Cincinnati Edition’s Anti-Palestine Bias- A Statement from Cincinnati Socialists
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The National Public Radio, Cincinnati Edition hosted by Lucy May on 91.7 WVXU published an audio Livestream recording titled How the war between Israel and Hamas is impacting local communities on November 1st, 2023. Cincinnati Socialists wrote a transcript that can be accessed here. It became starkly clear that there is a fundamental misunderstanding by Cincinnati Edition of the historical and material reality of the genocide currently being inflicted by the apartheid state of Israel. Cincinnati Socialists denounces Cincinnati Edition for its villainization of the anti-apartheid struggles of the Palestinian people and the defacement of Judaism in the name of upholding Zionist ideology.
This is not a war between Israel and Hamas, nor is this a war between Israel and Palestinians. The Palestinian people are experiencing a genocide at the hands of the colonialist apartheid state of Israel, which has publicly admitted its intention of ethnically cleansing Gaza. Israel commits this ethnic cleansing because of its racist Zionist ideology and in the name of imperialistic capital gain through the exploitation of Gaza’s oil reserves.
The basic definition of the crime of genocide as contained in Article II of the Genocide Convention is as follows, “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
The charges of genocide are well founded. Israeli government officials call for ethnic cleansing as they continuously dehumanize Palestinians and massacre civilian populations. 1.5 million Palestinians have been internally displaced across the enclave, and at least 10,328 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks over the last 30 days. The settler intent has grown exponentially since the Israeli Apartheid establishment and Palestinian Nakba in 1948. The Israeli Occupation Forces have been documented sexually assaulting, kidnapping, illegally harvesting organs of, mass incarcerating, and murdering not only Palestinians, but their own Israeli civilians.
This misleading program contained many claims that have been proven false. While Amina Barhumi (Executive director, Council on American Islamic Relations) was censored and ridiculed for using correct language such as genocide to refer to the current ethnic cleaning of Palestine, inaccurate and harmful claims from Laura Neack (Ph.D., professor, Miami University Department of Political Science) and Rabbi Ari Jun (Director, Jewish Community Relations Council, Jewish Federation of Cincinnati) were left without correction by Cincinnati Edition.
Such claims that have proven false yet continue to be accepted into building a pro-Zionist media narrative include: the beheading of children by Hamas, the false propaganda that Israel “pulled out” of Gaza in 2005, and that tokenism of bourgeois Muslim and Palestinian Supreme Court members at all justifies the discriminatory treatment against the proletariat of Palestine.
Within Gaza, while the Hamas movement maintains internal control, Israel remains an occupying power within and surrounding Gaza via military borders and colonist settlements which are a violation of Article 49 of the Geneva Convention. Israeli military forces control besieged Gaza borders, as well as its airspace and coastline. This meets the legal definition of "effective control" for an occupying power such as the Zionist Israeli state.
Laura Neack ludicrously chided Ms. Barhumi for correctly describing the situation in Israel as “apartheid.” Ms. Neack did not offer any factual rebuttal, but instead stated that using the word “apartheid” was “exclusionary.” Israel’s policies of ethnic exclusion are precisely what have led widely respected international NGOs like Amnesty International to use the term “apartheid” in the case of Israel. Ms. May failed her journalistic obligation to inform the public that Ms. Barhumi’s language was also that of the vast majority of international human rights organizations, and instead allowed her white guests to badger Ms. Barhumi.
The Jewish community is a secondary victim of the colonial project known as Israel. Their religion and history is politicized to further Zionist imperialism. As we look to the examples of South Africa, Angola, Algeria — their history may not apply wholesale to the settler ethnic cleansing of Palestine, but they hold important lessons. Cincinnati Socialists condemns the Zionist project of Israel which enlists all of its citizens as agents of the colonialist state.
The claim of anti-semitism from Rabbi Jun is a rote and deeply disappointing one that brings profound sorrow and shame to the Jewish members of our coalition and around the world in its equivocation of the apartheid state of Israel with Judaism and Jewish people. The Jewish members of Cincinnati Socialists, as well as the members of Jewish Voice for Peace holding phenomenal protests for Palestinian liberation all around the world, maintain our Jewish values of the sanctity of human life and reject the premise that our faith, our history, or our struggle against oppression can be used to veil or sanitize a genocide. The history of Zionism is not as long-standing as Rabbi Jun may imagine, and factually not universally supported by Jewish people, now or ever. We encourage him and all readers to investigate that history, particularly the Jewish Labour Bund and the readings included at the end of this piece. It is heartbreaking for us that Rabbi Jun and other prominent leaders in our media and legislature so cynically and easily use ignorant accusations of anti-semitism to silence our Palestinian and Muslim cousins when they ask for our help. Anti-semitism does of course exist, and has been on the rise in recent years, but it has come not from Palestinian, Muslim, or Arab people, but instead overwhelmingly from home-grown white racist radicals right here in the US. Further, centering white Jewish people in the US as victims of words while US-made earthquake bombs and white phosphorus rain abject misery and death on the captives of the world’s largest concentration camp in our name is a shanda fur die goyim that words cannot encapsulate. Equating the state that would do such things with Judaism only makes us less safe as Jewish people. Our strength in the fight against bigotry is only, and can only be, rooted in solidarity with our community, and especially with those of other marginalized faiths.
Cincinnati Socialists stands with unequivocal support for Palestine and opposition to Zionism. We applaud Amina Barhumi and her revolutionary praxis while speaking with this hostile and uneducated panel. We condemn Israeli aggression against the brave people of the Jewish and Israeli community that oppose Zionism. We condemn the complicity of Israeli’s supporters, as exhibited by National Public Radio’s Cincinnati Edition on 91.7 WVXU and the United States. We see the evacuation order of Gaza, blockade, and bombing campaign, followed by an air, ground, and sea invasion for what it is — an ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and genocide.
We call on the masses burning with righteous anger and grief to educate themselves on the historical and material struggle of the Palestinian people. We urge all of those in support of Palestinian people to publicly condemn Cincinnati Edition on 91.7 WVXU and call for an immediate correction of the blatant misinformation displayed during this panel by Laura Neack, Rabbi Ari Jun, and Lucy May. We ask Ms. May to consider her role in facilitating these vitally important conversations, and invite her to attend one of the many Palestinian rallies happening in Cincinnati to familiarize herself with the systems of power at play. Cincinnati Socialists does not call for any form of public aggression to the reporter or guest speakers, but calls on the masses to listen to our message and learn from their errors.
It is up to the working class to fight for liberation; as the ruling classes, the state, and the capitalist media will always contend with systemic violence. We demand an immediate ceasefire, the release of Palestinian prisoners, and the liberation of Palestinians and all people in Palestine from colonial Zionism. This transition from Zionism to democracy need not cost anyone’s life; it will only mean a return of equal rights to Jews, Muslims, Christians, and all other citizens living together in Palestine, as they did for hundreds of years before the failed Zionist colonial project.
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List of suggested educational resources
1) Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine by Foreign Languages Press — Both a historical document and a living political program for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Download here: https://foreignlanguages.press/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/S08-PFLP-Strategy-Lib-Palestine-7th-Printing.pdf?fbclid=PAAaZ1xQ5NHwyl5NDxD2HPaxehJGhe8vYISbvKFWlQl8SDmAczn8sPm6I8yNY
2) The Right of Nations to Self-Determination by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin — Dealt with the national question in relation to countries such as Norway and Poland. A polemic against Rosa Luxemburg. Download here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/self-det/
3) Ten Myths About Israel by Ilan Pappe — Examines the claims that are repeated endlessly in the media, enforced by the military, accepted without question by the world’s governments and reinforce the regional status quo. Download here: https://www.versobooks.com/products/370-ten-myths-about-israel
4) The Palestine Laboratory by @antloewenstein — Uncovers how Israel has become a global leader in spying technology and defense hardware that fuels the globe's most brutal conflicts. Download here: https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2684-the-palestine-laboratory
5) Palestine Speaks ed. by Mateo Hoke and Cate Malek — A collection of testimonials from Palestinians narrating their own experiences and their own suffering. Download here: https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/122-palestine-speaks
6) Blaming the Victims ed. by Christopher Hitchens and Edward W. Said — Shows how the historical fate of the Palestinians has been justified by spurious academic attempts to dismiss their claim to a home within the boundaries of historical Palestine. Download here: https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/1221-blaming-the-victims
7) The Case for Sanctions Against Israel ed. by Audrea Lim — Considers all sides of the movement—including detailed comparisons with the South African experience. Download here: https://www.versobooks.com/products/2239-the-case-for-sanctions-against-israel
8) The Punishment of Gaza by Gideon Levy — Tracks the development of Israel policy, which has abandoned the pretense of diplomacy in favor of raw military power. Download here: https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2135-the-punishment-of-gaza