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| JUST PUBLISHED .. | The Anti-Muslim Origins of 'The Star-Spangled Banner' Aug 30 2016 / 6:39 pm By Sam Husseini As several writers have noted - before and after the furor surrounding quarterback Colin Kaepernick refusing to stand for "The Star-Spangled Banner" - the national anthem is racist. Specifically, the third stanza: No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Even less well know, the song originates in slaveowner Francis Scott Key's " When the Warrior Returns" - which was set to the same tune. An early version of the "Star Spangled Banner" by Francis Scott Key, written in 1805 amid the routing of the Barbary states, offered a view of Islam markedly different from Obama's uplifting sentiments in Cairo: In conflict resistless each toil they endur'd, Till their foes shrunk dismay'd from the war's desolation: And pale beamed the Crescent, its splendor obscur'd By the light of the star-bangled flag of our nation. Where each flaming star gleamed a meteor of war, And the turban'd head bowed to the terrible glare. Then mixt with the olive the laurel shall wave And form a bright wreath for the brow of the brave. In 1814 Key rehabbed this doggerel into the Star Spangled Banner. So America's national anthem began as a gleeful tirade against the Mahommedans. And of course every member of the U.S. Marine Corps regularly bellows out the USMC anthem, beginning "From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli."
In short, America's march to Empire was minted in the crucible of anti-Islamic sentiment. (One admirer of this early chapter in America's imperial confrontations with Islam is that ardent Crusader, C. Hitchens who cites Joshua London'sVictory in Tripoli: How America's War with the Barbary Pirates Established the U.S. Navy and Shaped a Nation, on the origins of the Star Spangled Banner.)
Note to illustration on the front of jacket: In August 1814, a British raiding party led by Admiral Sir George Cockburn launched an attack on Washington. They set fire to the Capitol, then proceeded to the White House and, before setting fire to it, consumed a meal set out by Dolly Madison which had been abandoned by the fugitive President and his family. Cockburn next proceeded to the offices of The National Intelligence to avenge himself on the press which had abused him. He ordered his men to destroy the paper's printing types, saying 'Be sure that all the Cs are destroyed so that the rascals cannot any longer abuse my name'. Cockburn then laid siege to Baltimore, the unsuccessful fusillades prompting the composition of 'The Star Spangled Banner', whose reference to 'the hireling and slave' in the British force alludes, as Robin Blackburn points out in The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, to the fact that Cockburn had offered freedom to all slaves who would join him in his attacks of 1813 and 1814. According to a British report these slaves conducted themselves very well and 'were uniformly volunteers for the Station where they might expect to meet their former masters.' Some of these black recruits were in the party that burned the White House"
This highlights the darkest heart of the United States, eager to assault indigenous people - be they African or natives of what we call "America" or Berbers or Arab or whoever. Native Americans who are perceived as having been defeated can now be romanticized to an extent, while Arabs and Muslims who are not eager to roll over for U.S. establishment power are demonized. It also highlights that racism and violent nationalist identity are closely intertwined and attempts at separating the two may well be mere cover for both. - Sam Husseini is founder of the website VotePact.org. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.
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| FEATURED | Canada: Could Christian Zionism Explain Green Party Leader's Threats to Resign? By Yves Engler Elizabeth May's response to Green Party members voting to oppose Canadian support for Israeli colonialism has been wildly anti-democratic. She has not simply disagreed with a majority of members, which could reflect healthy internal processes, but publicly derided the party's procedures and members' clearly expressed opinions. After diluting a resolution about revoking the Jewish National Fund of Canada's charitable status strongly endorsed by members in an online poll, May threatened to resign if the party didn't organize another vote on a BDS resolution members strongly backed in a pre-convention online poll, convention caucus and full convention vote. The possibility of the Green Party leader resigning over BDS has thrust the Israel boycott into the news and will turn into a highly fortuitous development for the Palestinian cause if members remain steadfast. But, May's actions make little sense from a Green perspective. As Maclean's magazine pointed out, the party has more to gain by aligning with the growing number of Canadians critical of Ottawa's support for Israeli colonialism. Only if one believes May could lose her seat in the House of Commons over the matter, which seems improbable, would embracing Palestine solidarity activism be bad electorally. According to a poll conducted just before Israel killed 2,200 Palestinians in Gaza in 2014, 16% of Canadians sided with Palestine, while 17% sided with Israel. (The rest were undecided.) The percentage of Canadians who sided with Palestine is almost five times the 3.4% of Canadians who voted for the Greens last year. Additionally, the issue drives NDP activists to the party. The Greens have already gained a number of prominent NDP members disenchanted with that party's support for Israeli violence. But, even if you disagree with this electoral calculation, May's reaction still makes little sense from the party's perspective. Her actions have upset Palestinian sympathizers yet the media storm over the BDS vote makes it hard to imagine anyone mildly sympathetic to Israeli colonialism would vote, let alone campaign, for the Greens even if May succeeds in modifying the party's support for BDS at a special convention. Since her actions make little electoral sense, commentators have speculated May is driven by a combination of ego, fear of Jewish Zionist groups' accusations of anti-Semitism, a desire to join the Liberal cabinet or her establishment foreign-policy outlook. But, the influence of Christian Zionism represents an unexplored variable in May's position. A practicing Anglican, May was studying to become a priest until a few years ago. She's disparaged abortion and questioned whether Prime Minister Stephen Harper was a practicing Christian. " Being a Christian in politics is part of who I am as a person, so I don't hide it", May explained to the Anglican Journal in 2013. In 2013 she praised the Jewish National Fund for " the great work that's done in making the desert bloom." While not explicitly Christian Zionist wording, this (anti-ecological) statement echoes its thinking. While only May knows exactly what drives her thinking/positions, her church has a long history of Zionism, which began as a Christian movement. "Christian proto- Zionists [existed] in England 300 years before modern Jewish Zionism emerged," notes Evangelics and Israel. Until the mid-1800s Zionism was an almost entirely non-Jewish movement. And yet it was quite active. Between 1796 and 1800 there were at least 50 books published in Europe about the Jews' return to Palestine. The movement reflected the more literal readings of the Bible that flowed out of the Protestant Reformation. One of May's co-religionists Rev. William H. Hechler, chaplain to the British Embassy in Vienna, arranged for Jewish Zionist leader Theodore Herzl to meet Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Ottoman sultan, which then controlled Palestine. Another Anglican, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, came up with the infamous Zionist slogan " a land without people for a people without a land". He wanted Jews to go to their "rightful home" (Palestine) under a British protectorate. According to a Canadian Jewish News review of Allies for Armageddon: The Rise of Christian Zionism, "The Earl of Shaftesbury was the first millennariast, or restorationist, to blend the biblical interest in Jews and their ancient homeland with the cold realities of [British imperial] foreign policy." He got Britain's foreign secretary to appoint the first British consul to Jerusalem in 1839. A speech in England by Anthony Ashley Cooper in 1839 or 1840 was the first encounter with Zionist thinking for Canada's leading early proponent of the movement. At the time of Confederation Canada's preeminent Zionist was Henry Wentworth Monk who briefly studied to become an Anglican minister. In A Coat of Many Colours: Two Centuries of Jewish Life in Canada Irving Abella explains: "Henry Wentworth Monk, an eccentric but respected businessman, spent much of his time and money crusading for a Jewish homeland. In the 1870s and 1880s - long before Theodore Herzl, the Austrian founder of [Jewish] Zionism, even thought of a Jewish state - Monk took up a campaign in Canada and England to raise funds to buy land in Palestine for European Jews. In 1881 Monk even proposed setting up a Jewish National Fund. He issued manifestoes, wrote long articles, spoke to assorted meetings and lobbied extensively in England and Canada to realize his dream." Citing a mix of Christian and pro-British Empire rationale, Monk called on London to establish a "dominion of Israel" similar to the dominion of Canada. Monk was not alone in Canada. Many public figures, including prime ministers Lester Pearson and Arthur Meighan, expressed Christian Zionist thinking in backing the formation of the Israeli state. The son of a minister, Pearson's memoirs refer to Israel as "the land of my Sunday School lessons" where he learned that "the Jews belonged in Palestine." While Christian Zionism is now associated with right-wingers such as evangelist Charles McVety, who campaigns against sexual education in Ontario schools, Left Christian Zionism has a long history. Future CCF (the NDP's predecessor) leaders Tommy Douglas and Stanley Knowles, as well as a number of labour leaders, were members of the Canadian Palestine Committee (CPC), a group of prominent non-Jewish Zionists formed in 1943. (Future external minister Paul Martin Sr. and the premier of Alberta, Ernest C. Manning, were also members). Many CPC members' Zionism was partly motivated by biblical teachings. Both Knowles and Douglas were Protestant ministers and, as an indication of the extent to which religion shaped Douglas, his main biography is titled Tommy Douglas: The Road to Jerusalem. In 1975, Douglas, the "father of Medicare", told the Histadrut labour federation: "The main enmity against Israel is that she has been an affront to those nations who do not treat their people and their workers as well as Israel has treated hers." This speech was made eight years into Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and a quarter century after 800,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed in 1947/48. A decade later Canadian Labour Congress president Dennis McDermott, who referred to himself as a "Catholic Zionist", denounced a Canadian Senate report that rebuked Israel's 1982 invasion/occupation of Lebanon and provided mild support for the Palestinian Liberation Organization. McDermott said the 1985 Senate report, which stopped short of calling the PLO the legitimate voice of Palestinians, was an "exercise in bad judgment and, even worse, bad taste." (A portrait of McDermott hangs in a library named after him at the trade school of the Histadrut.) Aggressive Christian Zionism still crops up in progressive circles. When I spoke about the Conservatives' losing their bid for a seat on the UN Security Council to a Council of Canadians meeting in Delta BC, an older woman interrupted me to ask: "are you criticizing Harper's support for Israel? Doesn't the Bible say Israel is the Jewish homeland?" May, of course, would never be so crass. But, she is associated with a religious tradition that has promoted this type of thinking. Recognizing their contribution to Palestinian dispossession, some Christian groups have sought to right a historical wrong by divesting from or boycotting companies enabling Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands. Others have directly challenged Christian Zionism. In 2013 the Anglican Church of Canada committed itself "to explore and challenge theologies and beliefs, such as Christian Zionism, which support the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories." Last year a number of groups organized an important multi-day conference in Vancouver titled "Seeking the Peace of Jerusalem: Overcoming Christian Zionism in the Quest for Justice." I can't say for sure whether Christian Zionism has influenced Elizabeth May's thinking. But, it's clear she's not supporting progressive Anglicans and other Christians reassessing their contribution to Palestinian dispossession. - Yves Engler's latest book is Canada in Africa: 300 years of Aid and Exploitation. He's also the author of Canada and Israel: building apartheid. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.
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| EDITORIAL | Punishing the Messenger: Israel's War on NGOs Takes a Worrying Turn By Ramzy Baroud "You deserve to see your loved ones suffer and die. But, maybe, you would be hurt before them," was part of a threatening message received by a staff member at 'Al-Mezan', a Gaza-based human rights group. The photo attached to the email was of the exterior of the activist's home. The gist of the message: 'we are coming for you.' 'Al-Mezan', along with three other Palestinian rights groups - 'Al-Haq', 'Al Mezan', 'Aldameer' and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights - are actively pushing a case against Israel in the International Criminal Court (ICC) accusing it of war crimes in Palestine, particularly during the war on Gaza in 2014. In April 2015, the Palestinian Authority (PA) had officially signed the Rome Statuteand, a few months later in November, the groups presented a substantial amount of evidence of Israel's suspected war crimes and crimes against humanity. But even before these dates, the war on independent rights groups was already heating up. Restrictions on Israeli NGOs, especially those that challenge the Israeli Occupation of Palestine, are fairly recent. However, pressure, violence, restriction on movement, raiding of offices and arrests, have been a fixture of Israeli policy against Palestinian rights groups. The most recent episode is only one example. "Since September 2015, several of the organizations have faced ruthless smear and intimidation campaigns seeking to discredit them and stoke insecurity among their staff," Amjad Iraqi wrote in Israel's +972Mag. "The harassment culminated in death threats made against two individuals: A senior Palestinian advocate with 'Al-Mezan' and Nada Kiswanson, a Palestinian-Swedish lawyer who is Al-Haq's representative in The Hague." Israel is, no doubt, feeling embattled. Its carefully carved brand - that it is an oasis of democracy in an arid authoritarian desert - is now full of holes. Its occupation, wars and siege in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, and the dissemination of images and information about such conduct throughout the internet and social media platforms is making it impossible for Israel to sustain its official hasbara. Thus, the angry backlash. The Israeli Knesset has been busy passing laws and proposing bills aimed at restricting the work of its own rights groups, or any independent civil society organization that seems, in any way, critical of the government and sympathetic towards the Palestinians. The 'NGO Law' is now in effect. It forces NGOs to declare their sources of funding and punishes those who refrain from doing so. It also levies heavy taxes on such funds, even when declared. The European Union, along with the United States Government warned Israel against such laws, but to no avail. The bill is written in too broad a terminology, thus making it possible for the government to target such organizations without appearing vindictive or politically-motivated. "What is happening in Israel now is fascism," said David Tartakover, who was quoted in the British Guardian newspaper. Tartakover, the artist who designed the logo for the Israeli 'Peace Now' campaign in the late 1970's described 'a slow creep of limitations' that began in 1995 (following the assassination of Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, at the hands of a Jewish extremist), but one that accelerated in the last year. One example includes the "Loyalty in Culture Bill", which sounds like, according to Michael Griffiths, "something out of Nineteen Eighty-Four." But it is no fiction. This bill targets artists and authors, and withholds funding from organizations that promote any material deemed objectionable by Israel's political establishment. This led to the banning of "Borderlife", an Israeli novel by Dorit Rabinyan, depicting a love story between a Palestinian man and a Jewish woman. Israel's Minister of Education, the hardliner, Naftali Bannett, banned the novel on the pretext that it promotes 'assimilation' between the races. With the ' most rightwing government' in Israeli's history now in charge, and an equally hawkish parliament, the foray of contentious bills are likely to continue. However, while Israel's own organizations, rights groups and dissenting artists are targeted by bans, fines and withholding of funds, Palestinians are threatened with much more severe consequences. To appreciate this more, one ought to look at the language used by a recent conference organized by Israeli newspaper, 'Yediot Aharonot'. "Everyone from delusional Hollywood celebrities to cabinet ministers, to the leader of the Opposition have pledged fealty to the cause," he wrote. Top officials included Intelligence Minister, Israel Katz, who called for the "civil targeted killing" of BDS leaders like Omar Barghouti. According to Silverstein, the phrase Katz used is "sikul ezrahi memukad" which "derives from the euphemistic Hebrew phrase for the targeted killing of a terrorist, which literally means 'targeted thwarting'." Working hand in hand with various western governments, Israel's official perception of the non-violent BDS movement is reaching the point of treating the civil society movement as if a criminal organization. BDS merely demands moral and legal accountably from western governments and corporations that contribute in any way to Israel's violations of human rights and international law. The recent death threats against rights activists who are pressing for respect of international law and for justice for thousands of Gazan civilians killed during recent wars is a natural progression of Israel's relentless efforts. While restricting the work of independent rights groups is quite common by Middle Eastern governments, Israel's campaign is most dangerous for it receives little media coverage and, at times, outright support from the US and other western governments. The latest of these was the recently passed legislation at the Democratic-led Legislature in the State of New Jersey, which was signed by Governor, Chris Christie. New Jersey is now the latest of US states that outlawed BDS and vowed to punish any company that joins the boycott of Israel campaign. With little or no accountability, Israel will continue with its fight targeting NGOs, threatening activists and restricting the work of anyone that dares to be critical. "What is happening in Israel now is fascism," said Tartakover, and he is, of course, right. - Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books include "Searching Jenin", "The Second Palestinian Intifada" and his latest "My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story". His website is www.ramzybaroud.net. |
| LATEST | Israeli Officer: 'We Carried out Many Executions, but Have Not Been Tried' A senior Israeli army officer in Hebron has admitted that Israel Defence Forces (IDF) troops have committed numerous field executions in the West Bank, Quds Net has reported.Lieutenant Colonel Eliyahu Libman made his comments during a court hearing on Sunday during the trial of an IDF soldier accused of murdering Abdel Fattah Al-Sharif a few months ago.Libman was at the scene when the IDF's Sergeant Elor Azaria shot Sharif in an incident caught on camera and shared subsequently on social media. According to the senior officer, he has seen many examples where IDF troops have fired at Palestinians in order to "neutralise" them, or shot would-be bombers in the head to ensure that they could not explode a suicide belt. This, he claimed, is more or less routine and none of the soldiers who committed such acts were ever brought to trial. Libman denied a statement attributed to him following Sharif's execution, in which he is alleged to have said that it was wrong to shoot the Palestinian. He insisted that he did not say this to anyone, not even to Israel's former defense minister, Moshe Ya'alon. (MEMO, PC) |
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The Palestine Chronicle is an independent online newspaper that provides daily news, commentary, features, book reviews, photos, art, etc, on a variety of subjects. However, it's largely focused on Palestine, Israel, and the Middle East region. The Palestine Chronicle is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization. To contact the editor, submit an article or any other material, please write to: editor@palestinechronicle.com. For other inquiries write to: info@palestinechronicle.com. |
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