rebels, he gladly offered up his life to Irish freedom in the Easter Sunday uprising of 1916. Joe Biden would never know that.


Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Joe Biden takes pride in his Irish roots, as well he should. He finds comfortable repose in the romantic words of Irish tradition. He speaks of Irish bonds… words of warmth and love and hope. Irish is all that … but it is so much more. It is a journey of 800 years of occupation, of resistance at its finest, resistance at its purest, resistance at its deadliest. It is a chronicle Joe Biden has never lived nor learned.

Education is, for some, a privilege, for others a right, for more than a few a selective tailored read. Joe Biden is one such browser; a head-note sort of guy. Like his ignore of the necessarily militant, fierce chronicle of the Irish journey, Joe Biden prefers the packaged, heavily redacted narrative of another occupied people… Palestinians.

To Joe Biden, Palestinians are essentially little more than gate-keepers; visitors tasked by some biblical assign to safeguard the land awaiting the rightful return of relics from an Old Testament psalm long rewritten to serve the geopolitical needs of a Euro/Western colonial project. Of course, when it comes to Palestinians, like so many other political theists across the aisle, Joe Biden typically says all the right things: “except for Hamas terrorists, Palestinians are decent people… good people… honest people who must be treated with dignity and respect.” As for Israeli Jews, Biden’s cerebral tattoo is an echo of the crude international talisman that they are “entitled to live in peace and security.” How profound and deflective. And on those all too familiar occasions when the perpetual victim becomes the ever-lurking victimizer… by burning to death a Palestinian family, or running over a Palestinian toddler, or attacking farmers, damaging chicken coops and killing over 300 chickens or through “settler’ pogroms that ravage entire Palestinian communities… Joe Biden is among the first to denounce the deadly targeted assaults with the all too convenient preach “there are very fine people on both sides.”

It’s not difficult to discern Joe Biden’s myopic cheer for Israel over the course of almost half a century of his legislative applause. Anything but nuanced, or disguised, time and time again he voted aye for all pro-Israeli resolutions and nay for any that might begin to temper the systemic corrupt imbalance between the occupier and the occupied. To Biden and his generation of legislative pander, votes which might suggest, let alone facilitate, any modicum of equity or justice between Palestine and Israel were viewed as political surrender… if not suicide.

Yet, in the United States, political drive of legislative prerogative is far less indicative of one’s theological thirst than what they pursue when they wield the executive gavel of largely unfettered, unitary power. Here, eight years as vice president speaks volumes of Joe Biden’s heretofore zeal to protect Israel at all cost and to deny Palestine any safeguard of consequence whatsoever.

In the often uncomfortable world of reality, executive political power must be measured not by the echo of appealing words but, rather, the pound of deeds. Who better to measure the reach of Joe Biden when he reigned as the second most powerful man in the United States than Barack Obama. According to Obama, for eight years Biden was the last to leave the room of tough decisions and among the most active in shaping what they were to be and just where they were to go. And what were those decisions regarding Palestine?

With, by then, settled norm, Obama/Biden refused to accept the Israeli drive to annex land seized from the West Bank of Palestine. Likewise, the Zionist remake of al Quds into the recognized capital of a European implant went no further than their long standing holiday wish list… as did the transplant of the US Embassy to there from Tel Aviv. There was nothing remarkable about this political “intransigence,” nor did it slow the rapacious Zionist appetite to steal more and more occupied land in rank violation of settled international law. Indeed, in the half century since the on-set of Israel’s second wave of land snatch begun in 1967, American presidents have followed a fairly rote policy of “freeze” and wait while Israel, imbued with blanket U.S. legislative cover and a limitless checkbook, found little reason to pause in increasing its “settler’’ population in the occupied territories from the 10,000 of 1967 to more than 600,000 by 2016.

What, then, deciphers the political rhetoric of Obama/Biden to display the true nature of their largely unbounded support of a European colonial project committed to the eradication of an age-old indigenous population… whether by siege, violence, or categorical expulsion? During the eight years of Obama/Biden, that translate was not at all hard to find. There was, after-all, nothing subtle about Israel’s drive to punish Palestinians, for little more than their mere existence, during the time that Joe Biden readied himself to move from front row seat to oval office desk. Just several weeks before taking power in 2008, the future President got a primer on Israeli brutality through the lens of “Operation Cast Lead.”

With an opening salvo of war crimes on December 27, 2008, the first day of the operation, Israel bombed the main police headquarters in Gaza City, killing 42 police cadets standing in formation without weapons. Later that day, it bombed some 18 other police stations throughout the Gaza Strip. In total, 248 police officers were killed that day having not fired a single round at Israeli forces. Over the twenty one days of the Israeli onslaught that followed, it deliberately targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure and made widespread use of prohibited weapons, such a white phosphorous, in highly populated areas in clear violation of international law. During the attack Israeli fire targeted 23 U.N. buildings and/or compounds killing numerous civilians who had taken shelter there. In the most deadly case, 43 Palestinian civilians were killed by an Israeli shelling in one such compound.

Palestinian schools were also targeted. On January 5, an aerial strike killed three men who had sought shelter at the Asma Elementary Co-Ed A School. On January 17, a military ordinance struck the Beit Lahia Elementary School while it was being used as an emergency shelter… killing two young boys and injuring 13 others. Human Rights Watch documented at least seven instances where Israeli soldiers shot and killed civilians… including five women and four children who were in groups waving white flags to convey their civilian status. In one such incident, Israeli soldiers shot and killed several members of the al-Najar family in Khuza’a village, east of Khan Yunis. Following orders from soldiers to leave their neighborhood, and while waving white flags, Rawiya al-Najjar and her family were gunned down.

When the carnage ended, some 1440 Palestinians were killed and more than 5,000 injured… most of them civilians. According to the Israeli Human Right s group B’Tselem, 252 minors under age 16 (boys and girls) who did not take part in any fighting were killed along with 111 women and girls over 16. Nine Israeli soldiers were killed and 340 wounded.

Five years later, in the summer of 2014, Joe Biden got another stark, deadly reminder of just what it is to be a Palestinian in the cross hairs of a colonial fiend hell bent on relegating them en masse to the history of the disappeared. During Israel’s unhinged six week rampage on Gaza it dropped 40,000 tons of explosives on more than 5200 “targets”. At its end, some 2200 were slaughtered, including 550 children, and some 10,000 injured. Almost all the victims were civilians. More than 1900 children were orphaned, hundreds of thousands of civilians internally displaced with 20,000 homes, 26 NGO service providers, a half-dozen UNRWA facilities, 23 hospitals and health-care facilities, 133 schools, 360 factories, 50,000 acres of crop lands and half of Gaza’s poultry stock targeted and destroyed or damaged by Israel.

In the years since “Operation Protective Edge”, as so much a brazen dare to the rest of the world, Israel’s assault upon Palestinians has been as public as it has been relentless and diverse. In its 21 month-long attacks on tens of thousands of Palestinians during the Great March of Return, it met peaceful demonstrators in Gaza with tear gas canisters, some of them dropped from drones, or rubber bullets and live ammunition, mostly fired by positioned, hilltop snipers. The Israeli carnage resulted in the murder of 217 civilian protestors, including 48 children, 2 women and 9 persons with disabilities. Another 36,100 demonstrators were injured… including 8800 children. Of the 7,000 injured by live fire, 207 became permanently disabled with 156 requiring amputations. Among those killed and wounded were dozens of prominently identified journalists and medical staff.

Throughout Gaza, soon entering its fifteenth year of a choking siege, life remains a daily suffer for those living in one of the most densely populated areas of the world …all the while denied the minimal, essential guideposts of a healthy society. With large swaths of its infrastructure still in ruins and Israeli air attacks very much the norm, its two million residents live lives of isolated deprivation and despair subject to Israeli and Egyptian embargos of food stuffs, clean water, electricity and crucial medical supplies. For many in need of sophisticated medical treatment or equipment, the wait to exit the shuttered civilian prison becomes too little too late as they pass awaiting their turn. Others, including children, take their final breath alone in Israeli hospitals with families but 50 miles away denied passage with their loved ones not knowing if they will again see them alive.

In the West Bank armed “settlers” rampage daily attacking the young, the elderly, the frail, or those who dare to go for a walk or a drive. Not a day goes by without a report of another farm or grove attacked with century old olive trees destroyed for no reason but to tatter local economies and to devastate often elderly tree tenders, tasked with the protection of an age old tradition. According to the United Nations, 11,000 olive trees have been damaged or destroyed in a calculated settler strategy for dispossessing Palestinians of their land.

On November 3, 2020, the Israeli Civil Administration arrived suddenly at the Khirbet Humsah community, in the Northern Jordan Valley, with a military escort and two bulldozers and diggers. With but a few moments notice, they destroyed dozens of tents, sheds and livestock pens, water containers, solar panels, feeding troughs and tractors, and 30 tons of livestock fodder. By the time they moved on to the next village, they had smashed a community that was home to 74 people including 41 minors and numerous sheep and newborn lambs. Its destruction was ordered as one of 38 such villages that sit on land the Israeli military wants for training… training to destroy countless other villages, homes, lives with greater speed and proficiency.

Several day before Israel destroyed a water supply line in Masafer Yatta, South Hebron Hills, which provided water supply to the communities of Maghayir al-‘Abid and Khirbet al-Majaz. In late September of this year, Israeli bulldozers descended upon the community of She’b al-Batem, in the Masafer area of the South Hebron Hills. Before they left, they destroyed the home of two families… leaving 14 people homeless, including 10 children… one of them with a physical disability. Later that day, they proceeded to the community of Khirbet a-Rakeez where they demolished the homes of four families, leaving 17 people, including 10 minors and a woman with special needs, without any shelter. The week before, Israeli Civil Administration arrived at the community of Khalet Taha, in the Hebron District, accompanied by a military escort and Border Police. When they left, the homes of three families had been destroyed along with a large water reservoir, a well under construction, a power grid that stretched over 600 meters and razed land intended for building another water reservoir and a cattle pen.

These demolitions are by no means an anomaly. They occur daily throughout Palestinian Bedouin districts leaving countless families homeless, modern infrastructure destroyed, international development and improvement grants wasted and a tradition of the millennium struggling to see but another tomorrow. Yet they are not limited to distant desert outposts.

Very much the quiet, public face of an unbroken tear of ethnic cleansing, civil Israeli society aspires to undertake, in relative silence, what its military has long accomplished by unleashed bomb and bullet. Indeed, in its rush to erase generations of cultural and religious diversity, over the last few years Israeli demolitions in the greater East Jerusalem area have caused the destruction of several hundred residential and commercial structures… leaving hundreds of Palestinians homeless and dozens of businesses in ruins. This drive to turn Jerusalem into one huge Euro/American synagogue is but a continuum of the last fifteen years during which more than one thousand- five hundred residential and commercial units have been demolished by Israel… leaving more than three-thousand Palestinians homeless… including some one thousand- five hundred minors. But, then again, with history, at times, a precursor of what is yet to come and almost 10,000 Palestinian children detained… largely uncharged, unprosecuted and unrepresented over the last two decades… Zionists might argue, with straight face and determined purge, in Palestine there’s really no need for permanent housing.

Joe Biden has spent 50 years fleeing necessary friction; slapping backs trying in the name of some useless call for collegiality, to be all things to all people… that is, to those like him who find comfort in the myth of labor but, in reality, the privilege of birth. And now, Joe Biden, it is your time. What will you do? You are 77 years old, surely but a one term president who owes nothing to anyone or anything but to history. But for you that is a debt long overdue and riddled with the liberty and life of others. To get a flavor of your crossing, it would be easy to walk down the lane of history and stop at the headstones of your Criminal Justice Act of 1996, your pillage of Anita Hill, your support of an Iraqi sanction that starved the final breath from half a million children. These were your personal gold stars to own… ones that forged a political pathway which took a true believer to the apex of power… and, now, you are there.

To millions of Palestinians, their nightmare is a parallel travel in time to that of yours. Though you have felt the unfortunate sting of personal pain and suffer, imagine that of a stateless people, long abandoned, left to fend for themselves against an unbroken volley of Israeli violence and world indifference. You have played a role in that tragedy. Your votes have enabled and your silence empowered unspeakable and undeniable crimes. It is not enough to say “no” to Israeli plans to annex lands that are not theirs… and never have been. Money, once again, for UNRWA will be but crumbs on a table long smashed by an occupation now in its seventh decade. To reopen the shuttered Palestinian consulate in Washington D.C. will surely help thousands of Palestinians to navigate a world of documents yet do nothing to unfold a state that is no less legitimate, than the one you are about to lead.

Be daring, be bold, be decent, be humane. Israel must understand that until the siege on Gaza ends, the theft of Palestinian lands done, and political prisons shuttered, the US checkbook remains closed.

You speak often of your faith… one that welcomes all; a community of love, compassion and embrace. Words can become reality if only you dare.

In moving closer to the sage in action, as well toward a personal end of days, keep an eye and mind on Ecclesiastes for guidance.

“Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute,” (Psalm 82:3). “Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, and please the widow’s cause,” (Isaiah 1:17). 

Stanley L Cohen is a lawyer and human rights
activist in New York City. 
He has done extensive work in the Middle East
and Africa. 
Follow Stanley Cohen on Twitter @StanleyCohenLaw

35 comments:

  1. "t is a journey of 800 years of occupation, of resistance at its finest, resistance at its purest, resistance at its deadliest" Like at Kingmsill, Omagh, Enniskillen, La Mon ...

    It was the John Humes of this world that helped bring the conflict to an end. A chronicle that John Hume may have learned and lived and who spent his adult life dealing with the consequences of it; consequences which this sanctimonious crank who is on record as saying that he would defend President Assad could never experience or be aware of.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Barry,
    I would respectfully ask yo to withdraw your sanctimonious crank remark.
    What is your argument that 800 years of resistance is invalid because of war crimes? British intelligence through informers incapacitated their enemy and by extension ended the conflict.
    Trying to understand your thinking here. If someone defends Assad in any context does that make any further comments on any issue invalid. Is that not a strawman argument?

    ReplyDelete
  3. David

    I will not withdraw that remark because I object to someone from a distance of 3,000 miles with no connection to the island of Ireland buying into the simplistic 800 years of resistance narrative.

    I grew up on the island of Ireland and lived through the consequences of the outworking of the '800 years of resistance' story in modern technicolour. I have always been opposed to the violence of armed groups and their rationales and that of state forces. Peace or at least the end of armed conflict came due to the efforts of John Hume, Seamus Mallon and others not because of the futile armed struggles which the Stanley Cohens of this world romanticise from a safe distance; struggles which the Zionist groups of the 1940s he is so fond of demonising moddled their campaigns.

    Stanley Cohen's traducing of Joe Bidden's Irish ancestry is contemptible.

    One final point; Mr Cohen styles himself as a "human rights" lawyer. Why would someone in this field ever seek to defend such an egregrious human rights abuser and war criminal as Assad. Does that answer your question.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Barry,
    You're hours of fun. You never have a day off? No that doesn't answer my questions. You didn't even address them.
    You are opposed to certain violence you mean, you've no problem with no fly zones etc.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. David

      No fly zones saved the Kurds from genocide by Saddam Hussein in 1991.

      Delete
  5. As a young boy I learned from the Clancy brothers and then later as a lawyer from several IRA members I represented that blunderbuss is the blanket of the lost and the vapid. I'm not quite sure what Assad has to do with this piece let alone where I "defended" him so lets just wait for you to show us all and when and where I did be it by by word or voice. And when you fail crawl away exposed for the fool or liar that you are entirely irrelevant to any discussion of life or faith, exposed as little more than a pimp for the false.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. But you have defended Hamas and Al-Queda affiliated suspects, haven't you?

      https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/terror-suspects-lawyer-stanley-cohen-rants-prison-sentence-n228656

      Delete
    2. And Pat Finucane defended IRA suspects and the British decided to associate lawyers with their clients. As a result it fed into the collusion that claimed Mr Finucane's life.

      Delete
    3. Should Netanyahu's lawyers now withdraw from representing him. Yours is a logic that would ultimately lead to no legal representation.

      Delete
    4. Stanley

      You have the right to represent any client of choice and everyone has the right to legal representation.

      But you are on record as stating that you will only represent clients who you politically agree with. This includes Hamas who run a repressive regime in the Gaza Strip including use of the death penalty, torture and persecution of gays and lesbians; Hezbollah whose forces in Syria have aided the Assad regime in its ethnic cleansing of the Sunni Muslim population and, of course, the IRA who serially deprived over 1,500 people of the ultimate right - the right to life.

      How does such advocacy square with your commitment to and belief in human rights?

      Anthony

      Pat Finucane represented clients from both sides of the divide and from all armed groups. He never allowed his personal political preferences to dictate his choice of clients. He was murdered because RUC Special Branch and other state agencies made those false and nefarious associations.

      Delete
    5. Stanley

      This evidences my previous post:

      https://newrepublic.com/article/120699/stanley-cohen-lawyer-terrorists-goes-jail-tax-evasion

      https://newrepublic.com/article/120699/stanley-cohen-lawyer-terrorists-goes-jail-tax-evasion

      Delete
  6. What's all this ballix about 800 years of resistance and fighting the 'saxon foe'? Was it not the Normans who were invited by the King of Leinster?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anglo Norman’s ( who by that time called themselves English ) sent at the behest of an English king responding to a request from a deposed traitorous Leinster king .

      Delete
  7. R McC
    No they didn't, they considered themselves Norman until the 14th century and Norman French was the official language of the land until after the Hundred Years' War. They weren't English and they most certainly weren't saxon. So as I said 800 years resistance to saxon foes is pure ballix.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I disagree seeing as how they came here from England sent by an English king with even the famed chronicler of the time Giraldus Cambrensis referring to them time and again in his writings as the English .

      Delete
  8. Barry,
    That may be true about the Kurds. Not my point though. No fly zones kill civilians far in excess of la Mon etc and you've no problem supporting them in Syria and suchlike areas which makes me think that it's not violence you have a problem with but rather, violence against the global establishment.
    I see you've been called on one of your bogeymen blanket statements. Pointing out Assad, Orban etc are bad guys isn't an argument it's deflection.

    ReplyDelete
  9. David

    "No fly zons kill civilians far in excess of La Mon etc ..." That is self-serving rubbish. On what evidence do you base that claim? Or maybe you are referring to the 8,000 Bosniak men and boys massacred by Serb Chetniks in the UN safe haven of Srebinica in 1995 which Dutch "peace-keepers" criminally failed to protect. Somehow I do not think so.

    The absence of a no fly zone/safe haven led to the deaths of 800,000 Rwandan civilians in the three month genocide of 1994. And that's before we factor in the tens of thousands of Syrian dead due to the absence of no-fly zones.

    I support intervention under the ambit of the United Nations Responsibility To Protect 2005 as well as UN resolutions NOT preemptive attacks aimed at regime change as in Iraq 2003. Intervention worked well to stop Milosevic's genocide of the Kosovo Albanians in 1999; in dealing with the limb chopping rebels led bn Fodeh Sankey in Sierra Leone in 2000;in the UN process that achieved the independence of East Timor in 1999; in the defeat of ISIS by the UN coalition in support. Kurdish YPG.

    It worked less well in Libya even though the objective of the UN and Arab League backed operation to avert the massacre of the civilian population of Benghazi by the Ghaddafi regime was successful.

    Exactly what do you define as "violence against the global establishent" ISIS, the wars in Nakorna-Karabakh and Ethiopia; the genocide of the Royingha in Burma or the Assad regime

    There is a world of difference between legitimate force used for clearly defined obdectives (e.g stopping genocide and enforcing compliance with chemical weapons prohibitions) and mandated by the UN and the violence of tyrannical regimes.

    If you believe that national sovereignty grants every regime even those like the Khmer Rouge and Taliban to do what they like within their borders, then say so. Becsause most of your postings consist of linguistic and situational nit-picking and idle anti-elite sloganising.

    ReplyDelete
  10. David

    The moral equivalence that you seek to establish between the mass killings of civilians by ANY armed group such as ISIS, IRA, UDA, UVF etc and the deployment of force to save civilian populations such as the Kurds from Northern Iraq from genocide is both laughable and contemptible.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Barry - except that Milosevic was posthumously cleared of war crime/genocide allegations.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anthony

      Milosevic may have been posthumously cleared of war crimne/genocide allegations (I personally cannot recall his clearing) but Radovan Karadic and General Mladic will spend the rest of their days behind bars for their role in the Bosnian genocide; a genocide due in small measure to the nationalist posturing of Milosevic (and his counterpart Franjo Tudgman in Croatia) since the finger prints of the JNA (Yugoslav Federal Army) under the control of Milosevic were over many of the atrocities committed by the Chdetniks in Croatia and Bosnia.

      Delete
    2. Barry - the war crimes were horrific. The court found from the documents that he resolutely set his mind against those within the Serb authorities who carried them out. There were furious exchanges. I admit to being very surprised when I learned of the ruling because I had assumed he was up to his neck in them.

      Delete
  12. Barry,
    Whether no fly zones work or not is a separate argument. The kill innocents and you support them. Feel free to laugh and find contempt, particularly laugh, levity lightens the load. I don't seek any moral equivalence. It's hard to follow your logic. Everytime a no fly zone is in place it's to stop genocide? NATO don't commit war crimes, is this what you're saying?
    You jump about a bit. I can't be bothered going through it all. US led NATO, coalition of western liberal democracies, global establishment, whatever you want to call it, you seem to have a child like need to justify their violence, while condemn Putin, Assad for using similar tactics. You're go to response is to point out they are bad guys, even when nobody is arguing the reverse. My point is very, very simple if protecting civilians is high on your list, why not constantly hark on about Iraqi, Syrian, Lybian, Palestinian, Yemen civilians that NATO butcher? When you only highlight deaths caused by 'bad guys' you come across as disingenuous. Propagandist.

    ReplyDelete
  13. David

    In this scattergun response you mention that NATO butcher Iraqi, Syrian, Palestinian and Yemeni civilians. In none of these conflict arenas are NATO actors. I certainly condemn the wanton loss of life in these conflicts but apportion blame to those actually responsible: Saudi Arabia and its allies in the case of Yemen; Israel in the case of Palestinians; the US led coalition in Iraq from 2003-2009 in which NATO was not a part; Syria (where does one start except that NATO has never participated) Funnily enough Afghanistan does not feature on your list where NATO was involved from the very start of that conflict in October 2001.

    All participants in armed conflicts commit war crimes. The revelations of Western war crimes in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan etc recieve greater publicity because of the accountability of the armed services to civilian control in liberal democracies and because of the role of independent press and broadcasting - another fundamental part of liberal deemocracy. What was the chain of command and where was the independent reportage under Assad, Saddam Hussein, Putin etc?

    A word to the wise, David. Be clear what you mean about amorphous, nebulous concepts like "the global establishment". Then back up assertions like "no fly zones kill innocents" with verifiable evidence. Reliance on ad hominem, unspecified comdemnation of everything Western without any element of specificity just does not cut the mustard.

    Basically get your facts right before launching onto puerile rants on this forum.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Barry,
    You know what I mean, don't pretend otherwise. Whatever name you want to give to the western military alliance. Why is Assad Putin etc relevant? I would understand it if I was a supporter of these people, you mention these actors constantly, I'm at a loss as to why. I supported IRA war crimes, if you want to score points, that's the road to go down.
    At no point have I condemned everything western. I'm merely pointing out your hypocrisy which you seem to have trouble making peace with.
    What accountability, many people from the US and her allies have been prosecuted for war crimes?
    I'll launch into any puerile rant, fact based or otherwise as I see fit. Thanks for the concern though, it touches my heart.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. David

      I have never defended war crimes committed by the UK, US or its allies and would happily have them tried in the ICC. But you have made statements about the imposition of no-fly zones causing civilian casualities without producing any evidence whatsoever.

      I support the rules based international order established after 1945. This includes the United Nations, EU, NATO and all the rest I do not support going to war or resorting to armed struggle unless as an absolute last resort and with watertight legal backing. Examples are the Genocide Convention of 1948, the International Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and Responsibility to Protect.

      Anyway your support of IRA war crimes removes any obligation on my part to take you seriously.

      Delete
  15. Barry, Britain does not merely supply weapons to Saudi Arabia, despite global knowledge of the atrocities in Yemen for this war: it provides the personnel and expertise required to keep the war going.

    The British government has deployed RAF personnel to work as engineers, and to train Saudi pilots and targeteers. The Brirish are knee deep in the war in Yemen. RAF liaison officers work inside the command and control centres from where targets in Yemen are selected.

    Not only should the British stop selling arms to the Saudis, they should without all technical and logistical support. Then we can say "in none of these conflict areas are NATO actors".

    You mentioned the American War in Vietnam. In its early days the USA had a presence but used civilian advisors to train and direct the ARVN. They did this to deny a presence. 60 years later and you fall for the same trick.

    The weapons the UK provides are not only simple rifles. They include Paveway bombs (£22k each), Brimstone bombs (105k each) and Stotm Shadow cruise missiles (800k each). All of us in the UK benefit from the boost to its economy from this trade. Our comfort is the Yemenis' suffering and we should be ashamed.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Not to mention the use of private military contractors like Blackwater, used solely as political cover.

      Delete
  16. Barry,
    Evidence? What do you think happens when you drop bombs in built up areas? Do righteous bombs not hurt kids?
    I must admit, I have a wee bit of fun at your comments. Pubs are shut and I have more free time, so I play wee games I bet with myself how long it will take you to mention either Trump, Orban, Putin or Assad on any subject, then I have a wee Scotch if I'm right, sometimes even if I don't.
    It's ok not to take me seriously, I'll not be offended. It's not important. Just watched Lex Friedman talk about how our reality might be completely different and what we perceive as reality might be an illusion, a inter species, collective illusion but an illusion nonetheless. What you make of that? Personally I think it's a Russian disinformation program, damn Putin.

    ReplyDelete
  17. David

    And what do you think happened when the Allies had the opportunity to bomb the trainlines to Auschtwitz during World War II but choose not to do?

    ReplyDelete
  18. David,

    I bet with myself how long it will take you to mention either Trump, Orban, Putin or Assad on any subject, then I have a wee Scotch if I'm right, sometimes even if I don't.

    I've been doing the same for years. I somehow doubt we are alone.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Barry,
    I will not withdraw that remark because I object to someone from a distance of 3,000 miles with no connection to the island of Ireland buying into the simplistic 800 years of resistance narrative.

    You are roughly 3,000 miles from both Jerusalem and Washington with little to no connection to either, yet you pontificate about US affairs and politics almost as much as you do about Israeli's/Jewish affairs....

    ReplyDelete
  20. But I don't voice support for violent armed groups and their narrativdes from a distance of 3,000 miles as Mr Cohen does, Frankie.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Barry,
    As I said whether no fly zones work is a different argument. I'm pointing out the fact you lecture myself for violence while supporting violence yourself. That's my only point here.
    Frankie,
    I just think Barry needs to chill out a bit. I don't want to seem as if I'm on his case at the end of the day it's just an exchange of views, other people see things differently, we might disagree but a wee giggle none and then lightens the load. Plus I like a Scotch

    ReplyDelete
  22. David

    And your point is wrong. I do not support violence only legitimate force in pursuit of clearly definded purposes such as the breaking o international humanitarian laws.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Barry,
    This is like talking to a robot. Whether you deem it legitimate or not is irrelevant. Violence is violence.

    ReplyDelete