Crazy Country

National Suicide in three acts

2012-01-24T08:27:00.000-08:00

Stay out of my bedroom

National Suicide (1)

Many towers are concentrated in a single corner, on the eastern side of the Kirya area of Tel Aviv. High in the civil government tower sit the Interior Ministry officials, who at their discretion decide fates, a residence permit to the one and a deportation order to the other. Across the street, the tower with a helipad on its roof is the Ministry of Defense where Army officers are running the lives of millions of people and define for the Palestinians the order under which they would live and send armed soldiers to enforce that order. And across the junction – the commercial Azrieli towers, with their shopping malls and restaurants and observation balconies, symbol of the flourishing Israeli economy which leaves so many behind, the economy whose captains have no interest whatever in social justice, neither before nor after the mass protest of last summer.

A hundred Jewish and Arab activists gathered last week at the foot of these towers there, at the at the initiative of the Tarabut Movement, to protest the ruling of the Supreme Court defining the reunification of (Arab) families to be "an act of national suicide". At the foot of the towers they stood and chanted protests and faced the burgeoning traffic on the roads with their signs: "Supreme Court confirms Apartheid", "No to the Supreme Court's racism, yes to family reunification", "It is not for the Supreme Court to decide with whom we shall live", "Family unification is not national suicide - national suicide is the denial of fundamental rights".

"I am Sumaya, Israeli citizen and resident of Ramle," said the voice on a small hand-held megaphone which drivers whose windows were open could hear, through the hubbub and honking. "I am one of thousands of people who suffer from this law, and the Supreme Court justices decided that we will continue to suffer. Fourteen years I am living with my husband, who came from Gaza, and he never got any permanent status in the country. Each year he must extend the permit once again. We never know if this year they will renew the permit again or suddenly just cut it off. He is not allowed to work in Israel, he can't get a driver's license. After hearing on the radio the decision of the judges, my daughters asked 'Will they now deport Daddy?'. We have four daughters. I am a citizen of Israel, it is nobody's business who I fell in love with and who I want to share my life with. By what right does the government enter into our bedroom? What right have they?"

Foreign country, or what?

National Suicide (2)

So who are these people who want to come and live here with their spouses and children and are blocked by the Government of Israel and its Supreme Court? There can be no doubt, if one listens to cabinet ministers and Knesset Members and newspaper columnists speaking on the subject: They are foreigners, people from outside Israel, residents of "a hostile country or entity" who want to emigrate from their foreign country and come to live within the borders of Israel. And it is well known that every nation state has the right to define which foreigners will or will not be allowed to enter its bounders. Indeed, comparisons are made with some European countries where xenophobic parties were able to gain influence on governmental immigration policy and impose all sorts of limitations (though in none of them was any such piece of legislation enacted...)

No doubt, then: as far as those ministers and Knesset Members and columnists are concerned, the State of Israel ends at the Green Line, and beyond that line is another country altogether. No doubt? Actually there is very much doubt about that point, because the same people can also be heard resolutely declaring that the entire Land of Israel is ours by divine and ancestral right, that it is a good fine act to settle there and that Ariel and Kiryat Arba are Israeli cities just like Tel Aviv, which is why Israeli theaters must perform at their Halls of their Culture "just like everywhere else in Israel".

Indeed, when it comes to Israeli citizens (rather, Jewish Israelis) who want to cross the Green Line eastwards and go to live in a settlements or marry a resident of a settlement, then it's not really a foreign country. They need not ask a special permit for family unification, in fact they need no permit of any kind. Also the very same Supreme Court ruled, just a week earlier, that the crossing of the Green Line by an Israeli (Jewish) citizen, so as to set up residence in a settlement on the other side, is an act of daily routine of no special importance, indeed not disqualifying him from being a Supreme Court Judge. "National suicide"? What the hell are you talking about?

In short - when it serves a purpose the Territories can be a foreign country, when it serves another purpose they can be an integral part of Israel. When the settlers want to vote, then the Israeli Electoral Law applies and provides for them voting to the Knesset (but not their Palestinian neighbors, of course) . When they do not want to pay a minimum wage, they can declare without blinking that the Israeli Minimum Wage Law does not apply because 'the settlement is not part of Israel' (this contention, at least, the courts rejected ...).

Such zigzagging is no coincidence-it is a systematic policy.

When there is need to say that the occupation is not so bad, in fact there is really no occupation any more, the world is told that the Palestinians already have their own government and a parliament of their own and that they are running their own affairs. But when needed, the IDF can go to every town and village, at every time of the day and especially the night, and detain anyone they want, and bring them in for an interrogation under moderate physical pressure in the cellars of the Shabak Security Service. (Last week the Speaker of the Palestinian Parliament himself was taken from his home at a late night hour, another routine detention in a night of raids by our boys in uniform.)

When a Gazan needs urgent medical treatment, it is explained that Israel disengaged from Gaza and is no longer responsible for its people and they have no entitlement to medical treatment in Israel, at the most a humanitarian gesture of mercy might sometimes be approved (provided the patient does not die in the meantime, while the topic is under discussion...). But when a ship or even a small boat tries to get to the shores of Gaza, Israeli Navy ships hurry to block its way, as no one should be allowed to violate our sovereignty and our territorial waters. American and European activists who are taken off such Gaza-bound boats in the middle of the sea are brought to court and remanded in custody, on charges of "attempted illegal entry into Israel."

In short: eat the cake and have it.

The cat came, and ate the goat (Chad Gadya*)

National Suicide (3)

The determination that the reunification of (Arab) families constitutes national suicide was contributed to our public agenda by His Honor Asher Grunis - the man who is due to become the next President of the Supreme Court, under a special law to that effect enacted by the Knesset two weeks ago. Two ministers of justice, one after the other, had worked very hard to achieve this result. For years they waged a hard prolonged struggle, in daylight and darkness, the Knesset and cabinet and the media and on discreet committees and commissions, straining with all their might to force the judges and change the composition, until they came at last to this fine appointment. It was the previous Justice Minister, Daniel Friedman, who embarked on the task - and his successor, the current minister Ya'akov Ne'eman, reached the finishing line.

As he wrote on the pages of "Yediot Ahronot", former Justice Minister Daniel Friedman is very pleased with the new Supreme Court ruling, and of course he too thinks that family reunification is national suicide. If he has any reservations about the Court's ruling, it is in criticizing the judges on clinging to the argument that somebody from the reunified families might engage in acts of terrorism, and that they were too shy to state openly that they were protecting the demographic balance in the Jewish-Democratic State of Israel. Entry of Palestinians into the country is in any case a serious danger, says the eminent jurist Friedman. Even if they use no violence and no terrorism, still they may try to change the character of the country, and this too is a type of warfare.

Still, there is one aspect in which Daniel Friedman is a bit of a Liberal. Toward migrant workers he proposes a bit different attitude. "In my humble opinion, there should be no difficulty in the absorption of foreign workers and of their children who were educated in Israel. They want to fit in, they would not try to change the character of the state" writes Friedman, adding the clinching argument: "We can also expect them to serve in the IDF!". Well, who needs more then that?

It seems that quite a few people, including current ministers and Knesset Members, want absolutely nothing of the kind. Arabs are not wanted here, certainly, but neither are Blacks who are not Arab, and in general we have had enough of all intrusive foreigners. By the law which was also enacted last week, internment camps will be set up for tens of thousands of African infiltrators. There, they will spend years without trial until they get out of their heads any idea of integrating in the Israeli society. The refugees from the Ivory Coast, who are living here, already got a collective deportation order, effective immediately. Is the civil war in their country still going on, or is it really over? Would their lives be in danger if they returned? Who cares - fly out of here they must. And the African and Filippino kids who were born here and speak Hebrew, and who are simply begging to be allowed to join the army? To the airport with them, out, out, just get them out of here and be done.

And what about the Ethiopians? It has been officially determined that they are kosher, bona fide Jews. (There were some rabbis who thought otherwise, but they were overruled more than twenty years ago, and by now it is too late to try to reopen that issue...). So these Blacks came here in great masses and got off the plane and immediately received Israeli citizenship and by now it had been decades and a new generation was born to them who speak Hebrew and understand Israeli politics and know how to organize mass demonstrations and protests against racism. On TV we see a resident of Kiryat Malachi protesting that she is being called a racist: "You don't understand, you don’t have to live with so many Ethiopians near you and smell their cooking and the value of our housing is immediately falling down. The worst is that when we have so many Black Ethiopians living here, also the Black Sudanese are starting to arrive. They know that the police will not know the difference, will not know whom to deport and whom not. It's just hell, it can't go on like this. "

One of the Ethiopians in the big demonstration against racism in Jerusalem told the press his experiences: "I was discharged from the army and I thought that now I was completely accepted as an Israeli. But at every workplace I applied, they saw the color of my skin and told me 'Don't call us, we will call you'. The only exception was in Oz, the Immigration Police. They took me up immediately when I applied, gave me a job capturing and deporting illegal foreign workers. It's not exactly what I wanted to do in life, but a person has to live from something, not so?".

And he has a friend who a job as a security guard for the City of David settlers at the village of Silwan in East Jerusalem. These settlers went to houses which the government declared to be Absentee Properties and threw out their Palestinian inhabitants and raised the national flag of the Jewish-Democratic State of Israel on the roofs. By now they are very worried that nefarious plots might be hatched by their Palestinian neighbors, and are in urgent need of very numerous security personnel to stand guard day and night at the barbed wire surrounding the houses. It turns out that the security personnel charged with settler protection has a liberal and non-discriminatory hiring policy. Any who applies for a job there can expect to be hired with no questions asked and regardless of skin color.

Speaking about bad smells, the Israel Railways decided to stop allowing soldiers to travel free by train on Sundays between the hours of six to nine in the morning, because on this day and at these hours all the soldiers go back from weekend leave and they all do it at the same time since they stand to be punished for being late at the camp. Soldiers set up an outcry and protest, as did their parents and some legislators and public figures. One citizen who travels every day by train explained: "You don't understand, the soldiers are making the train packed like a can of sardines with the smell of sweat in the air. It's Hell, it can't go on like this". A soldier's mother speaking in the same radio program was very indignant: "My son has been serving his country for two years now. He stands guard at the Gaza border every night, to ensure that Palestinians won't penetrate into our territory. Is this the thanks which the country gives him?"

Further rounds of the 2012 Chad Gadya are certain to be played out –just stay tuned to the newspaper headlines.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Had_Gadya

Chapters in a Tragicomedy

2012-01-12T04:58:00.000-08:00

If the tall cedar tree is aflame, what can the lichen on the wall do?
(Fifth Century Talmudic saying attributed to Bar Kipok)

Chapter One

For the past two and a half years, the Foreign Minister representing the State of Israel towards the rest of the world is a settler, living in the Occupied Territories and thereby blatantly violating International Law, day by day. This is one of the reasons why Israel's Foreign Minister is not exactly the most welcome of guests in most world capitals (though, to be sure, also the minister's personality and conduct have something to do with it). Year after year, there is an increase in the number of settlers serving as officers of the IDF, the army responsible for maintaining and expanding their enclaves. Among other sections of Israeli society, there is less and less inclination to devote a life to a military career... But the Supreme Court did not have a settler among its judges. Until this week.

By the "deal" agreed last Friday between the rival factions in the Judicial Nominations Committee, Noam Solberg will be one of the new judges added to the bench of the Supreme Court in Jerusalem, and it is possible that in the future he will also become the President of this court. Every morning His Honor, Justice Noam Solber, will rise at his home in the settlement of Alon Shvut on the West Bank near Bethlehem. He will enter his car and drive along the road which is reserved for Israelis only, directly to his new workplace in Jerusalem. On the way he will swiftly pass the long column of Palestinians waiting for hours under the blazing sun to be inspected at the IDF checkpoint. What, if one of these Palestinians would present to the Supreme Court an appeal because of the expropriation of his land and its being handed over to settlers...

Attorneys Omer Schatz and Yiftach Cohen presented, on behalf of "Yesh Gvul", an appeal to prevent the appointment of Noam Solberg. Gush Shalom – of which the writer is a member - was asked to add its voice to this petition.

The two lawyers noted that Noam Solberg, has at his own free will taken up permanent residence in the Occupied Territory, an act contrary to the morals to which a decent person can be expected to adhere. To settle in occupied territory is a manifest violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention as ruled by the International Court in The Hague – a body which Israel's Supreme Court recognizes as the highest authority in the field of International Law. Therefore, the settler Noam Solberg is not endowed with the integrity expected of a Supreme Court judge.

I would not be revealing a great secret in disclosing that none of those involved had nurtured any great hope that the petition would be accepted. Still, we were a bit surprised by the lightning speed with which the justices threw away this hot potato. Within a bare few hours from when the petition was filed, Justices Hayut, Fogelman and Amit gathered and rejected it unanimously and out of hand. They noted dryly that having examined the Basic Law on the Judiciary and the Rules of Ethics for Judges, they have found "no legal precedent indicating that the choice of a place of residence constitutes a violation of integrity in general or judicial integrity in particular". Clean and Pure the new Supreme Court Judge Noam Solberg, along with his fellow settlers. Integrity is in no way impugned.

And International Law? The Fourth Geneva Convention? The International Court of Justice? In the ruling of three judges, they were completely absent, vanished into thin air. Present absentees. All this, even before Their Honors were joined by their new colleague.

Chapter Two

Benny Katzover is one of the founders of the settler movement. Immediately in 1967 he took part in the group of settlers who established themselves in Hebron and created a fait accompli. Indeed, there was some obstruction from the military governor – who was rightly apprehensive that the presence of extremist settlers would make Hebron the permanent focus of tensions. Katzover and fellows had to make an appeal directly to the ministerial level in the then Labor Party government, playing on the power struggle between Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and his great rival Yigal Allon. Ten years later, when Katzover took part in attempts to expand the settlement project northwards into the Nablus area, again good use was made of contacts in the political establishment (including with the Defense Minister whose name was Shimon Peres). And later, when the settlement movement grew and expanded and became institutionalized, Katzover was elected as Head of the Samaria Regional Council. As such, he for many years got a salary from the state treasury and used his good contacts in the government (by then controlled by the Likud Party) to gain very, very generous resources and budgets allocated to a further expansion of the settlement project.

Throughout all these years, Katzover and his fellow settlers declared their loyalty to democracy. They angrily rejected any assertion that they were opposed to democracy or seeking to harm it. But not anymore. This week – as it happens, on exactly the same day when the Justices decided to take settler Noam Solberg to their bosom - Katzover made his position crystal clear: "I would say that today, Israeli democracy has one central mission, and that is to disappear. Israeli democracy has finished its historical role, and it must be dismantled and bow down before Judaism. All the events nowadays are leading to the realization that there is no other way except putting the Jewish issue before any other issue, that that is the answer to all the situation and the threats."

In other words: For forty years and more, democracy gave most generously to us settlers - abundant funds and lands expropriated from Palestinians and military protection at every step we took. We ate our fill and blessed democracy for all these nice gifts, and now that we're big and strong enough, we do not need democracy anymore.

If one regards democracy as being represented by the majority of Members in Israel's Knesset, elected by Israel's citizens in free and eminently democratic elections, strictly, it seems that democracy in Israel is indeed about to do as Katzover asked.

Chapter Three

A few months ago Education Minister Gideon Saar sent a circular to the principals and teachers of the schools in Israel, in which he called upon them to educate their pupils to uphold and respect Human Rights. The principal of the high school in the village of Ar'ara took seriously the Education Minister's directive and took his pupils off to Tel Aviv, there to take part in the Human Rights March held on the International Human Rights Day.

But probably, that was not what the Minister of Education meant. Maybe he did not mean the same Human Rights which the Tel Aviv march was intended to promote, or perhaps he did not mean teachers and principals to take his circular that seriously, or that he specifically did not intend an Arab principal in an Arab village like Ar'ara to send Arab pupils to demonstrate. For when it is Arabs who speak of Human Rights, it might become a bit subversive.

Anyway, the Ministry of Education immediately sent a severe reprimand to the principal of the Ar'ara school. The Knesset Education Committee met to discuss this serious incident, and Members from the right wing demanded the immediate dismissal of the notorious Human Rights enthusiast. Knesset Member Ghaleb Majadleh - who happens to be an Arab, just like the principal, and who knows him personally - got up to answer. And this defense by MK Majadleh so infuriated MK Anastasia Michaeli that she poured over him a glass of water. Immediately, all the media was filled with reports on the Glass of Water Incident, which completely overshadowed the issue of Human Rights education.

Michaeli's party, the Israel is Our Home Party led by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, felt a bit uncomfortable and rushed to dissociate itself and publish a reprimand of Michaeli. Tsk tsk, a Knesset Member should not pour water on a colleague, not even if he is an Arab.

But perhaps in the future MK Michaeli will be spared such dilemmas. Another Member of the same party, Moshe ("Mutz") Matalon, proposed a bill which would allow solely those who served in the army to be elected to the Knesset. If this bill is adopted (and nowadays, who can say just how far the majority in the Knesset would dare to go?), then in the next Knesset will be no Arabs. Nor will it include Jews who oppose the Occupation and for reasons of conscience are not willing to serve in an army of occupation. Nor will there be Jews who believe that Torah study is more important than military service (a controversial opinion, but the IDF had given it considerable consideration since it was founded).

Moshe Matalon is the first disabled person to enter the Knesset in a wheelchair. In his legislative career since 2009 he was much praised by his fellow disabled Israelis, especially his efforts to introduce laws and regulations giving the disabled access to every location in the country and eliminate the barriers which exclude them.

But not to Arabs, and other undesirables...

Chapter Four

Lately the town of Kiryat Malachi is often in the news. Its favorite son, Moshe Katsav, rose to prominence and entered the Presidential Residence in Jerusalem. As is well known, from there he moved his residence for the next seven years to the Ma'asiyahu Prison, due to the controversial things he did to women who worked under his authority and which the judges took very harshly, though many of his friends and neighbors still consider him a hero - only targeted for his oriental origin. And just after the media completed its coverage of the journey of Moshe Katsav to prison, a new reason arose to re-direct the spotlight at Kiryat Malachi.

In recent years, an increasing number of Ethiopian Israelis have come to live in Kiryat Malachi, to which some other residents took a great objection. There were those who went out into the night and sprayed on the walls graffiti expressing exactly what they think about the Ethiopians, using the most pungent expressions which colloquial Hebrew borrowed from other languages and developed for itself. And others acted also in broad daylight. There were the Tenants' Committees in four high rise apartment buildings who took action and established a formal Admissions Committee to which the application of any new tenant must be submitted. And the Admissions Committee formally and officially published its guidelines, namely "No Ethiopian need apply for residence".

And there was a great commotion which got into the headlines, and Ethiopians from all over the country rallied in their thousands and drove off to Kiryat Malachi and demonstrated and protested very loudly indeed, and with them also some who are not Ethiopians but do not like racism.

But basically, what all this fuss about? Why are the Ethiopian-haters in Kiryat Malachi to blame? Six months ago, the Knesset passed the Admissions Committee Law, empowering Communal Villages to set up Admissions Committees and exclude persons who "do not fit the social fabric." Why only Communal Villages? Why not urban apartment buildings as well? What kind of discrimination is this? So why can't the gates of Kiryat Malachi be shut in the to Ethiopians' faces? Are they less Black than the Sudanese and Eritreans? After all, just a few weeks ago, the government of Israel decided that stopping the entry of refugees and asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea and other African countries is in the supreme national interest of Israel, a purpose for which it is right and proper to spend huge resources on constructing walls and fences and prisons, and to get the Knesset to pass stringent special laws.

Chapter Five

"Thou shalt not wrong or oppress the Stranger, for you were Strangers in the Land of Egypt" (Exodus 22:21)

A bit of relevant family history, before I return to the present of this country. During the First World War Galicia - then a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, later part of Poland – was a deadly battlefield. Great armies passed though it back and forth, fighting and killing each other. It was most certainly not a pleasant place to be. All residents of Galicia suffered greatly, and the Jews there suffered even worse then the others, because war conditions gave a free rein to anti-Semites of all kinds.

It was at that time that my grandparents, Yehoshua and Sarah Keller, escaped from the flames of Galicia, and found refuge in Berlin, the capital of Germany. Germany was then considered a civilized and enlightened country, and after the 1918 Revolution which established the Weimar Republic it had a model Liberal and Democratic Constitution. My grandparents lived together with hundreds of other Jewish refugees and asylum seekers in a big, crowded building near the Alexanderplatz in the eastern part of Berlin. There, my father Ya'akov Keller was born in 1929.

Not all residents of Germany were happy with the fact that their country has become a haven for refugees. For example, at a rally which took place in the city of Hanover in July 1922, a minor local politician named Gustav Seifert got loud applause when he voiced a warning that the influx of refugees from the East was a time bomb and a serious danger to Germany. Who was this Gustav Seifert, and who were the people who applauded him? They were not complete monsters. Just simple people, living through a difficult social and economic crisis, who felt threatened by this flow of refugees with their strange language and weird clothes, and who felt it just must be stopped. As the speaker on the podium said.

Gustav Seifert in himself was not any great political success, and his name remains an unimportant footnote in the history books. But he and many others joined a party which grew and gained political momentum and made to the citizens of Germany a solemn promise that the flow of refugees will be stopped, once and for all. The party gained a capable and highly talented leader, whose name became known across the country, later all over the world. And finally, this party came to power.

That was when my father was four years old. During the new government's first months in power, Jews in Berlin (as in all the world) celebrated the Feast of Tabernacles. Supporters of the new government, who very much disliked refugees, came in the evening to the big crowded building near the Alexanderplatz and destroyed the Sukka, the ceremonial hut which had been erected in the courtyard. My grandparents came then and there to the conclusion that it would be better not to stay in Germany.

Indeed, the party which came to power in Germany at that time fulfilled its promise to the voters, and stopped the flow of refugees from the East. It fulfilled that promise very thoroughly - in fact, in a much more thorough way than most of the voters could have imagined when they brought it to power. By the time when that party ended its twelve years of tenure in power, many of these voters were no longer alive. But that's another story.

Chapter Six

My father arrived at this country with his parents in 1933 and grew up and came to adulthood in Jerusalem, and I was born and raised in Tel Aviv, and this week I was at home and late at night witnessed on TV the Knesset voting and passing the law which says that from now on, anyone crossing Israel's southern border would be liable to three years' imprisonment without trial.

37 Knesset Members supported this law and only eight opposed it. 73 other Knesset members just voted with their feet. The heated debate continued deep into the night, and the comfortable hotel beds paid from the state budget beckoned.

Even before it was definitely enacted, Minister Aharonovitch instructed the personnel of the Police and Border Guards and Prison Service to prepare for the expected flood of detainees. Prison slots have already been prepared for fifteen thousand people, and the government approved funding to build more prisons and detention camps. All infiltrators will automatically get three years in prison. Refugee? Asylum seeker? Just a migrant worker? First of all, get him in the cell and shut the door on him, and then (if at all) look into who he is and what he is looking for here.

Would it really deter them from continuing to come here? That is far from sure. Certainly, three years in an Israeli prison is not a picnic. But many of the people who come here by foot from faraway Africa have undergone such horrors in the places from which they fled and also at various places along the way, that they may still would insist on escaping into our territory.

"We have no choice. We had to pass this law. We are the only country in the First World which Third World people can reach on foot," said yesterday morning the Prime Minister's Chef de Bureau on the radio.

Indeed, it is so. Israel is the first part of the First World, the rich and successful and prosperous part of the Earth. Even the poorest in our country (and there are many of them, and their numbers increase every year) live a better life than the residents of most African countries.

A hundred years ago, this country was a remote province of the Ottoman Empire. A clear part of what is nowadays called "Third World". How did Israel manage to become part of the First World, a place which people from Africa strive to reach (even for three years in prison...)? Of course, our own hard work and know how and the quality of our workforce was part of it. But the State of Israel also received considerable help to get that high up on the ladder.

For example, the aid to the tune of three billion dollars per year, generously granted to the State of Israel over several decades by the generous Uncle Sam. Three billion dollars a year – much more than the aid provided by the United States to any country in Black Africa.

So why do they continue coming, these damned infiltrators who go thousands of miles on foot and do not flinch from the horrors of the way nor from three years in nice Israeli prisons? Maybe they're looking here for the dollars which America did not send to their country of origin?

About Antisemites and Kindergartens

2012-01-07T07:19:00.000-08:00

Several months ago, the social protest in Israel was at its peak. The crowds took to the streets and called for Social Justice. The Israeli National Union of Students was prominent among the protest leadership – the union as such, and most especially its chair Itzik Shmueli.

A prominent issue at the time was the "Baby Carriages Protest" of mothers demanding free kindergartens. And lo and behold, at this very moment the Prime Minister is proposing that the cabinet implements free kindergartens to all! A happy end – or is it? Not precisely. A small question remains - exactly where will the money come from?

The social protesters had called for a cut in the defense budget, and noted that providing social security to Israel's citizens is as every bit as important as providing external security. Three months ago the Prime Minister went on record with the opinion that out of the annual tens of billions allocated to the military, three billion can be cut without compromising Israel's security. But that was three months ago, an eternity in this country's politics. Since then, participation in demonstrations on the streets went down. What went up were the dire warnings by the generals - about the dangers and challenges posed by the upheavals in the Middle East' about the coming wars in Gaza and Iran etc. In short, the Prime Minister announcing a defense budget cut is now definitely out of the question.

There was also a proposal to impose a special tax on the richest of the rich in our country. Not much, just two percent - it certainly would not have led them to bankruptcy. But at the last minute before it was to be voted on in the Knesset, the tax on the rich just vanished, evaporated into thin air. Just what happened? Perhaps, once upon a time, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance will deign to give an explanation. Meanwhile, the tycoons get to keep their money and keep defaulting on payments of their debts.

So, where will kindergartens be funded from? No problem, a flat budget cut will be implemented in all government funding, other social activities will be curtailed and reduced and the money transferred to the kindergartens. "That's not at all what we wanted and demanded" cry out the social protest leaders. "We did not want the blanket pulled from one side to the other, one social budget cut for the sake of another. We demanded a significant increase in all the social budgets!"

But this time, the voice of the National Union of Students is missing among the renewed social protesters. At the moment, they have more important and urgent issues to deal, world-spanning issues. In short, the union is engaged in mobilizing the students of Israel to fight antisemitism. Yes, a struggle against antisemitism. What a wonderful cause. And it turns out that nowadays, it is no longer needed to take any risks in order to fight antisemitism. You need not even leave your home. In this day and age, it is possible to fight antisemitism from the comfort and convenience of the student's own home. Just in front of your word-processor with a cup of steaming tea at your side and get on with the job, fight and fight and fight, detect and locate and map out the nasty anti-Semitic sites of which the Internet is full and pull the ground away from under them.

"This is our chance, Israeli students! Our chance to provide correct and balanced information, help in the fight against the de-legitimization of Israel and against anti-Jewish hatred in the world!" exhorted the National Union of Students in the manifesto addressed to its three hundred thousand members. And best of all, you don't have to do it for free. Each student committed to engage in the fateful struggle against antisemitism for a at least five hours per week over the coming year will in the end be rewarded and remunerated to the tune of 7600 Israeli Shekels.

The only remaining question is this: just who are the antisemites, and how can we recognize them? Over long periods in history, there had been no great difficulty in this regard. Antisemites used to be quite obliging and even the most simple of persons could easily recognize them on sight. But since then, things have changed considerably, and nowadays you often need to be an expert with years of exacting studies behind you in order to locate and identify the antisemites.

Indeed, both here in Israel and all over the world, experts of this kind are hard at work, tirelessly increasing and extending the scope of antisemitism and often making brilliant careers in the process. They have searched out and located antisemites in all kinds of unexpected nooks and crannies. Indeed, quite a few people have been exposed when even they themselves did not know they were antisemites.

So, when it's so difficult and complicated to diagnose just who the anti-Semites are, how can a first year student, harassed with preparing for difficult examinations, develop the unique sense of smell needed to scent out the hidden antisemite?

No worry! The government of Israel is providing to all and sundry, free of charge, a comprehensive preparation course guaranteed to make you a world class expert on antisemitism at record speed. What exactly will be learned in such courses? Well, the precise curriculum has not been published, but we can get some idea from the remarks of senior cabinet ministers and government officials.

For example, this week it was published that Prof. Yaakov Neeman, Minister of Justice in the government of Israel, called "Haaretz" newspaper by the name "Der Sturmer", the name of the organ of the Nazi Party under Hitler. So here, at one fell blow was discovered and exposed a dangerous antisemitic newspaper which disseminates antisemitic propaganda in Hebrew and English, in Israel and all over the world. Which creates a wide opening through which other major and minor antisemites could be located and exposed.

For example, Ha'aretz (sorry, Der Sturmer) reported on a group of five hundred nasty and rude Israeli parents, who came out in outspoken opposition to the welcome educational initiative of minister Gideon Sa'ar to have Israeli pupils go to the pioneering settlers in Hebron and Shiloh and learn from them about the glorious history of the Jewish people. Students attending the special government courses would immediately understand that these are not Israeli parents caring for their children – no, they are nothing but antisemites.

And here is another breed of these nasty antisemites, those who oppose Israeli theaters holding performances in the settlements. They went so far as the absurd suggestion that there might be a contradiction between Habimah Theater performing at settlements built in Occupied Territory and the same theater appearing at a prestigious international Shakespeare festival. Because of these antisemites there is now an intense debate going on at the site of the Globe Theatre in London - certainly a place where courageous and determined Israeli students can show their mettle.

And yet another example - the British Internet sites attacking such a great and wonderful institution as the Jewish National Fund. They dare to question the JNF's well-known role in making the desert bloom. Rather, those antisemites assert that the JNF is holding on to thirteen percent of Israel's territory and is willing to lease them only and exclusively to Jews and to nobody else, and that this is explicitly set out in the JNF's regulations and bylaws. And they further assert that the JNF is sending bulldozers to destroy Bedouin houses in Al-Arakib in order to plant a forest where they had been. Only antisemites can come up with such nasty accusations against good old JNF, and even get 76 Members of the British Parliament to demand that the issue be debated in the House. Clearly, dedicated Israeli students must immediately wade in and disprove all these nasty lies, once and for all.

Who is still interested in Kindergartens?

"You have found the place of my shame, O King of the Kazars"

2012-01-03T06:57:00.000-08:00

Yehudah Halevi was one of the prominent figures in Jewish history, a Rabbi, poet, philosopher and physician who lived more than nine hundred years in Christian Spain and Muslim Spain and at the end of his life in Egypt. A man who lived in the days of harsh and cruel wars between Christians and Muslims, in which the Jews were often caught between a rock and a hard place. He dreamed about the Land of lsrael and about a Jewish kingdom which would be established once upon a time. And he wrote beautiful and sad poems which centuries later would be taken up by the Zionist movement and set to music and are occasionally still heard on the radio.

Yehudah Halevi's masterpiece was "The Kuzari", a book designed to defend "the humiliated and despised religion" and to prove the superiority of Judaism over Christianity and Islam (as well as over Greek philosophy). And he wrote it originally in Arabic, which he and his millieu considered to be the language of culture in which was the appropriate language for religious and philosophical writings. Only later translated into Hebrew, it still is an important text of the Jewish religion.

It is written in the form of a dialogue between the King of the Khazars, an ancient people who lived in what is now the Ukraine, and the Jewish sage who convinced him to convert to Judaism and convert his people - an event which was already ancient history at Halevi's time.

In one of these sections (Kuzari 111 - 113) the Sage remarks that the Jews who live in poverty and misery, subject to scorn and agony and killing, are exactly therefore "closer to God than if we had reached greatness on earth".

But the King objects: "This might have been so, had your humility been voluntary. But it is involuntary, and if you get power in you hands you too would slay".

To which Halevi lets the Sage answer: ""You have found the place of my shame, O King of the Kazars".

Full text in english of Halevi's "The Kuzari"

Darkness

2011-12-30T12:10:00.000-08:00

We have come to expel the darkness
We carry light and fire
Each of us is a little light
Together our light is a power
Away, darkness! Begone, blackness!
Turn back, back from the light!

Last week Uri Elitzur, a founder and leader of the settler movement (and former chef de bureau to Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir), related to this well-known Hanukkah song in the weekly edition of the right-wing "Makor Rishon" .

"We sang 'we have come to expel the darkness', and the kindergarten teacher let us march in step, and we were four-year old Maccabees and Pioneers upholding the Blue and White flag and fighting the Greeks and Arabs", writes Elitzur, who was four in 1950. "We absorbed the conviction of the teacher and the other adults that we were the Children of Light and the Harbingers of Progress. In those days, both here and in the wider world, Zionism and Jewish Nationalism had a natural link with Enlightenment and Progress - the forces which expelled the Arab darkness and established the State of Israel".

But these good old days are long gone, complains Elitzur: "Light and Darkness have exchanged sides. Those who nowadays hold aloft enthusiastically the flag of Jewish Nationalism and fight the Arabs and settle the Land of Israel are no longer regarded by the Enlightened Camp as Bringers of Light ; to the contrary, they are designated the Forces of Darkness. Conversely, it is those who support the Arabs and fight against Zionism who are convinced that it is they who are expelling the darkness and bringing the light".

So what does he propose to do about it? Make peace with the Palestinians? Fundamentally change Israel's behavior in practice, of which unpleasant reports go out all over the world? One need not exaggerate. Uri Elitzur lives in the settlement of Ofra at the heart of the West Bank, and he certainly has no intention of seeing it become part of the State of Palestine. In fact, he has a much simpler solution - later in life he realized that in fact "That image of the Expulsion of Darkness was a bit too enthusiastic and impassioned". In fact, it's not so appropriate to Jewish traditions. Hanukkah is about modest little candles that have no pretense of expelling the darkness.

In short: What is so bad about the darkness? If the Enlightened in this country and throughout the world turn against the settlers and settlements, let the settlers full-heartedly embrace the Darkness, and the world be damned. (That quite fits with the bills they and their friends keep on proposing in the Knesset...)

It happened that two days after the publication of this article, Channel 2 TV broadcast a big news item about a group of people who are very concerned about the deterioration of the status and image of Israel at the universities in the United States, where "Israeli Apartheid Week" is marked annually and speakers for the Government of Israel face a hail of hostile heckling. "From the universities in the U.S. will come the next generation of leaders, the Presidents and Senators of the coming decades. Unless we can change the atmosphere there, the future of Israel is in danger," said one of the organizers.

So, what do these good people propose to do? Change the policy? Change Israel's face? Replace the government? Again, one should not exaggerate. A way was found - to convene the Israeli students attending American universities and equip them with good arguments to explain why we are still the Good Guys in this story. For example, to describe the horrors of suicide bombings perpetrated by Palestinians, and also explain that Israel covers only 0.8% of the overall total surface of the Middle East.

Is that enough to convince the students at universities across the United States that Palestinians could and should content themselves with 0.0% of the Middle East? That's not at all sure.

And then, another coincidence (or is it truly coincidence?). On 26 December, the same day when this news item was broadcast extensively on Israel's Channel 2 TV , Adham Baroud died in the Al Rantissi Children's Hospital in Gaza City.

Adham Baroud was seven months old when his life ended. He had been born suffering from congenital renal problems requiring specialized treatment that is unavailable in Gaza. Four months ago, he was sent to an Israeli hospital, where he was operated and returned to Gaza in a much better condition. But in late November there was a new deterioration after a catheter inserted in the previous operation got infected.

On December 1, an official and urgent request was lodged with the Israeli authorities to let Adham Baroud be treated again. The request got somehow stuck in the wheels of bureaucracy. For over three weeks, the officers and officials in charge of such issues could not make up their minds whether or not Adham Baroud constituted a danger to the security of the state of Israel. Now, they are spared any further dilemma on this issue.

This story came to me from the Gaza office of the British charity Oxfam. I looked in vain for any mention of it in the Israeli media. To be sure, there were other Gaza-related news items, much more important: about the aircraft carrying out the liquidation of those deemed to be dangerous Gazan terrorists, and of Palestinians shooting some missiles in retaliation, and of Israeli planes bombing some more in counter-retaliation, and of Israeli generals speaking ominously of a big all-out new war in Gaza, in or without conjunction with the bigger all-out war with Iran. It is absolutely necessary, in order to rebuild Israel's deterrence, which had been eroded a bit. But not this week. Not yet.

And, indeed, this morning there was on the radio a neat little item of how good we are. Gazan farmers willing to come to a hall which was especially prepared for them near the Erez Crossing (which they are not allowed to cross) could attend a course of instruction in the proper use of insecticides and fertilizers, delivered by very enlightened Israeli instructors.

Who says we are no longer the Children of Light and Harbingers of Progress in the Dark Middle East?

Them Europeans

2011-12-23T09:54:00.000-08:00

Why didn't we think of it before? Launching a frontal assault on the Europeans. We will teach them a lesson, once and for all, as we have already taught the Turks.

"Israel vs. Europe" proclaimed banner headlines in yesterday's newspapers. The "Israel Today" newspaper, aka Bibinews - published for our PM by philanthropist Sheldon Adelson - had an even more telling title: "Israel takes the offensive, Europe becomes irrelevant".

Huge ads all over the country, published by the Bibi paper, say "Every Israeli has the right to get excited!". And indeed, the promise is fully kept: What an excitement! The Battle of the Giants, Binyamin "Bibi" Netanyahu and Avigdor "Yvette" Lieberman, all by themselves, take on the whole of Europe, the English and the French and the Germans, all of them together, and smite them hip and thigh!

Shame on these Europeans. Did they have nothing better to do with their time? Must they poke into the settlements which the government of Israel has seen fit to build and expand on every hill and under every tree in the West Bank (sorry, Judea and Samaria), on various pieces of land which Palestinians insolently assert that we stole from them? What robbery are you talking about? Is this not the Land God in person promised to our ancestors. And now the Minister of Education, Gideon Sa'ar, announced also in person that this is the Land of Our Forefathers which will remain ours forever, and that the scarce resources of the educational system must be used to bring all school kids to visit our brethren the settlers, who make desert after desert bloom. So, let the Europeans stop interfering in our internal affairs.

And, by the way, what is this outrageous European interest in the torching of ten mosques? Oh, well, it's fifteen now, I was not quite up to date. But no matter, we will catch these arsonist bastards, we will indeed catch them and punish them with the full severity of the law, and we do not need Europeans to give us advice on the matter. We picked the best detectives of the Israel Police to work on this hot case, they are feverishly detecting and investigating and scrutinizing. There is no doubt that within five years at the most they will lay their hands on at least one of the arsonists. Well, maybe within ten years.

In short, the Europeans have lost their minds, they have become irrelevant, as the Palestinians are irrelevant; and the Turks, and the Egyptians, and the Syrians, who have never been relevant and the Iranians, not to forget how terribly irrelevant they are. And now - the Europeans. The British, the French, and the Germans. All of them have ceased to be relevant. As a matter of fact, the Germans are still relevant when they build us a new submarine and fund it with one hundred and fifty million Euros. But that is where their relevance begins and ends. Otherwise, let them sit quietly and not interfere. Quiet, we are busy here – building and setting on fire and redeeming an ancestral land. Silence, don’t disturb!

And the Americans? Oh, that's another story altogether. The Americans certainly are relevant. At least, they are relevant until the Presidential elections in November next year. Until then, all candidates must listen to AIPAC and the Jewish vote, and take care not to anger us. That is what is relevant. But what if that Obama gets re-elected and after the elections he also starts to make trouble about the settlements? Clear enough – in that case, he too will become irrelevant. We will stand all alone, in the most relevant of isolations.

About rampaging settlers, paralyzed soldiers and a threatened TV channel

2011-12-16T11:47:00.001-08:00

"The law breakers at the Ephraim Brigade base camp are just like the law breakers at the Fence demonstrations in Bil'in, and should be treated the same" said the Prime Minister of Israel yesterday. As it happens, at exactly the same time there was a broadcast on the TV Documentary Channel a film about the activities of "Anarchists Against the Wall" in such villages as Bil'in and Ni'lin and recently also Nabi Saleh. Had the Prime Minister put on the TV set in his office, he would have seen soldiers opening up with a heavy barrage of tear gas as soon as protesters approached within tens of yards away, even without a single stone having been thrown. He could have seen how activist Matan Cohen was shot at close range and lost an eye. (There happened to be a photographer nearby, who documented in real time the bleeding eye). And the Channel 10 News this evening broadcast photos from the killing of Mustafa Tamimi last Friday at Nabi Salah and the killing of Bassam al Tamimi in Bil'in last year, both shot by soldiers from close range. (So far, Channel 10 is still broadcasting, though it is under imminent threat of being closed down next month...)

In response, the spokesperson of the Army's Central Command expressed his wonder: "What did Mustafa Tamimi expect when he ran after a moving jeep and threw stones?" Indeed, what did he think? Now it is a bit late to ask him. And what were the young settlers thinking just four days later, when they opened such a door of an army jeep - whose passenger was an IDF brigade commander - hitting him in the head with a heavy stone? Were they afraid of sharing Mustafa Tamimi's end? If they had any such apprehension, it was certainly baseless. Actually, none of the many soldiers present did anything to prevent them from assaulting the commanding officer, calling him a Nazi, and walking calmly away.

And after that the young settlers went in a great crowd through the main gate into the base camp of the Ephraim Brigade, without the guard blocking their way. (The guard at the gate of an army base is quite low in the military hierarchy, without much authority or standing – but the one thing he can be reasonably expected to do is prevent the entry of unauthorized persons…) . They entered the camp openly and brazenly, damaged military vehicles and slashed tires openly, in front of dozens of watching soldiers, and at the end of this operation went back through the same open gate decorated by the same guard, and went blithely back to their homes in the settlements.

So what should the soldiers have done? Open fire? With all due respect to Labor KM Ben-Eliezer, this might have been an unnecessary exaggeration. It would have probably been quite enough to declare "you are all under arrest", take the entire band into the nearest available detention cell, and on the following morning ask a judge to remand them in custody on charges of aggravated assault and destruction of property.

But if it's that simple, how come it never occurred to any of the soldiers and officers present? Probably because already for decades it has been made crystal clear to soldiers entering service in the Occupied Territories, that their role and function is to help, facilitate and protect the settlers - at all times under all conditions and at all costs. When settlers take over a piece of land and establish a new outpost, the soldiers' mission is clear: first of all deploy to protect the settlers from any threat (including, and especially, from th side of the angry Palestinian owners of the land; only later (if at all) check into the legality of their presence there. In general, in any conflict between settlers and Palestinians, there is no question what the role of the soldiers should be: first, use all means to help the settlers, and only later (if ever) check exactly what happened there, and why, and who is responsible and who is to blame.

Actually, all this began already in 1967. Already when Rabbi Levinger and his band set themselves up in Hebron for the first time and created a fait accompli, and the military governor sought to evict them due to his best professional judgment that their presence constituted the danger of a violent conflagration dangerous. But the political echelon (a Labor Party Cabinet, at the time ...) made it very clear to the governor that there are higher considerations which override the best of an officer's professional judgment. And ever since then, this lesson had been instilled and made clear to many generations of soldiers and officers. (Not to mention that an increasing proportion of the soldiers and officers are themselves settlers or come from the settler-friendly National Religious community, and that an ever decreasing number of people from other parts of the Israeli society are enthusiastic about serving in these places and in that army...)

Last night the Prime Minister delivered a magnificent speech at the Likud Governing Council and promised that all this will would change, and that from now on harsh measures and severe penalties would be effected against anyone doing such things. Is he serious? There is, in fact, no need to take very drastic measures. Quite enough to convey new instructions through the army's normal chain of command which make clear to soldiers that in such circumstances it is their duty to arrest the settlers.

So what is going to happen next time that the Price Tag Hilltop Youth decide to go berserk? Probably we will not have to wait long to know the answer.

How we celebrated International Human Rights Day

2011-12-13T08:52:00.000-08:00

December 10, 1948. Sixty-three years ago, the nations of the world gathered in Paris to adopt the Declaration of Human Rights, which states that all human beings everywhere have inalienable rights, which were set down and enumerated in great detail, and that every state and every government is bound to maintain and preserve them. In commemoration of this event, the date of December 10 has been marked, ever since, as International Human Rights Day.

http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml

The young State of Israel, founded only a few months before, was among the first to sign this declaration, though its actions - both during the harsh war that accompanied its creation and in later years of its existence – did not always match what was said in that Declaration. In fairness it should be noted that Israel is not the only signatory to be open to such charges. Nor is Israel the only country where the government is angry and furious at the actions of human rights organizations which conduct research and dig up and reveal to the world the human rights violations perpetrated by the government and army and police and security services of their country.

This year, the Human Rights March in Tel Aviv was more than just another of the annual events which take place every year on this date. It was a challenge to an all-out assault by right-wing Knesset Members, in whose mouths 'Human Rights' became a dirty word and Senator Joe McCarthy - an admirable man who was "right in every word he said." At the Rothschild Boulevard, the same place where the Social Justice protests began last summer, Human Rights activists gathered in their thousands - Jews and Arabs as well as hundreds of the African refugees for whom the Prime Minister of Israel intends to build new, large prisons (sorry, "staying facilities") and spend on it no less than 650 million shekels from the state budget.

"The Right Wing will not gag us!" read signs carried in the procession along Ibn Gvirol Street. There were activists for workers' rights, women's rights, the rights of the Arab minority, of the gay community and of the Palestinians in the Territories, as well as advocates of the right to housing, health, and education. Also members of the "Legal Aid Center for the Aged" were to be seen in the crowd, with their special logo showing a judge's gavel becoming a walking stick. Even MK Ofir Akunis would not find anything wrong with that (or would he?...)

And at that same moment, the villagers of Nabi Saleh demonstrated in protest of settlers from Halamish taking over the spring which had provided water to their village over centuries. Every Friday they demonstrate, and every Friday Israeli soldiers disperse them. But not every Friday there are fatalities. Last Friday, in order to honor International Human Rights Day, an Israeli soldier sighted directly at the head of protester Mustafa Tamimi and shot him from a close range. Tamimi was mortally wounded and died in hospital the next day.

The next day, at about the time when Mustafa Tamimi died from his wounds and soldiers started shooting tear gas on Palestinians and Israelis taking part in his funeral, Prof. Dan Shechtman of the Haifa Technion delivered a speech in Stockholm when receiving the Nobel Prize in Chemistry from the King of Sweden. In the speech he said that it is the duty of scientists to promote education, rationalism and tolerance, in order to create a better world for all of us, and to keep their eye on the actions of the politicians. For their part, our politicians praised Professor Shechtman for an impressive and well-delivered speech and for having brought upon Israel a lot of honour, and went on to discuss the bill which would prohibit Muslims in Israel from calling the faithful to prayer from the top of minarets.

JNF losing the battle for its reputation

2011-12-06T10:56:00.000-08:00

Investigative journalist Uri Blau specializes in obtaining documents that are not intended for publication. He is currently waiting for the State Prosecutor's office with regard to the classified military documents he published with regard to "liquidations" and executions without trial whose publication considerably embarrassed the High Command of the Israeli Defense Forces. Former soldier Anat Kam already begun serving a four and a half years' term for having leaked these documents to this reporter. Is the journalist also to be prosecuted for having fulfilled what he considers his professional and moral duty? A complicated issue, with which the government's legal branch has not yet completed grappling. Meanwhile, Blau does not sit idle.

In the Ha'aretz weekend supplement last Friday, Blau published minutes from the organization known as the Jewish National Fund, internal documents which include quite a few interesting items.

http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/seeing-the-forest-and-the-trees-the-untold-story-of-the-jewish-national-fund-1.400530

The included quotes hereafter are my own translation from the Hebrew original, written before Blau's article appeared in Ha'aretz English.

"A Jew bought an apartment in Carmiel [in the Galilee], on JNF land. He had no problem. Twenty years have passed and Muhammad, who lives in Deir al-Assad [near Karmiel] came in search of an apartment to buy. The Jew sold him the apartment, and got a proper payment. Then he goes to the Israel Lands Administration and says: 'Hello, I am Muhammad, I would like to register the apartment in my name in the Land Registry. They say, "Wait a minute, you're an Arab, aren't you? Then it is impossible. The rules are that JNF land may not be sold or leased to Arabs'."

Nowadays, this doesn't really sound good. Effi Stenzler, Israeli Labor Party member, Head of the Jewish National Fund and former Mayor of Givatayim, certainly did not mean these honesty spoken words, duly noted down in the minutes, to get such a public scrutiny in Israel and abroad. True, the Jewish National Fund had known better days, easier times, when there had been no need to hide its goals or be ashamed of them. When the JNF was established through the resolutions of the 1901 Zionist Congress, and still for many years afterwards, there had been no special problem in openly proclaiming that its raison d'etre was to acquire land for the use of Jews, and of Jews only. Throughout the Twentieth Century, it was common for the current British Prime Minister to hold the title of Honorary Patron of the JNF (the current habitant of 10 Downing Street decided to decline this honor).

Under Ottoman and British Mandatory rule, the Jewish National Fund purchased another acre after acre, through the donations of various millionaires as well as the dimes and pennies which Jewish children all over the world placed in the JNF 's blue donation boxes set up at their schools. (In Woody Allen's film "Radio Days" taking place in New York in the 1940's a Jewish boy broke open one of these boxes and dropped the money into his own pocket - which turned out to be a biographical detail.)

Until 1948, the JNF managed to gain control of about four percent of Mandatory Palestine. In 1949 the government of Israel gave it another nine percent of the land, which was at the time classified as "abandoned land" whose previous owners ended up in refugee camps on the other side of the border. For this bounty of real estate the Jewish National Fund was not required to pay anything, not even a single one of these pennies donated by children to these famous blue boxes. And all of these thirteen percent of the State of Israel's territory which became JNF lands were - and still are – subject to the JNF bylaws stating that the land shall never be sold or leased or given away to a non-Jew. (According to these bylaws, even working as an employee on JNF land is prohibited to non-Jews, although this stipulation the JNF has long ceased trying to enforce – otherwise, Israel's agriculture might have collapsed...)

And that is still the situation up to the present. By the law enacted by the Knesset, management of the JNF lands was transferred to the Israel Lands Authority, which is obliged by law to administer it according to the abovementioned JNF bylaws. But in recent years, this routine is starting to creak, and there were repeated appeals to the Supreme Court, making the judges stick their noses into JNF affairs and take considerable interest in them and strangely enough rule that the discrimination of Arab citizens is illegal in a democratic country. In the previous Knesset, legislation has been initiated by right wing MKs to define this as legal, but it got stuck (maybe now it will be back ...). And now in some of the world's democratic countries – in Britain and Australia and even in the United States – there is an increasing number of people and groups asking why should the Jewish National Fund go on being registered in their countries as a tax-exempt charitable organization.

And then the Jewish National Fund was faced with a worldwide deluge of unflattering reports about the Negev Bedouin village of Al-Arakib, the village whose existence is strongly opposed by the Government of Israel , which applies its might to destroy it again and again (only to have it erected again and again by the residents). There were widely-disseminated photos of JNF bulldozers flattening the ground, in preparation for the planting of a Jewish National Fund forest on the site of the village, so as to create there an irreversible fact.

Also on this Stenzler had interesting things to say, quoted in the minutes now published by Blau: "We learned from experience that where a tree is planted, almost no one can take over the land... This is an area of which we take possession so that nobody else can take it over, neither Jews nor non-Jews, neither Bedouins nor anyone else". JNF Board member Yitzchak Krivitzky had an idea how to deal with the problem. "We play with courts and democracy. Go to Sinai and see how the Egyptians take care of the Bedouins. There is no democracy there."

But other members of the JNF board did raise concerns about the revelations in the world. Director Alon Tal said the affair was "a very grave JNF public relations fiasco... The photos of JNF forestry workers and bulldozers destroying buildings get into the focus of attention, and the Jewish National Fund looks like an accomplice. Our overseas representatives were unable to give a convincing answer to the charges. They lost the battle for our reputation in Australia, the United States, and so on ".

Even more emphatic was Director Ora Kresin. "I will say what I think, even if it sounds quixotic" she said. "I feel uneasy about these photos placing trees against people. Having trees become a weapon of war against an Israeli population, citizens of Israel, is extremely difficult. It is very difficult to see these photos and listen to these voices. "

Chairman Stenzler expressed his satisfaction with the fact that at least the adverse publicity occurred mainly abroad. "I want to thank communications and public relations people, who worked diligently to prevent this issue from popping up in the media... In the Israeli media this issue hardly struck a chord. God forbid that it would." Well, now it begins to get attention also in the Israeli media.

The response made to Blau by the JNF stated that "the article is based on a collection of misquotes and half-truths" and that "the Israeli media acts responsibly, seeing and knowing that not a single tree had been planted in that area." Indeed, so far the JNF had not implemented its declared purpose of planting trees in Arakib and establishing facts on the ground against the Bedouin population. And perhaps, because of the media coverage, it never would ...

And a bit different, yet similar, issue: Since 1967, the JNF has made an effort to take control of Palestinian lands and properties, and was not very scrupulous about the means used in achieving this purpose. For example, the JNF had been conducting a years-long struggle to evict the Sutrin Family from their home in the village of Silwan in East Jerusalem. The state authorities declared the family house to be "absentee property" and therefore transferred ownership to the "Custodian of Absentee Property", who transferred ownership to the Jewish National Fund, which intended to remove the Palestinians from the house and hand it over to the settler association Elad, which had already taken over in similar ways many Palestinian buildings and lands in Silwan. Last week, the twelve members of the Sutrin Family were going be thrown out of their home by a court order issued at the request of the Jewish National Fund.

Had the story not burst out in the Israeli and international media, by now the settlers would have already been in possession of the house. But the publicity caused the JNF a lot of confusion and headache - especially when the Rabbis for Human Rights organized a campaign of letters of protest to both the JNF directors in Israel and their fellows in the United States, who could be expected to be more open to the arguments. The JNF people tried to assert that it was not them demanding expulsion of the Palestinian family, but only the settlers who asked the court for the eviction order. But it turned out that the request to the court to issue the eviction order was lodged by the lawyers in the name of the JNF (though, indeed, the same lawyers also happen to represent settlers). In the end, JNF announced that (at least for the time being) the eviction order would not be carried out ...

On the well-designed website of the Jewish National Fund, all this is not mentioned. There's no word of Arakib nor of Silwan. In fact, no mention of Arabs at all. There are a few general words about JNF "working on behalf of the Jewish people, as the trustee of their properties in the Land of Israel". But mainly the website is devoted to explaining that the Jewish National Fund is a model ecological and environmental organization, thoroughly Green :

http://www.kkl.org.il/kkl/

"JNF is responsible for 1.5 million acres of planted and natural forest in Israel. In this land the JNF has planted over 240 million trees across approximately 200,000 acres. At a time of global warming, planting trees fixes the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, and therefore contributes to reducing global warming. JNF is developing community forests and bio-spheric parks which combine and balance between use by the community which lives around the woods and open spaces and the preservation of nature and environment. JNF staff are ready at any moment to prevent forest fires and use advanced firefighting equipment and fire observation towers. The JNF performs advanced research in the process of rehabilitating burned areas. The JNF is working to de-pollute and rehabilitate the springs and rivers of Israel, and develop the potential for using nature and landscape as a public resource. The JNF prevents soil erosion and desertification processes, embarking on drainage flood damage rehabilitation projects. The JNF partners with international agencies in an attempt to find a solution for global forestry issues, drainage basin management, lowering levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and the management of semi-arid regions. The JNF conducts and supports research and development enterprises with international implications, and shares the knowledge with other countries."

The above is a sample of the extensive environmental activities for which the JNF proudly takes credit.

Indeed, a welcome and praiseworthy activity. It is highly desirable that somebody in Israel be in charge of promoting it. But why, in fact, should it be a specifically Jewish organization, excluding everybody else? Is preserving the environment not in the interest of all Israeli citizens, irrespective of religion, race or ethnicity?

"There are judges in Jerusalem!"

2011-11-26T12:12:00.000-08:00

A week ago the extreme right paper "Makor Rishon" published an article praising the efforts of Justice Minister Ya'akov Neeman to introduce significant changes in composition and orientation of the Supreme Court. In illustration it was accompanied by a cartoon depicting Supreme Court President Dorit Beinish screaming in rage and frustration when the minister moves his pawns in sophisticated gambits on the chessboard.

But not all moves are successful. This week the Israeli Bar Association has elected its representatives to the Judicial Selection Committee, which would choose new judges for the Supreme Court, and they were not at all to the liking of the Minister and his adherents. Not that they are deterred – the new ploy is to pass in the Knesset a bill which would overturn the Bar Association's choice and force the lawyers to elect new representatives, more to the government's liking... Is this a game of chess? It looks more like a boxing bout without rules.

Yaacov Katz, a leader of the settlers in the Occupied Territories and a Knesset Member for the National Union Party, initiated a bill which would make Justice Asher Grunis - who rarely interferes with the acts of the government and the army – into the next President of the Supreme Court. "This is a bill to return power to the people and wrest control of the Court away from a small miserable Tel Aviv elite group" said Katz. "All opinion polls confirm that confidence in the Supreme Court is meager. Only the Left and the Arabs express any trust in this court, the Jewish People regard it with contempt."

Coincidentally or not, the same newspaper which published Katz's opinions also featured another item about the same Supreme Court. The twins Mohamed and Mahmoud Atun live in Wadi Hummus which is part of Sur Baher, itself part of East Jerusalem. In East Jerusalem, Palestinians may only live if granted a residence permit by the Interior Ministry in the Government of Israel. Such a status the Israeli authorities refused to grant to the young Atun twins, though their father is an undisputed Permanent Resident of East Jerusalem. Since 2008 Ahmad Atun had been conducting as struggle on the status of his sons - but the Supreme Court heard his appeal and decided that the twins would not get the residency permit.

Indeed, Supreme Court President Dorit Beinish did rule that it is unacceptable to split a family in that way, the father having the right of residence at his home and his children denied the same - but she remained in the minority. Judge Grunis, the government's designated President of the Court, ruled together with his colleague Edmund Levy that such splitting of a family was acceptable "in order not to create a precedent".

"Now my sons are imprisoned in the house. Any police officer can at any moment arrest them. They can't go out to study or work or get married" said the father, whose last hope was dashed.

If such was the ruling of a "left-leaning court", what would have been the outcome in a court tending to the right?

***

The Supreme Court of the State of Israel is part of the government structure. It has shared interests and a shared system of values with the government, the Knesset, the Israeli Defense Forces and the Security Services, Shabak and Mossad. It rules according to the laws made by the Knesset (though having wide powers to interpret them) and acts on the presumption that the government's acts and policies are legitimate (unless clearly proven otherwise). Its judges certainly do not want to make a move which would be – or would be perceived as being – harmful to National Security or undermining the foundations of the Zionist enterprise.

But the Supreme Court justices are also part of the international legal establishment, along with the Supreme Court judges of the United States, and those of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and of the International Court in the Hague and the jurists and professors in prestigious Faculties of Law throughout America and Europe. They would certainly not want to take a step which would be (or could be construed as) a violation of the norms of equality and democratic conduct formulated in Western democracies over the past fifty years.

So what do the judges do? They look here and they look there and compromise in this direction and in that. Immediately after the war in 1967 Meir Shamgar, then President of the Supreme Court, decided to hear and rule on the petitions of Palestinians from the newly conquered territories and pass under judicial review the actions of the army. But the court also decided that such petitions cannot be based on the Fourth Geneva Convention, and that the State of Israel is not obligated to do adhere to the letter of that Convention, but merely to its "Humanitarian Principles".

For example, the Court ruled that the State of Israel is not obligated to adhere to the article in the Geneva Convention which prohibits an Occupying Power from moving and settling its own citizens in the Occupied Territory – since ruling otherwise would have rendered illegal any Israeli settlement whatsoever, and put the court in complete opposition to the basic government policy. In March 1979, when a petition was filed against the expropriation of Palestinian land for the establishment of the settlement of Beit El, north of Ramallah, the General in Charge of the IDF Central Command provided an affidavit to the court stating that "civilian settlement is part of Israel's system of defense" and therefore the expropriation was required for security purposes. The court did not want to dispute with the professional opinion of a general and accepted the state's position. Then Prime Minister Menachem Begin declared jubilantly on the Knesset podium: "There are judges in Jerusalem – settlements are legal!" and it was the left which was incensed at the court.

But half a year later, when a petition was filed against the expropriation of land near Nablus for the Elon Moreh settlement, the retired generals Matti Peled, and Chaim Bar-Lev filed affidavits stating their professional opinions which were contrary to that of the incumbent officers, stating that settlements do not in any way serve National Security but to the contrary impose on it a heavy burden. And this time the judges took up the dissenting opinion and determined that expropriating private land in order to build settlements was unacceptable and that the land in question must be returned immediately to its owners. This time it was the adherents of peace who proclaimed "There are judges in Jerusalem", and briefly the settlers and their supporters panicked. But soon the state found methods of declaring vast tracts of land to be "State Lands", making creative use of various obscure laws leftover from the Ottoman Empire, and even if they had been for generations in possession of Palestinian farmers such State Lands were made available for the erection of Israeli settlements, all perfectly legal according to the Supreme Court...

And later arose the question of the Separation Wall (or Fence or Barrier or various other names), and was under review at the International Court in The Hague. Whereupon that court held that the Fourth Geneva Convention in its entirety does apply to the State of Israel, and that Israel should not build a separation wall inside the Occupied Territory, blocking Palestinians villagers from having access to their land.

Should Israel want to build a border fence to defend its borders, the right place to erect it is on the Green Line, the 1967 border which remains the internationally recognized border of Israel. And then the Supreme Court judges of Israel came up with their own different verdict on the same issue. They determined that building a Separation Wall inside the West Bank was in itself acceptable, but the injury caused to Palestinians must be "proportional". And therefore the court held that in some places the fence had to be moved and (some of) their lands be returned to the Palestinians. And right-wingers were extremely incensed at the leftist court which helps the Arabs and damages National Security. For their part, the military authorities were very slow in implementing the ruling and came to the brink of contempt of court, but in the end the Wall was indeed moved in several locations, which made a lot of difference to the specific farmers whose land it was.

And on another field – an Israeli middle class couple named Kaadan wanted to purchase a home in a newly established town – and were turned down because they happened to be Arabs. And when they appealed to the Supreme Court, the state authorities answered to the court that it was true, an exclusively Jewish community was being created in which there was no room for Arabs, and there was nothing unusual about that – establishing Jewish-only communities was and had always been a cornerstone of Zionism. At the time, Supreme Court President Aharon Barak stated "This is the most difficult decision of my life", but after years of deliberation he and his colleagues decided to accept the petition and require the state authorities to allow the Kaadans to buy a house, like every other Israeli citizen irrespective of religion, race or ethnicity. It took the couple several more years and bureaucratic struggles until they actually got into their home. In the meantime the authorities found a new method – establish "Selection Committees" which are empowered to reject those who want to buy a home in a community because "they don't fit the social fabric", and this method was given the sanction of a Knesset law passed a few months ago. In the Supreme Court, appeals on its legality are still pending…

And there also came up the question of the interrogation methods used by the Shabak Security Services. For years, when the lawyers of Palestinian detainees appealed and asserted that their clients were being tortured, the court refused to hear the petitions on various technical grounds. When Human Rights organizations lodged an overall petition about such methods of torture ("moderate physical pressure"), the deliberations dragged on for years without issue, and the Shabak made strong hints and suggestions that should the Judges intervene in the interrogation methods, they would be held responsible for any upsurge in acts of terrorism which would follow. At that time, Supreme Court President Aharon Barak used to stay some time each year at the prestigious Law School of Yale University in the In the United States. Some of the Yale students were going to hold a protest against "the Supreme Judge who allows torture." With great effort, the heads of the Faculty prevevailed upon the students not to hold the demonstration which would have shamed their Guest of Honor, but shortly after the return of Barak to the Supreme Court in Jerusalem he accepted the petition of the Human Rights groups and banned various methods of "moderate physical pressure" which were held to be contrary to International Law. (The Shabak later invented new methods, a bit different than those which the Court forbade...)

And then, there came back tot the Supreme Court the issue of settlements and the land on which they were established. Peace and Human Rights organizations collected and brought evidence that despite the great abundance of "State Lands" available to them, the settlers allowed themselves to seize the private land of Palestinians, without any kind of expropriation or legal procedure - robbery and theft, pure and simple. And the court ruled that these settlements must be evacuated, and particularly determined that the settlement of Migron – which has become a kind of symbol and rallying point for the settlement movement - had to be evacuated no later than March 2012. And the settlers and their supporters cried out very loudly, and threatened civil disobedience and large scale violence and a multitude of random attacks on Arab property which they call "price tags". And Foreign Minister Lieberman threatened to leave the cabinet and shake its stability, should the Supreme Court ruling on Migron be carried out. It might be all this which created for the Netanyahu Government a feeling of emergency and urgency to change, ahead of March 2012, the composition and orientation of the Supreme Court...

***

So - who are you, the Supreme Court of the State of Israel? The last remaining defender and bastion of democracy and Human Rights, or just the "Good Cop" in a role-playing game which the State of Israel is playing? Or a bit of this and a bit of that, and not quite either? The Supreme Court is constantly looking in two directions, making all the time opposing considerations, and reaching all kinds of compromises – sometimes, rotten compromises. For many years, also the Government of Israel wanted to have such a Court, and found it quite useful. "There are judges in Jerusalem!" can only be said with conviction when these judges have some international credibility in the world.

But a different time has come upon us, when different tunes are sung. It is a different kind of a Right Wing – one which feels no shame or embarrassment, which no longer feels a need to put on a mask. A government appointing as its chief diplomat an Avigdor Lieberman, deliberately making him the face which Israel presents to the world. And now they want the Supreme Court to toe the line, too.Let the judges look in one direction only - at the government and the Knesset and the Army and the Security Services – and definitely turn their backs on colleagues in America and Europe and forget all that crap called democracy and Human Rights. To achieve this, ingenious tricks are devised and procedures are twisted out of shape and laws are changed in a twinkling and every obstacle crushed through with a heavy hand and everything done openly and brazenly. No more hypocrisy.

Is it possible? Certainly, it's possible. Gone are the days when you could say about anything in Israel "this is unconceivable." All bets are off, everything is open, everything is conceivable. Even a Supreme Court in the shape and image of the current majority in the Knesset. Why not? Also in North Korea there is an institution called The Supreme Court. Also in Syria.

The bastards have changed the rules

2011-11-19T11:44:00.000-08:00

In a public opinion poll conducted in Israel several years ago, about sixty percent of the respondents supported the idea of Israel joining the European Union. So far, this has not happened, but Israelis are very pleased that our soccer and basketball teams participate in European championships. Also the Eurovision Song Contest gets at least as much public attention in Israel as in countries located in the continent of Europe itself.

But how many Israelis would like to accept the authority of the European Court of Human Rights based in Strasbourg?

Herzl would have been very surprised to hear that a time will come when "Colonialism" would be a dirty word and various Zionists will write articles and books trying to prove there is no connection and no similarity whatsoever between Zionism and Colonialism.

"The Jewish Colonial Trust" was the name of the financial institution established by the Zionist movement at its beginning (now Bank Leumi LeIsrael, Israeli National Bank). Theodor Herzl devoted much time and effort to meetings with the British Colonial Secretary, and attempts to persuade him that Zionism could be a loyal ally for the worldwide British Empire.

At the time when Zionism started, the enlightened and civilized countries of the time considered it quite acceptable and self-evident that Europeans had the right to seize control of the rest of the world and establish settlements there – with or without the consent of the "natives".

When the State of Israel was created and its establishment caused hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to become refugees, it was very shortly after millions of people in Europe were uprooted and driven from their homes and from countries where they had lived for hundreds of years. Acts which today would be called "ethnic cleansing" and which then at that time were undertaken with official and express authority from the resolutions of the war victors, gathered at the Potsdam Conference of 1945. Mainly uprooted and expelled from their homes in Eastern Europe were ethnic Germans (in 1945, it was common to consider what happened to Germans they had brought upon themselves); but quite a few Poles and Ukrainians and members of several other peoples were also uprooted from their homes by force ...

And on the year in which the State of Israel was born, and still for some years after that, racial segregation the discrimination of Blacks were set out in the laws of the United States of America, and a significant part of the American political system thought that this was exactly the way things should go on. And in those years most people in France considered Algeria to be an integral part of France which would remain such forever, and a million and half French settlers lived in Algeria and were in political and economic control, and Arabs in French Algeria did not have civil rights, and only radicals and extremists in France thought there was anything wrong about this. And not coincidentally, when these Algerian Arabs rebelled embarked on a war of independence, France regarded the young State of Israel as its natural ally.

So, for many years it was not so hard to be members of the club of Western Democracies. The admission requirements were not so rigid, and the norms of behavior of other members in the club were not all that different. But in the sixties things began to change definitely and the ways started to part in opposite directions. Algeria won its independence after a harsh and cruel war, and the colonies of France and Britain and other empires gained independence, and the very idea of colonialism and settlement in the territory of somebody else became unacceptable and illegitimate. And in the Southern United States Martin Luther King and his Black (and White) fellows waged a hard struggle and ultimately won, and the laws of segregation between Whites and Blacks were abolished and discrimination became illegal and illegitimate, and the way was paved towards the entering of a Black President to the White House. The norm was set that all people living under the rule of a government must share in the elections from which this government issues.

And just at this time, in the Sixties when students went out on furious demonstrations in Europe and America and opposed the Vietnam War and the authoritarian government of France, the State of Israel went out on a war lasting six days and captured a territory which it keeps to this day. And the state worshiped its victorious army and victory albums were published and the Chief Rabbi of the victorious armed forces went into the newly occupied territories in search of holy sites where he blew the ram's horn. And in the immediate aftermath of war and conquest, the settlement movement started in the Land of Our Forefathers, with the generous support of Labor Party ministers who did not understand that they were digging a grave for their party (and not just for it). And the people who understood the magnitude of the danger, and who went out at night to write graffiti against the just-started occupation on the walls of Tel Aviv, were a minority and their voice was not heard.

And ever since, the disparity has widened and the State of Israel has become the black sheep in this club of Western democracies, to which she so much wants to belong. And increasingly, outsiders could see a huge armored Israeli Goliath confronting the little Palestinian David, stone in hand.

There had been an interlude when Yitzhak Rabin – a man who spent most of his life in war but retained enough flexibility to change his way of thinking when already beyond the age of seventy – tried to change and reverse course. Seeing Israel isolating itself and embarking on the path of eternal war with its neighbors in the region and loss of its friends in the world, Rabin went on to shake hands with Yasser Arafat and enter into an agreement that would have led to the establishment of the State of Palestine no later than May 1999.

But the assassin's three shots in the square intervened, and among all Prime Ministers who served after the murder Yitzhak Rabin did not have a successor.

Rabin's legacy is still alive among the youths who came to the square on Saturday a week ago, to honor the memory of a man who was murdered when they were babies or not yet born and to swear allegiance to the cause he took up in the last years of his life and for which he died. But Israel as a state has turned its back on Rabin and his legacy - moving high-speed towards the abyss.

Taming the Europeans

2011-11-19T11:28:00.000-08:00

In a month or so, after the American diplomatic steamroller blocks recognition of the State of Palestine at the UN Security Council, the debate will move to the UN General Assembly, where the American have no veto power. Towards this vote, Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu made an intensive effort to secure the support of Western democracies and gain their vote against the Palestinian request. Especially he sought the support of the European countries, making repeated visits and showering their leaders with compliments. Again and again Netanyahu declared that if the enlightened democracies stand by him, support for the Palestinians "would not have a moral force".

And just at this time Knesset Member Ofir Akunis, a close associate of Netanyahu, submitted a bill which gained the cabinet's support and which takes a quite different attitude to these same countries. A bill whose proclaimed aim is "to prohibit Israeli NGOs from accepting the donations of governments and international bodies such as the European Union", and thus "prevent the interference of foreign states in Israeli politics" and their support for (God forbid!) Human Rights organizations.

Speaking about "moral force"...

Catch-23

2011-11-08T15:47:00.000-08:00

In 2005 the State of Israel carried out a large political and military operation called "Disengagement from Gaza", following which the state formally informed the Supreme Court that it no longer controls Gaza and is not responsible for what is happening there.

When asked why, then, does the State of Israel continue to keep its warships cruising off the coast of Gaza and block the way of anyone trying to get in or out, the state answered that it had imposed a naval blockade on the Gaza Strip. Indeed, there is such a possibility in International Law, to impose a blockade on the shores of another country. But does Israel really consider the shores of Gaza as the shores of another country?

Last Saturday, two boats sailed toward the coast of Gaza, one from Canada and the other from Ireland. At sea, in international waters, they were boarded and taken over by the renowned Naval Commandos of the State of Israel. "This time it passed without violence," read a brief news story published the next day's in Israel's biggest newspaper "Yediot Ahronot". Which is not entirely accurate. The peace sailors, from Canada and Australia and Ireland and other countries, indeed did not resort to any kind of violence. On the other hand, the renowned commandos did use electric shockers and pointed loaded guns at the heads of the activists. True, on this occasion they did not pull the trigger, and everybody on board survived and got alive into the detention cells.

"You're charged with violating the law on Entry Into Israel. Sign right here: 'I admit that I entered Israel illegally' " said the Israeli Police interrogators. "Absolutely not," answered the activists. "We did not want to enter Israel, we had absolutely no intention to do so. We wanted to reach Gaza, and you yourselves stated that Gaza is not Israel. We have entered Israel only because your soldiers took us off a boat in international waters and brought us into Israeli territory by force and against our will".

"If you don’t sign a confession that you have entered Israel illegally, we keep you here" concluded the policeman...

November Second - and Fourth

2011-11-08T15:46:00.000-08:00

Last week there passed quietly the date of November 2. It is exactly 94 years since that day in 1917 when Arthur James Balfour, Foreign Minister of Britain, signed a document known in Zionist history as "The Balfour Declaration". There were times when this date was noted with ceremonies and enthusiastic celebrations among Jews living in this country and by angry protests of their Arab neighbors - but since then, quite a few other things had happened, adding various other dates to be marked with joy or rage, and the Balfour Declaration was pushed into the margins. Perhaps this opportunity should be taken to briefly remind of it again.

A short document of great historical significance. "His Majesty's Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" – to which, however, was added the proviso "It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine". In the original English was written " Palestine". Hebrew translations almost always render it as "Eretz Israel", a difference which is not only linguistic.

The British deliberately did not give a detailed explanation what exactly a "national home" is, leaving it to "constructive ambiguity". But there was no doubt that with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, that National Home did in fact become a reality (at which point, by the way, His Majesty's Government no longer viewed it with any great favour). And what about the other half? Which Zionist - even the most ardent – would dare to assert that the civil and religious rights of non-Jewish communities in Palestine have not been infringed in the least during the years which passed since 1917?

***

How to build and maintain in this country a Jewish national home without prejudice to the rights of the Arabs? How to protect the rights of the Arabs without damage to the Jewish national home? How to eat your cake and have it, get into the water and stay dry? The British tried to maintain an impossible balance for thirty years of conflict and bloodshed, and finally gave up and went away. After that nobody even tried seriously to strike a balance, and there were many, many conflicts and wars and much suffering, and the conventional wisdom was that of a zero-sum game, what's good for us is bad for them and vice versa, and better be ready to kill them before they kill us.

Then, in a moment of hope, it seemed that the rules have changed. A ceremony was held on the lawn of the White House and an Israeli leader shook hands with a Palestinian leader and a document was signed which stated that "The Government of the State of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, representing the Palestinian people, agree that it is time to put an end to decades of confrontation and conflict, recognize their mutual legitimate and political rights, strive to live in peaceful coexistence and mutual dignity and security, and achieve a just, lasting and comprehensive peace settlement and historic reconciliation.

The Prime Minister which Israel had at that time signed this document and took it seriously and tried to realize it in practice. He intended to reach a definite peace agreement with the Palestinians by the date stipulated in the agreement signed - no later than the month of May, 1999.

But he did not live to see that day. On the night of November 4, 1995, seventy-eight years and two days after the Balfour Declaration, three shots reverberated in a city square where a peace rally had just ended. The first (and so far only) Israeli Prime Minister who seriously wanted and intended to achieve peace with our Palestinians neighbors paid for it with his life. And May 1999 passed without an agreement and without a Palestinian state. The occupation continued, as a matter of fact became worse; the settlements expanded further and further, as did violent attacks and assaults and bombings and bloodshed and more bloodshed on both sides.

We have come back to the zero-sum game, to fighting and fighting without hope; to killing and dying and wandering in the dark of a tunnel with no glimmer of light ahead. Ninety-four years after the Balfour Declaration and sixteen years after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the government of Israel government decided to punish the Palestinians for their audacity in asking UNESCO for recognition of an independent statehood – punish them by building a further 2,000 housing units reserved for Jewish settlers only, on parcels of land which the State of Israel proclaimed to be "State Land " and thus expropriated them from the Palestinians. ("It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine" - but who remembers that?).

This week Dr. Yuval Steinitz, the renowned philosopher of Haifa University who serves as Finance Minister in the Government of Israel, paid an especially hearty and cordial visit to the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba (yes, the same settlement in which pilgrimages are taking place to the grave of Baruch Goldstein at the heart of Rabbi Meir Kahane Park) and noted how glad and happy he was to increase the government budgets allocated to the settlements in general and to Kiryat Arba in particular. And Dr. Steinitz also noted during his visit to Kiryat Arba that "it would be strange if the State of Israel continues to transfer funds to UNESCO".

Much less strange that Steinitz' colleague FM Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of an extreme right racist party - sent his ambassador at the UN to meet Marine Le-Pen, leader of France's extreme right racist party (perhaps to convey his sincere wishes for her to become Foreign Minister, too?)

Next Saturday night, November 12th, at 7:30 pm, will gather at the Rabin Square in Tel Aviv the people who remember Yitzhak Rabin, and what he came to symbolize; what he sacrificed his life for. People who think that Israel can still change direction, get on the path of peace and follow it.

Where did this mess come from?

2011-10-29T11:14:00.000-07:00

And again, for the thousandth time, escalation on the Gaza border. They fired missiles at us and we bombed and killed five of them, and they fired more missiles and this night the Air Force will return to Gaza and bomb again. Quite by chance, all this is happening just on the evening when the Social Protest Movement gets up from its slumber and back to the streets.

What the hell? Why now? We had months of quiet on the Gaza border when the prisoner exchange was being negotiated and finalized, and we carried it out, and our Gilad came back home, and of the Palestinians prisoners those who were released were lucky and the others will have to wait another ten or twenty years, and the box called Gaza was closed and locked up again. And we have sent prisoners from the West Bank to Gaza because it's too dangerous to let them go home. And to their families we did not give permission to travel to Gaza to visit the sons which they have not seen for ten years and more. No, this is not really a security risk - but it's a matter of principle. Everyone should see and know who is the boss here, everyone should know that Israel holds the keys to the Gaza Strip and without our approval, no one will enter or leave the Gaza Strip. Oh yes, there were some human rights groups who said that since Gilad Shalit is released, now is the time to lift the siege on Gaza. Really, what do these leftists understand? Gilad Shalit is Gilad Shalit and the siege is the siege, there is no connection. The siege stays, just as it was, and please stop this chattering. And now suddenly they are shooting at us from Gaza and rockets are launched. The whole of South Israel runs to the air raid shelters. What the hell? What did we do to them? So we killed five, so what? These were terrorist bastards, they got what they deserved! If they dare to fire, we should teach them a lesson, to bomb and bomb more and more, shoot and kill and kill. Then they will learn a lesson and launch no more missiles. And if it actually puts them in a mood of defiance and they actually respond with even more missiles? Well, Israel is not helpless, the Air Force armories are choke-full of sophisticated bombs with a great destructive power, we should bomb and bomb and bomb, hurray for our armed forces!

In the meantime, in Beersheba the Social Protest rally was already cancelled. .A net profit, let them stay in the vicinity of their air raid shelters, not take to the streets to chant about Social Justice. Enough is enough!

Egg and Chicken

Why is a siege imposed on Gaza? Why do you ask, it's perfectly clear, would answer the common citizen on the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. They shoot missiles at us, they make hell for us, so teach them a lesson until they stop shooting missiles. What is unclear here?

Why are rockets fired on Ashdod? Why do you ask, it's perfectly clear, would answer the common citizen on the streets of Gaza and Rafah. They shoot missiles at us, they make hell for us, so teach them a lesson until they lift the siege. What is unclear here?

So how to get out of this impasse? Well, just a short time ago, with the prisoner exchange we had an example of how to solve difficult and painful problems between us and the people of Gaza. To talk and negotiate, and offer proposals and counter proposals and come to a more or less mutually satisfactory agreement. And if is not possible to sit face to face at the table, then we can find a mediator to take messages from side A to side B and back. The Egyptian mediators who helped with the exchange are already quite familiar with the route from Tel Aviv to Gaza and back ...

Who do we talk to?

2011-10-24T01:06:00.001-07:00

Several months ago, a reconciliation agreement was signed between the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority and the Hamas leadership in Gaza. It was agreed to end the long conflict between them, with the intention of establishing a single government to represent all Palestinians and hold new elections in which Palestinians will be able to freely express their wishes. Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu made a furious reply, stating that if the Palestinian reconciliation agreement implemented and a government established which includes Hamas, Israel would immediately sever all contact with the PA and no longer regard it a partner for negotiation (if and when negotiations resume...) .

As we know today, at almost exactly the same time there was a major breakthrough in the negotiations conducted the same Binyamin Netanyahu with the same Hamas movement, regarding an exchange of prisoners. A new Hamas proposal, passed on to the government of Israel, has indicated a significant degree of flexibility, and paved the way for implementing the exchange last week and the home-coming of Gilead Shalit.

There is something strange here, not entirely consistent. It is no surprise that in the opinion poll conducted last week among a sample of Israeli citizens, no less than 79% expressed themselves in favor of Israel embarking on official negotiations with Hamas, also without resorting to Egyptian or German mediators. Of course, the results of an opinion poll are not binding on the government. Yet what would Netanyahu say if and when the Palestinians actually establish a joint government of Fatah and Hamas? "No, no, out of the question. We will never, never talk to these people, we are opposed in principle totalks with Hamas?" It somehow does not sound quite believable.

Congratulations!

2011-10-12T17:30:00.000-07:00

Congratulations, first of all, to Gilad Shalit, who will at long last come out of captivity, from darkness into light, from total isolation into the maelstrom of politicians and the media. (It is to be hoped that he would be given a bit of time to be in private with his family, and that he would once upon a time get the chance to live the normal life of an ordinary young person.)

Congratulations also to his parents, brother and grandfather, the devoted and stubborn family members who refused to give up and struggled and demonstrated and mobilized masses and eventually managed to move even the government of Binyamin Netanyahu.

Congratulations also to a thousand and twenty-seven Palestinian prisoners who will also come out of captivity, from darkness to light, and to the families who missed their sons and daughters no less than did the Shalit Family, and demonstrated again and again for many years and stood in public squares waving signs and photos (and were almost never seen in the communications media of the State of Israel).

Congratulations to all of us, that an agreement was signed which makes many hearts glad in Jerusalem as in Gaza, Tel Aviv and Ramallah. A practical, empirical example that a "Zero Sum Game" is not the only game in town. That there could well be an agreement which is acceptable and welcome to both sides. "We did not surrender to Hamas, nor did we force them to surrender" were the words of Yoram Cohen, head of the Shabak Security Service.

Congratulations to all of us, for having gotten a practical demonstration that it is possible to negotiate - not only with Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, but also with Hamas - and reach a successful conclusion. It is possible – if we seriously mean the negotiations to succeed and end with an agreement and that the agreement will be implemented in reality. Not what we have seen so many times: a show of negotiations, handshakes and photo opportunities for the media and announcements about a "Peace Process" which never gets anywhere, while the reality of the occupation continues and the oppression deepens, and the settlements expand.

If we seriously want to reach results, the show can be dispensed with. No need of photographers, it is not even indispensable to sit around one table. It would be enough for an Egyptian or German mediator to pass from one side to the other, deliver proposals and counter-proposals. If we really want to achieve a result, this is quite enough – today we have the proof.

If we really want, there can be peace between the sovereign State of Israel and the sovereign State of Palestine. And with peace, there would be no reason for Palestinians who were released from prison to commit acts of violence against Israel (also not for Palestinians who hadn't been in prison). And Palestinians would also be able to stop worrying about armed Israeli soldiers and settlers, and of tanks and drones and fighter planes and gunboats. And it would be possible to implement very deep cuts in the defense budget and divert a great deal of money to social causes, and no longer would officers and politicians be able to cry out at such cuts and threaten us with grave and terrible dangers.

Not realistic?

It will only happen when we make it happen. When we demand it with loud voices from many, many throats.

Born on the day war broke out

2011-10-08T11:02:00.001-07:00

Observations on Yom Kippur 2011 (1)

Again, like every year since 1973, Yom Kippur provided an opportunity to once more remember that war and the way it took the State of Israel by surprise, and for again finding soldiers and officers whose stories of heroism were not yet published in previous years, and for newspaper headlines quoting the Army Chief of Staff and his senior officers regarding the best way to win the next war. And because there had just been in this country huge demonstrations demanding to seriously deal with social issues, including a demand to cut the defense budget, this year's Yom Kippur provides a golden opportunity for supporters of the military establishment to prepare a counter-attack, urging that not a single penny be cut .

"Yediot Aharonot" found an original angle: interviewing 38-years old military officers, who were born during that war. Such as Lieutenant Colonel Amihai Segal, who was born exactly on its first day. He commands the Netzach Yehuda Battalion in the Kfir Brigade - the brigade which was established specifically to maintain Israeli rule in "Judea and Samaria" and whose soldiers go out every day, and especially every night, to detain people in the Palestinian cities and villages. Like many officers of the brigade, he and his family live in the settlement of Eli, where they found "a community which is very supportive and helpful." Lieutenant Colonel Segal is not much concerned about the fact that thirty-eight years after the war raging on the day he was born, the state of Israel has not yet reached peace with its neighbors, and that military officials talk about the next war in terms of "when" rather than "if." In the eyes of Lieutenant Colonel Segal, there are problems and national objectives more important than peace.

Who still remembers that the Yom Kippur War could have been avoided, and that in 1978, Israel signed the peace agreement with Egypt which could have been signed already in 1970? This is a lesson which only a few hint at.

Boycott and boycott

2011-10-08T11:01:00.001-07:00

Observations on Yom Kippur 2011 (2)

The had never been a better time for consumer boycotts in Israel. The boycott against the dairy giant "Tnuva" resulted in a significant lowering in the price s of its products. The boycott organizers are now seeking the most effective next target, and newspaper commentators highly praise them on the successful initiative which at last managed to get the Israelis out of their traditional indifference.

And also the initiators of the Israeli tourism boycott of Turkey celebrated a small victory this week. The Turkish government decided to call back the tourism attache from its Tel Aviv Embassy. Until two years ago, hundreds of thousands Israeli tourists were going to Turkey, and their numbers were on the rise. Now, it is down to almost zero. Why waste money on a tourism attache when there is no tourism?

Only one kind of boycott is strictly outlawed in Israel. According to the law passed in the Knesset during a dramatic night session a few months ago, every Israeli person or organization daring to call for boycott of settlement products runs the risk of a lawsuit which might render them bankrupt.

The day after the passing of that law, an appeal was lodged by Gush Shalom - whose spokesperson I happen to be. The petition sought to have the new law ruled altogether invalid, due to its instituting a gross discrimination between boycott and boycott, protest and protest, and its constituting a severe infringement of the freedom of expression, assembly and political activity.

The Justices gave the state sixty days to reply to this petition. The State Attorneys did not rush to answer. Last week the sixty days were over, and on the last day the State Attorney's Office simply asked for a further sixty days to reply.

As a matter of fact, no wonder that the attorneys have a difficulty in formulating their answer – they who are charged with the thankless task of defending in court the Netanyahu Government's policies and the legislation that gets passed by the right-wing majority in the Knesset. Already in advance, the State Attorneys several times addressed directly the Knesset Members, pleading against such a doubtful law and warning that it "verged on the red line".

A green light and a red light from Sweden

2011-10-08T11:00:00.001-07:00

Observations on Yom Kippur 2011 (3)

This week Professor Dan Shechtman received the phone call which all scientists dream of, a call from Sweden announcing his winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. A day of joy and pride for Professor Shechtman and the scientific community in our country and for Israel in general – especially that in recent years the number of Israeli citizens getting Nobel Prizes far exceeds the proportion of Israelis in the world population.

And almost exactly on the same day we also received another message, a less pleasant one, from Sweden, where 218 professors and lecturers signed a petition calling for the severing of all ties with Israeli universities, until the State of Israel ends the occupation and oppression of the Palestinians. Specifically, professors at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm called upon the management of their Institute to cease cooperation with the Technion in Haifa - where Professor Shechtman works - because of the Technion's close relations with the IDF and Israel's defense industries, with some Technion scientists busy developing new weapons systems.

This problem Israeli scientists will not be able to solve, however bright they may be. Ending the occupation and oppression of the Palestinians, which blackens the name of Israel all over the world, is a task resting on the shoulders of the government and the political leadership.

No celebrations in jail

2011-10-08T10:56:00.000-07:00

Observations on Yom Kippur 2011 (4)

On this Yom Kippur, as on the preceding one, is spent by Gilad Shalit's parents in a tent outside the Prime Minister's residence in Jerusalem. The price for the release of Shalit from Hamas captivity is known. The list of prisoners whose release the Palestinians require in exchange for Shalit is already for years in the possession of the Government of Israel - but the Prime Minister is not willing to pay the price.

Several months ago, Benyamin Netanyahu found a replacement. In a dramatic speech which made newspaper headlines, he announced that "The celebrations by Palestinians prisoners in Israeli prisons are over" and immediately the prison authorities began to worsen the conditions for the thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons: eliminating the possibility of academic studies by correspondence, limiting the newspapers which they can read and the television channels they can watch, and placing many of them in isolation, almost totally separated from other prisoners and the outside world. And all of this is of course in the name of the isolated prisoner Gilad Shalit, held somewhere in Gaza.

Several months passed of the new tough policy in the prisons and detention camps. And as one might expect (and as has been predicted by people who know a bit about these matters), the release of Gilad Shalit did not move an inch forward, and there was rising bitterness among Palestinians prisoners whose conditions were far from "a celebration" even before, and a prisoners' hunger strike began to gather momentum.
The Israeli media hardly reports it. Israeli citizens in whose eyes it is all about "terrorists" and "murderers" couldn't care less. But among Palestinians, where almost every family has a person sitting today in an Israeli prison and / or some who have done time in the past, the hunger strike has an enormous resonance.

It's been done before, at regular intervals since Israel occupied the Palestinian territories in 1967 and began to imprison Palestinians who expressed their opposition to this rule in various forms (by the way: not all of them by violent means). Every few years, somebody decided to exacerbate the conditions and "end the celebration", and always, soon afterwards a hunger strike started which caused unrest and tension in the prison itself as well as outside it, and eventually the authorities decided to quietly stop the worsening of conditions and restore the former situation. And so it probably will be again, now.

And Gilad Shalit? He will hopefully still be released, and return to his loving family, and happy celebrations will take place all over the country. As soon as the government decides to cut a deal and pay the price required.

The end of the Oslo years

2011-10-01T10:52:00.000-07:00

Whatever will happen in the coming months, one thing is clear: the status quo of the last two decades is dead.

The confrontation of Mahmoud Abbas and Binyamin Netanyahu on the United Nations podium took place eighteen years, almost to the day, after an earlier encounter of Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

It was in September 1993 that Itzchak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shook hands on the White House lawn, and hope was in the air, and peace seemed imminent. An interim agreement had been signed, under which a Palestinian Authority with very limited real authority and power was established as a strictly interim measure for a clearly defined period of five years. An explicit time table was set, under which a definite agreement was to be negotiated and signed and a fully independent State of Palestine come into being no later than May 1999.

And Rabin was assassinated, and Arafat died in circumstances which remain controversial, and very many Israelis and an even far greater number of Palestinians and quite a few others died in various horrible ways. And Palestine was not established in May 1999, nor on various later deadlines which were set and not enforced. And settlements in the Occupied Territories expanded to about twice the size which they had on September 1993, and the yoke of occupation weighs upon the Palestinians at least as heavily as it did eighteen years ago. And in Israel's latest opinion poll, more than half those asked said they did not believe peace would ever be achieved.

Should you ask a chance passer by on the streets of Tel Aviv what went wrong, he or she would probably answer – to the best of their knowledge - that Israel had been very generous to the Palestinians and that they have answered by terrorism and the hurling of missiles. Should you put the same question in the streets of Ramallah, you would most likely get a similarly sincere answer that it was the Palestinians who had made enormous concessions and that Israel answered with ever harsher occupation and settlement expansion – not to mention the three-week bombing of Gaza. In essence, both alike would say "we tried to make peace with them, we made every effort, but they only want to kill us and take our land" – differing only with who are "we" and who are "they".

After the elections of 1992, which brought Rabin to power, the ousted Prime Minister Shamir mourned: "We could have continued talking for another ten years and meanwhile extended the settlements". But even though Rabin came to power and for a time the term "peace process" seemed to have a real content, ultimately it was Shamir's vision which won out. Israel has been doing as he said, already for twenty years (and Netanyahu would not mind doing it for another twenty at the least).

***

In the halcyon years of Oslo, the agreements had raised hope among the majority of Palestinians as among the then flourishing Israeli Peace Camp, while the settlers and their allies opposed them vociferously. I can still remember the time when streets were full of extreme right stickers voicing the strident demand to "Prosecute the Oslo Criminals". It is the irony of history that with the passage of the years attitudes changed greatly, albeit subtly and without an open proclamation.

The situation which was intended to be temporary and last no more than five years had been extended indefinitely. The Palestinian Authority is limited to isolated enclaves, comprising only 42% of the West Bank. Even there, its security forces are obliged to maintain "security cooperation" and stand aside when Israeli forces come raiding at any hour of the day or (especially) the night, arresting whoever they want and hauling them off to interrogation with "moderate physical pressure" by the Israeli security services.

The rest of the West Bank is defined as "Area C" which Israeli government and settlers regard as their own – to plant and extend settlements, to grant (rather, refuse to grant) building permits to Palestinians and demolish homes built without such a permit, to dig for water and reserve the lion's share of it to Israeli settlers (and Israeli citizens in Israel's population centers). Israelis can assert that Palestinians already have their own self governing authority, complete with president and prime minister and cabinet and parliament, even while any 19-year old Israeli corporal at a roadblock on the Ramallah-Nablus Highway has far more concrete power in Palestinian daily life than the Palestinian President and Prime Minister combined.

No wonder that Israeli right wingers, also among the settlers, concede that from their point of view the best practical option for the future would be "just to continue the present situation" – the situation created by Oslo. No wonder that Palestinians increasingly came to resent to the Palestinian Authority which had once aroused their hopes, to regard it as a hindrance to the achievement of their national aspirations, in effect a body collaborating with the Israeli occupation. No wonder that some Palestinians called explicitly for the Palestinian Authority to be disbanded, and many other would not shed a tear at its passing.

What can President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) and his Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and their ministers and officials do to dispel such feelings among their constituents and regain their credibility? In essence, only one thing would do: to give concrete proof that the situation created by Oslo is indeed temporary and that it could and would be replaced by an end to the occupation and full Palestinian statehood.

To be sure, no such reassurance could be given by a new round of negotiations, yet another photo opportunity with the President of the United States ceremoniously spreading his protective wings over handshaking Israeli and Palestinian leaders in a hollow pretense to impartiality. Not after eighteen years when the term "peace process" had become a sad joke among Palestinians and Israelis alike.

And so, there came up the Idea of Palestinians in general – and the Palestinian Authority in particular - ceasing to wait for handouts from a tightfisted Israeli government of from a US on whose internal politics the same Israeli government maintains a stranglehold. The idea of the Palestinians taking their fate in their own hands, breaking by their own effort out of the decades-long stalemate. Boldly going to the UN to demand recognition of their sovereign statehood – as Israel's sovereign statehood was recognized more than six decades ago, as sovereign statehood was recognized for no less than 193 nations around the world. To voice this demand and basic aspiration, neither asking nor needing anyone's permission and authorization, steadfastly persisting in it also in the teeth of a very manifest and prolonged displeasure from the American superpower. .

So far, it had been an enormous publicity success, putting for months the Palestinian plight on the global agenda, and forcing everybody – Netanyahu, Obama, the European leaders – to respond to and grapple with a Palestinian initiative. This much they have achieved, even if the statehood bid itself is quashed by an outright American veto or by behind the scenes machinations and pressures on weak nations which happen to hold a crucial Security Council seat. Unflinchingly facing up to the American pressure has – at least for the time being – greatly increased the popularity of Mahmoud Abbas, never a particularly charismatic leader.

For its part the United States – and President Obama in person – pay a high diplomatic price for a right or wrong support to the government of Israel. For a manifestly biased presidential speech at the UN, which flatly contradicted Obama's previous positions and was warmly endorsed by Netanyahu's thuggish Foreign Minister Lieberman. Followed a weak later by the US offering a week lip service condemnation for Netanyahu's construction of a new 1100 "Jewish only" housing units in East Jerusalem, while the Palestinians were very concretely punished for the temerity of seeking statehood with Congress withdrawing US$200 million of already dedicated aid.

Altogether, the United States very thoroughly discredited itself and exhibited, clear for the entire world to see, its unfitness for the role of sole Middle East mediator which was established already by Kissinger in the 1970's. All the more so as the manifestly biased position was taken by none other than President Obama, of whom there had been expectations for something better (from the point of view of the Israeli right wing, for something worse).

French President Nicholas Sarkozy, who took the UN podium after Obama, got considerable international attention when stating that "We must stop believing that a single country, even the largest, or a small group of countries can resolve so complex a problem”. Never in decades was there such a clear call for a more objective mediator to take up the role of arbiter between Israel and the Palestinians. Indeed, Obama himself – whose own diplomatic efforts ended in such dismal failure and who has many other urgent issues on his plate – might not really object to somebody else taking up this hot potato.

Yet, where can an effective and impartial alternative arbiter be found, strong and decisive enough to enforce compliance? Can the Europeans – far from united, and mired in their own deep economic crisis – take up this role? What would happen if the appeal to the UN turns out to have brought the Palestinians no concrete result, no real step towards emancipating themselves of the occupation's suffocating presence?

Abu Mazen's dramatic speech at the UN included a passage which got virtually no attention in any of the Israeli media, completely overlooked by the hordes of commentators and analysts: "“This settlement policy threatens to also undermine the structure of the Palestinian National Authority, and even end its existence.” In an interview to Alquds newspaper, Abbas was more explicit: “I will return to the Palestinian leadership, which will make a decision on whether the time has come for Israel to re-assume its responsibility as an occupying authority.(…) We will not keep the Palestinian Authority as a mere name."

In short, the interim period - which the Oslo Agreement envisaged as lasting five years and which various Israeli governments managed to prolong into eighteen – seems to be drawing to an imminent end. Things will not remain as they were before Abbas made his appeal to the International Community. The Palestinian Authority might be upgraded to a fully sovereign state, or it might disappear, leaving a vacuum and completely unpredictable new situation in its place.

A century-old warning

2011-09-19T14:13:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I found lying in the street near my home an old book – the collected writings of Micha Joseph Berdichevsky, a Zionist writer, poet and commentator who was born in 1865 and died in 1921. Once his name was well known, but now he is almost forgotten and even most of those who live on Berdichevsky Street in Tel Aviv have no clear idea for whom their street was named. I opened the yellowing pages and found an article written in the aftermath of the Seventh Zionist Congress, held at Basel in 1907. Much of it seems as if it was written just now. (Emphasis in the original). .

(...) We heard a thorough discussion about the Arab movement and of the Arab people. Eretz Yisrael is no virgin soil, but a land inhabited by a nation which works the land and which has rights over their land ... The writer A. Hermoni, a native of Eretz Yisrael, spoke of the Arab movement in his articles published in "Hashiloah". Even more explicit was what we heard from another resident of Eretz Yisrael, the teacher Yitzhak Epstein, who during the Seventh Zionist Congress in Basel set out before us this major issue, the issue of the attitude of the Sons of Israel coming to settle in the Land of Israel towards the Arabs ... 

"The Hidden Question" was how the speaker spoke of it. The fact that such a fundamental issue could have been ignored and kept out of mind, that after thirty years of settlement work it could be spoken of as a new subject for investigation, is a sad proof of the lighthearted attitude prevalent in our movement. 

"Ever since our national movement emerged,  said this speaker, the activists ceaselessly discussed and debated about the situation of the the country and its laws and so on. But one thing we have forgotten to discuss: we have forgotten that in the country we love there is an entire other people, which has been holding to it for centuries, and which never had any intention of letting go of it". 

And he goes on to tell us of this living people as "a people with a sensitive heart and a loving soul", which is bound to its his homeland by strong bonds and that "It is to be conjectured that many of them are descended from the scattered and refugee members of our own people, who had become assimilated among other peoples during times of persecution and destruction", and share this blood relation. "The Arabs are a prime example of peasants who work their fields devotedly and water them with the sweat of their brow. In physical development, the Arab is the superior of all European". 

"It is high time to get rid of the wrong idea, which has become widespread among Zionists, that in Eretz Israel there is soil which remains uncultivated due to the lack of working hands. There are no empty fields. On the contrary, each fellah is striving to add to his plot whatever uncultivated land is to be found nearby."."Well, when we come to take hold of the country, there immediately comes up the question: What would do the peasants, whose fields we will purchase? – Where will the dispossessed turn? – True, sometimes the Hebrew colony provides him with some work. However – first, we can’t oblige ourselves to permanently provide him a job, and secondly, by so doing we only make the situation worse. For when the fellah is provided with a job in the colony founded on his land, he is also provided with the ability to retain contact with the land which nourished him from birth, and he will continue to regard it as his own domain which had been temporarily stolen by strangers…"  

The speaker added: "Even supposing that in the land of our ancestors we are not obliged to care for others and that we have the right – or even a duty incumbent upon us – to obtain whatever parcels of land become available. But can this behavior really persist? Would these dispossessed keep silent and accept passively what was done to them? Is it not clear that they would at least rise up to regain by the fist what was taken away from them by  gold!  Will they not seek to settle accounts with the foreigners who expelled them from their land. - and who knows, would they not then become prosecutors and judges rolled into one... After all, they are brave people, all of them armed, skilled shooters, excellent riders, zealous for their nation and especially their religion. And this people is but a small part of a great nation, holding all the environments of our country: Syria, Mesopotamia, Arabia and Egypt"..

.

"We must not disregard the rights of these people" he cried out. "Most especially, we must not resort to the evil of those who rob their brothers. Do we trust that the ashes will always cover  the flames? Let one spark escape – and a conflagration will arise which could not be extinguished!" 

Is Binyamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel in September 2011, truly unable to see what Micha Joseph Berdichevsky described so clearly a hundred years ago?

The Village of Aqaba, the bulldozers and Netanyahu's truth

2011-09-17T10:41:00.000-07:00

Sample protest letter in the end

Last Thursday morning it happened again. As on many previous occasions over the past decades, a large force of the Israeli Defense Forces arrived at a small village called Aqaba, on the northeast corner of the West Bank. Soldiers mounted on jeeps sped along the village's main (and only) street, followed by three bulldozers. Three houses were razed to the ground, and twenty people (out of a bit more than the village's three hundred) were thrown into the street. The bulldozers also destroyed and thoroughly ploughed the access road to the village, about a kilometer and half long and known by the inhabitants as "The Peace Road", and then blocked it by large piles of dirt and debris. Also another kilometer-long road, used by villagers, was similarly destroyed and blocked.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqabah

The soldiers were accompanied by a man called Asher Tzur, an officer in the Civil Administration maintained by the State of Israel on the West Bank - a man who already for many years has taken it as his personal mission to act as the nemesis of the Akaba villagers, constantly issuing demolition orders and taking care that they would be implementated. Villagers standing near the active bulldozers could see a big smile on his face, and later he got on a bulldozer, and asked a soldier to take his photo. And then he left the village with soldiers and bulldozers - until next time.

Not for the first time, Haj Sami Sadeq, Mayor of Village of Aqaba asked me: "Why are they doing this to us? What did we do to them?" Haj Sami is wheelchair-bound since being, early in his life, shot in the back during training with live ammunition held by IDF forces in the village. "I personally, all our village people, have suffered very much from the Israeli occupation, but we do not harbor hatred in our hearts. There were never any acts of violence here. I went several times to speak in Europe and America and everywhere I told that all we want is to live in peace with the Israelis. Just leave us alone, to live our lives in our village, stop destroying our homes and roads ".

How to understand and how to explain that it's probably not a chance act nor the sadistic whim of one man, it's a policy that comes straight from above, straight from the government's decision makers. Not new policies or a new plan, but ultimately the same program which was initiated already in 1967 by a senior Israeli cabinet minister named Yigal Allon, who is long dead but whose "Alon Plan" is alive and well. According to this plan, the State of Israel must maintain permanent control over the Jordan Valley. And unfortunately for the village of Aqaba, it is located on the edge of that Valley. If the authorities can manage to "get rid" of Aqaba, than the Jordan Valley area "free of Arabs" could be extended several kilometers further. And so it came about that the bulldozers arrived again to make another effort at implementing the Alon Plan.

And by chance (and is it only by chance?) the bulldozers came to the village of Aqaba on the very day that Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu announced his intention of going to the UN General Assembly next week and delivering an eloquent speech setting out Netanyahu's truth and explaining why he calls upon the nations of the world to reject the Palestinians' bid to be free of the occupation and establish their independent state. From what was published so far, it seems that Netanyahu intends to speak at the UN about Israel's righteousness, its democratic society and its desire for peace. The name of the village of Aqaba would most probably not be mentioned in his speech on the UN podium.

To 
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu
http://www.pmo.gov.il/PMOEng/PM/Write+to+PM/
http://www.pmo.gov.il/PMOEng/Public+Applications/PublicApplications/ 

To
Defense Minister Ehud Barak 
pniot@mod.gov.il

Dear Sir 

I wish to express my strong protest at the September 15 demolition of homes and roads in the small village of Aqaba, east of Tubas in the West Bank. It is an especially ominous sign so short before the  United Nations debate on  Palestinian statehood. The twenty people who were left homeless by your acts are no recommendation for your real intentions. 

I can't understand what your government thinks to achieve by delivering such a blow to a small village whose inhabitants wish only to live in peace and be left alone. 

 Yours,

  ....

Bankruptcy of the bypass diplomacy

2011-09-10T12:03:00.000-07:00

About a century ago the Zionist movement - established in order to settle in an ancestral land and establish a Jewish state - met with increasing resistance from the inhabitants, who also regarded it as their ancestral country. Already then it occurred to the Zionist leaders that it might be possible to overcome this resistance by creating bypasses and finding allies across the region who would counter-balance and cancel the local Arab resistance in Mandatory Palestine.

The first to be assigned such was the Hashemite Dynasty, which during the First World War led the Arab Revolt against Ottoman rule, and who later became Emirs of Transjordan, still later the Kings of Jordan.

Already in 1921 Chaim Weizmann - the future President of Israel – met with the Emir Feisal, founder of the dynasty, and got from him a statement rather sympathetic towards Zionism and its goals. The only problem was the Arab Palestinians, in whose country Zionism strove to establish the Jewish State, had not really authorized the Emir Feisal, nor his descendants, to make concessions on their behalf. And for decades the unofficial alliance with the Hashemites continued, and even when they found themselves at war in 1948 the secret contacts continued, and after the war the new State of Israel tacitly encouraged the Kingdom of Jordan to annex what is known since then as "The West Bank" and wipe the name of "Palestine" off the map. But it turned out that the Palestinians have not disappeared, were just swept under the carpet, emerging into the spotlight after another war in 1967. And after more struggles and intifadas "The Jordanian Option" (once Shimon Peres' favorite) was once and for all removed from the agenda.

But in the meantime there continued a feverish creative effort to find tortuous new diplomatic detours. In the fifties it was David Ben Gurion, Founding Father and first Prime Minister of Israel, who came up with what seemed a brilliant idea - "The Alliance of the Periphery", designed to bypass the entire Arab World and form a strategic alliance with the non-Arabs Muslim countries of the region, i.e. Iran to the east and Turkey to the north.

Indeed, for decades this covenant thrived. The Shah of Iran was a close and loyal ally to Israel, which among other things helped him to lay the groundwork for an ambitious nuclear research program in his country. And also the Shabak, Israel's security service, helped greatly in establishing and building up the Shah's own Security Service, which became notorious under the name Savak (the similarity of names is perhaps not entirely coincidental). But it so happened that in 1979 the Shah fell and in Iran emerged a new regime, many of whose leaders were graduates of the torture chambers of the Savak, which did not increase their sympathy for the State of Israel. (It also did not deter them from establishing torture chambers of their own, but that's another issue...). And thus, Israel's close ally Iran became its bitter enemy – far more bitter, in fact, than countries which had never been Israel's allies.

Israel's strategic alliance with Turkey lasted longer, until quite recently – extensive military contacts, and flourishing bilateral trade, and tourism packages highly popular with less than affluent Israelis. But then came the dramatic chain of events of the past three years. There was the hearty visit of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to Ankara in December 2008, when he requested the help of Prime Minister Erdogan to mediate between Israel and Syria and neglected to mention that within three days he was about to embark upon massive bombings in Gaza in which over a thousand and three hundred Palestinians would be killed, and it happened that Erdogan took this rather personally. And then the incident of the Turkish Ambassador being made to sit on a low chair, the unique contribution of Foreign Minister Lieberman and his deputy Danny Ayalon to Israeli relations with Turkey. And then of course the Israeli naval blockade on Gaza and the flotilla which was trying to break this blockade and the Israeli Naval Commandos who encountered resistance on board the "Marmara" and overcame this resistance within minutes and then went further to the extent of confirming the kill of Turkish citizens by means of bullets shot point blank at their head. And then many months of secret and public discussions and attempts to reach a compromise formula and the absolute refusal of the Government of Israel to utter the word "apology" and the scrupulous preservation of Israeli National Honor. And ultimately Israel remained with its National Honor intact and with a a strategic ally irrevocably lost, and now it is not longer a complete fantasy to envisage a naval battle in Gazan waters between the Israeli Navy gunboats and the Turkish warships which might escort the next Gaza-bound flotilla.

And meanwhile Egypt, and the wild crowds bursting into the Israeli embassy despite Egyptian security forces shooting dead three of their number. One should again go back - back to the days of euphoria in November 1977 and the courageous Egyptian President who abruptly landed in Israel and spoke in the Knesset and opened a horizon of hope and peace and sought to break and shatter the psychological walls separating the two peoples. And it must be mentioned that it was never the purpose or intent of Anwar a-Sadat to sign a separate peace treaty with Israel and leave the Palestinians to their fate. But certainly that was the precise intention of Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel, and he did achieve it, above and beyond all expectations. The peace agreement between Israel and Egypt has become a part of reality, and in order to strengthen it was taken the decision that Egypt would receive annually two billion dollars from the U.S. taxpayer, with the generous assistance of the influential Israeli lobby on Capitol Hill. Meanwhile, the negotiations conducted with regard to the Palestinians moved not a single inch, and dozens of new settlements mushroomed throughout the Occupied territories, and the IDF invaded Lebanon and bombed and killed thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians, and Israel's allies carried out the massacre in Sabra and Shatila, and then came the time of the intifada and the daily killing of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. And throughout all this the peace with Egypt remained steady, and the Egyptian Army remained camped on the other side of the Suez Canal and the IDF could safely transfer forces to other fronts. But the spirit of peace between Israel and Egypt was murdered with every IDF bullet and bomb, with every house built in a settlement, and the psychological walls which Sadat had sought to break down rose up again, higher than ever. And the bitterness and hatred accumulated, and already for many years Israel-Egypt peace was considered a Cold Peace, cold as ice, and some called it a Cold War. All that was needed was a revolution to topple the dictatorial regime in Egypt in order to blow the lid off the bubbling pot. And another diplomatic bypass road designed to avoid dealing with the Palestinians seems to have come to its end.

Only once in its history did the State of Israel seriously try to stop circumventing the real problem, to come face to face with the Palestinians – its closest neighbors, co-inhabitants of the land where the founders of Zionism chose to create the state of the Jews. In September 1993, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin met with Yasser Arafat, Head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and they shook hands and signed an agreement under which the State of Palestine should have come into being by May 1999. And as one of the results, the long-established relations between the State of Israel and the Jordanian Hashemites could come out of the closet and become an official peace treaty, and the possibility was opened of peace with the entire Arab and Muslim world, an official peace initiative adopted by the Arab League - not a peace leaving the Palestinians behind, but the fitting and rational complementary to a peace between Israel and Palestine.

What would have happened if the assassin's three bullets had not been fired behind the Tel Aviv Town Hall on November 4, 1995? Had Yitzhak Rabin remained alive, and remained Prime Minister for another term, would he have completed what he started? That we will never know for sure. In history as it actually happened, Rabin was assassinated, and management of what was still called "the peace process" fell into the hands of Binyamin Netanyahu, and the devastation left by Netanyahu was completed by Ehud Barak proposing "generous offers" which were not that generous, and the bloody wilderness through which Israel was led by Sharon and Olmert and Netanyahu again.

So, on this day, the tenth of September of 2011, the State of Israel is at the brink of a moment of truth which had been avoided for years and decades: the bankruptcy of bypass diplomacy, the end of the Turkish bypass as well as the Egyptian one - and in ten days, facing at the UN the Palestinians' firm demand for an independent state based on the 1967 borders, a demand which for Palestinians is the very bare minimum as it effectively entails accepting the finality of what they lost in 1948.

Apparently, this is the last possibility for Israel to gain recognition and acceptance as a legitimate part of the region in which the Zionist founders chose to establish it. As it now seems, the Government of Israel is about to reject that possibility furiously and out of hand, to respond with physical violence on the ground and diplomatic violence at the UN. A complete reliance on the largest and only remaining detour, Capitol Hill and the rule of AIPAC in American politics. The State of Israel would live by the sword, holding to the mantle of a sinking empire - wagering its entire future on the willingness and ability of the United States to maintain a pariah, isolated enclave in the heart of the turbulent Middle East.

Will the Palestinians be able to influence the international diplomatic arena by conducting a determined mass struggle in the Occupied Territories, without being drawn into the kind of violence which would take away the sympathy of the world? Would the International Community be able to force the State of Israel to turn to a sane path, even without the participation of the US? Would the United States be able to shake off the stranglehold of the Government of Israeli on its internal politics? Could the young people of Israel, who in the past two months waged such an impressive and encouraging struggle in the past two months, turn their energies also to an issue which so far they have carefully avoided? I wish I could see a convincing reason to end this article on an optimistic note.

Those ungrateful Palestinians

2011-09-02T14:08:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was celebrated throughout the Muslim world – including the Palestinian Occupied Territories – the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which marks the end of the month of Ramadan. And with the end of this month there also came to their end the special Ramadan easing of restrictions which the state of Israel and its armed forces granted the Palestinian population on the occasion of Ramadan.

Exactly a month ago, General Eitan Dangot, Israel's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, met with the representatives of the Palestinian Authority, so as to inform them of the special favors which Chief of the General Staff Benny Gantz has seen fit to recommend for them and which Minister of Defense Ehud Barak has seen fit to approve. These measures were undertaken as part of the policies intended on improving the way of life for Palestinians in the Judea and Samaria region.

http://idfspokesperson.com/2011/08/01/the-idf-and-the-coordinator-of-government-activities-in-the-territories-ease-restrictions-during-ramadan/

As at the time reported proudly on the Israel Defense Forces blog, it was decreed that no less than 200 Palestinians be allowed to travel abroad via Ben Gurion Airport; that during Ramadan the Beit Mishpat crossing to Ramallah be open to Palestinian traffic, as would be Gate 107 near Qalqiliya; and that during Ramadan, trucks carrying supplies will be able to travel freely between the Judea and Samaria Region and the Jordan Valley. Also, in a most generous good will gesture, it was decreed that for the duration of the Ramadan period, no less than 2,000 Palestinians be able to pray at Temple Mount during weekdays. As for Fridays, it was decided that Palestinian residents of the Judea and Samaria Region and who are men aged over 50 and women aged over 45 would be able to enter the Temple Mount for prayer without any restrictions. For men married with children who are over the age of 45 and women married with children who are over the age of 30 it would be more complicated, they would have the option of asking for a special prayer permit and if granted it would be allowed to pray in Jerusalem. And as for men younger than 45 and women younger than 30, they would just have to wait some years for implementation of Israel's famed policy of free religious worship in Jerusalem, for which Netanyahu got such a wonderful standing ovation on Capitol Hill…

But now Ramadan has ended and the time of leniency with it, and now the checkpoints and gates will close down, and there will be no further prayer permits, and no further trucks with supplies sent to the Jordan Valley.

At the end of this month, the Palestinians will go to the UN - as well as holding mass demonstrations on the ground. They intend to express, in a clear and unequivocal way, that they are not content with an easing of restrictions which an Israeli Chief of Staff graciously recommends and an Israeli Defense Minister graciously approves. At the end of this month, the Palestinians will demand at the UN - and on the ground - to be a free people and live in their own independent state. A state in whose territory there will be no checkpoint or gate manned by Israeli soldiers, with the Jordan Valley part of its sovereign territory to which Palestinians would be able to send trucks of goods at any time of the year, and also the mosques in East Jerusalem would be part of its territory where Palestinians of all ages could pray without needing anyone's permission, and their state would also have an international airport from where all Palestinians could take off to wherever they choose as of right. In short, the Chief of Staff of Israel's armed forces would no longer have anything to do with improving the way of life for Palestinians in the Judea and Samaria region, but rather this issue would be given over exclusively to the government of their own sovereign state.

And how would the Israeli Defense Forces respond to the audacity of Palestinians who are not satisfied with the easing of restrictions granted to them by the army? According to news published daily in the papers, the soldiers are intensively training in order to respond to that threat. Two weeks ago a Ma'ariv correspondent was present during one of these exercises, held in the Nablus area, where the commander told him "We practiced using non-lethal weapons, but still in the scenario of our exercise three demonstrators were already killed". Later, the army started providing weapons to the settlers, who were authorized to use them in case of a crowd of Palestinian demonstrators crossing a "red line" which was demarked around each of the settlements. And dogs are also to be used by settlers against the threat of Palestinian demonstrators - on TV the head of the Judea and Samaria Dog Handlers Unit reiterated that "A dog is an excellent biological weapon."

Meanwhile, the new school year opened throughout the State of Israel (and also in the settlements the state of Israel maintains in the Occupied Territories). On this occasion Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu declared that the educational system would continue to focus on instilling the values of Zionism and Jewish Heritage and inoculate discipline. Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar added that he would strive to instill love of the Homeland, and even in kindergarten kids must learn to salute the national flag, and the dogs of course…

Who needs a ceasefire anyway?

2011-08-27T10:03:00.000-07:00

A bit of the past week's history: after several days of escalated fighting on the Gaza Strip border, a ceasefire was declared. The Government of Israel approved it after a meeting of the "Forum of Eight" lasting deep into the night, and next morning the press was told that "The State of Israel formulated a policy of examining the situation on the ground and noting whether or not the shooting continues, and the IDF shall conduct its operations accordingly".

On the next day the behavior of the Gaza Palestinians was thoroughly examined, and - wonder of wonders - the ceasefire was adhered to, the shooting of rockets did stop, residents of the South began to leave the air raid shelters, and at the Ashkelon National Park began preparations for the 2011 Sea Breeze Festival, a large scale Israeli Music outdoor event which the people of the city and the entire region have long been looking forward to.

But a few hours before the festival was to take place, somebody – in the government or army or security services – took the decision to send the Air Force to perform a "liquidation" in the Gaza Strip. The assassination was carried out on schedule, the car traveling on the Gaza Strip's main highway was destroyed and its passenger killed on the spot. A smooth and precise implementation, exactly as planned. The citizens of Israel were informed that it had been a dangerous terrorist and that the action had been necessary - and who can independently monitor and judge the Security Services of the State of Israel, in exercising their authority to issue and implement death sentences?

So, there was no question of an open air music festival, and the sound of singers was replaced by air raid alarms and loudspeakers stridently announcing "Code Red! Code Red!". Fortunately, during the days of renewed escalation nobody was killed (not on the Israeli side, that is). The case of an Israeli baby who was lightly wounded by the shrapnel of a Palestinian missile received considerable publicity in our media. Only those who follow the Palestinian media heard of two Palestinian children aged two, killed at two different locations in Israeli Air Force bombings.

"The liquidation of one militant, one out of the thousands roaming Gaza, was unnecessary," said yesterday Yehiel Lasry, Mayor of Ashdod – one of the cities which got back into the line of fire as a direct result of that liquidation (Ma'ariv, August 26, 2011).

Last night, another ceasefire on the Gaza border went into effect. Will it last, this time? And if not, who will be responsible for breaching it this time? And how does this relate to the social protest, which is about to resume tonight at full force, with demonstrations scheduled simultaneously at five places? And with Noam Shalit, father of the famous captive soldier, who tonight joins with the social protesters to call for a prisoner swap which is the only way to bring home his son Gil'ad?

Yechiel Zohar, Mayor of Netivot - another of the southern communities entering the line of fire at every new Gaza border flare-up - called upon the government to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians, and reach a long-term stable peace which would give breathing space to residents of the Negev. But who in the government is going to pay attention to this voice from the Negev, in the commotion of the September events which are speedily coming upon us?

.

A changed agenda?

2011-08-19T04:37:00.000-07:00

Someone in the wild Sinai peninsula took a decision and sent a big, well equipped squad to infiltrate across the border into the Israeli Negev, attack buses and cars and engage in running battles with soldiers and shoot and kill and kill indiscriminately. And presto, in one minute the agenda changed and the public mood changed into a state of emergency and war at the gate and in all communications media there was no more talk of social protests, nothing but terrorism and army and security issues.

It had been a difficult month for Prime Minister Netanyahu – truly, a very hard month. A Prime Minister under siege, caught in a bind. Tent encampments and more tent encampments sprouting up all over the country, demonstrations and protests and more demonstrations. The demands for affordable housing and for Social Justice and for a Welfare State occupy the center stage, and the Free Market economics which Netanyahu had worked so hard to foster since he was Finance Minister are suddenly cast into doubt. What did he not try? He used sticks and he used carrots, he tried to entice the protesters with committees and benefits and rabbits drawn from the hat and he tried to castigate them as Leftists and pampered sushi-eaters, and they went on to protest and demonstrate and extend ever further the tent encampments and get their rallies to the peak of three hundred thousands in Tel Aviv. Just yesterday morning, the protesters arrived at the home of Eyal Gabbai, Nethanyahu's Chef de Bureau, and he spoke forthrightly and made it clear to them that the Free Market system will not change, and there will be no taxation on the rich and there will be no Welfare State in Israel. And these cheeky youths did not accept these clear clarifications from their government, and just announced that they will increase ever more their protests and demonstrations.

How, how to change the focus and move the public agenda in a different direction? Perhaps finally September will come and the Palestinians will go to the UN and demand to have their state and thus help to distract public opinion in Israel? But the big show at the UN is only due on September 20, how to get through another month until then? Besides, would even that change the tendency of public opinion? What if the Palestinians hold mass demonstrations in late September, without any violence, and demand to have some Social Justice, to be free in their country and no longer live under occupation – would this be enough to change the agenda? It might even get a bit of sympathy among Israelis.

But not all is lost, and relief for the harassed Netanyahu came from the usual quarter, out of the deserts of Sinai came the dramatic initiative to change the Israeli public agenda. And it so happened that Israel's fine security services had long since prepared a plan to liquidate Gazan leaders which just needed to be put into operation, and now put into operation it was forthwith, and all at once Israel's Air Force took off for Rafah and made the hit, an instant and huge success, and immediately afterwards could the Prime Minister make a full-blooded patriotic Address to the Nation people over all channels and offer congratulations to the brave soldiers and the valiant pilots and the diligent security operatives and deliver a stern warning to the Palestinians and offer condolences to the bereaved and wish the injured a speedy recovery and how great it felt at last to make a long speech without a single word about social problems, just like in the good old days. And of course, as soon as Gaza was hit, Israelis all over the South knew that the time has come to seek shelter and expect the worst, and indeed the Qassam and Grad rockets were not slow in coming, naturally prompting the Air Force to counter-attack on more Gaza targets and bring on more missiles on Israel the escalation is mutually escalating - and who would now dare demand a cut the in the defense budget in order to promote social causes?

But what the social protest activists do now in their tent encampments? Would they quietly yield to the changed agenda and meekly disappear from the scene? If that's what Netanyahu is counting on, he should think again.

I would like to give the floor to Social Protest activits, with a selection of messages posted in the past twenty-four hours on the Offiical Housing Protest Facebook Page.
http://www.facebook.com/j14rev

Voices from the grassroots field

Yigal Cohen: We will not let terrorism beat us!

Ittai Hertzberg: I just read this piece of news:
Deputy Minister Ayoub Kara calls upon demonstrators to dismantle their tents and call off their protest, in solidarity with the wounded in the attack, as "it's time to be united in the struggle against terrorism".
Ayoub Kara, don’t you have another appointment scheduled with neo-Nazis in Austria?

Arnon Shaked: How sad, Bibi and his government got a terrorist  attack just in the nick of time. There is only needed a small military operation to make him happy. That's what they think about human life, it's like a game to them.

Yossi Levy: This protest cannot stop, this protest will not stop. We must continue to protest, we must continue to protest. This protest will not stop! [modeled on a well-known Israeli song].

Friends, do not have to bow down low, we can prove that we can go on. Express our respect for the victims, with quiet rallies, go on  going out to  protest. Let the wounded heal and recover and rise up from their beds as patients in a better health system!
Let the soldiers on discharge find a better higher education system.
And a better Israel for all citizens.
Continue! Continue!
.

Tamar Aviyah: We undertake to continue the protest even if military action starts. Protests throughout the country.

Avi Hevroni: Finally, we will have to learn to go on demonstrating even after such events. There is no choice. It can not be stopped. This may sound insensitive but it's not. There is no other way you can keep this issue alive in a country where there is no certainty of tranquility and security.
 

Avishai E. Edenburg: Now is perhaps the most crucial moment for this movement. We all had this cynical thought, that we would fold everything down and go home like good children, when security issues come to the fore. No. We will not fold down, not until our needs are seriously addressed.
  
Shlomo Ohana: Friends, let's have a moment of silence for the Housing Protest. It was nice while it lasted, but now it's over.

Bikosh Bik: Well, Shlomo, speak for yourself. If you feel OK with the situation as it is, good for you... But you can't decide for others what is good for them and what they will do or not do.
    *
Eshkar Eldan Cohen: Continue the protest, full steam ahead! 
What happened today is a tragedy for the families of those killed and wounded. But it also a tragedy when men and women die from illness because of difficulty in purchasing drugs, or when people's  health is damaged because they could not buy proper food, and when disabled people lack what they urgently need, and when people are discharged from hospital prematurely due to shortage of beds in rehabilitation, and when children go to school when  their parents could not afford to buy textbooks, when people die because there were no beds free in Intensive Care – all these are tragedies. The military and government failure in their role to defend the border leads to tragedy. Also their failure to take care of daily needs. So the protest must go on, for those who manage to survive and want to go on living. 
      
Meir Ben-Or: Mr. Prime Minister:
After the attack in the south, probably you will probably send out call-up orders also to the leftists who live in tents and eat sushi, just as you will send them the rightists and the settlers. You will sent us into action in Gaza which would  probably be followed by overall war, and who knows where it would end. I just ask you, Mr. Netanyahu, for one small favor. Just remember us who will go away to fight for you and for Sarah and for all your distinguished colleagues, and to eat dust (instead of sushi). Of course, if we do not come back from this war, then all bets are off and you are exempt from all obligations...


Ashkar Alden Cohen: Do not go to this delirious war. You do not have to!

Neora Barak: Do not stop the protest in any situation. We are not indifferent.  We are consistent and determined, we have patience and we will see who blinks!
Human pain and identification with the families of the victims does not mean giving up the momentum already created. We must not create a dangerous precedent of stopping the demand for social justice. Like it did not contradict the demand for release of Gilead Shalit. Suddenly the government sent a negotiator to Egypt to get him. That was only because the protests put some pepper up their ass. 
We should not give up, there is a silent majority looking up with hope at this protest. Do not forget this!


 Elad Shechter: The government wants protest forgotten. They asked the Jerusalem encampment to cancel the demonstrations (which shows how much the government thinks only of its own interests ). So it is important to manifest our presence and show that with all the sorrow and the pain, citizens are struggling also to live in a better country!

Not only does the protest not divide the people - it unites them for the first time in decades. The tents strengthen us against enemies from outside as well as inside. There is no contradiction between defending the country and improving it: before '48 we were able to struggle to formulate an ideology and therefore there is no reason we can't do it today. This is our War of Independence.
If the protest organizers cancel the scheduled actions, we would go on without them!      

Sivan Wolchinsky: That's right! In Kiryat Shmona there will be a march ending with a rally. Certainly one thing does not come at the expense of the other. You have to remember that in the aftermath of such terrorist attacks the state often defaults on its responsibility to provide aid to the wounded, to give them benefits for disability (physical and mental…). Social Security payments could be very hard for them to get, for no justified reason! This is the real test – now more than ever, get to the streets!

Charles Arthur James: I would like to propose a "middle of the road" solution. Both mourning and a protest. On Saturday night we will not hold mass demonstrations. Events will take place in tents, circles of study, lighting candles in memory of those killed and writing letters of support to the wounded, holding hands and creating a human chain along Rothschild Boulevard, and more activities like this. In this we will show that we are united in pain, but do not let terrorism destroy our struggle for a better quality of life here.
         
Eyal Ap: The occupation and the settlements are part of what creates such situations, in which we cannot just go on with "a normal protest" that does not touch upon the conflict. That's why we must demand an end to conflict, demand true security which only peace can give.

Bikosh Bik: Eyal, this is not necessarily .. It is also possible to adopt a protest policy that says that the social and economic situation is no less important than the security situation ... without going into the unresolved debate about the conflict.

Matan Bar: We all feel pain and grieving over the deaths of innocents. Our outcry will be the continuation of the protest, despite all. For us, for the dead, and for the mourners. Another "Cast Lead" operation in Gaza? Again an enshrining of the khaki uniforms? Talking of security and silencing the voices on education, equality, welfare? We grieve for and and honor the victims, but we also continue the protest whose hope they also shared. Will will not cooperate with the war drive of Bibi - Barak - Lieberman! We will not run again to kill and die in Gaza under the outworn banner of 'state security'. We will walk in silence at the rally Saturday night, we will remember the dead, and will continue to press our demands upon the ministers and the prime minister!

The protest organizers announce:

We march in silence - the pain of all, the protest of all

On Saturday, August 20 at 9:00 pm, we all march together with the entire Israeli people, from Habima Square to the Charles Clore Garden. It would be a peaceful march with torches and candles, designed to remind the Prime Minister that even in these difficult times, he is still responsible for welfare and health just as he is responsible for security. When the march gets to its destination in the Charles Clore Garden on the Tel Aviv coast, we will all sit on the grass in wide circles or intimate discussion, talk, discuss, argue and  sing – everything quietly, in silent respect for and solidarity with the victims of the criminal terrorist attacks.

This is the pain of all, this is the protest of all of us.

Quietly, but firmly. Because the people which demonstrates is the same people which is hit by the fire of our enemies. And their determined demand for a deep change in the order of economic priorities and for comprehensive social justice does not at all come at the expense of fighting terrorism - on the contrary. A people whose members are responsible for each other, struggle together for the future and strength of the State of Israel, are a strong people who can stand up to all their enemies.

Together with in the circles, honoring us with their presence, will be the best of Israel's artists, their voice devoid of the help of microphones, their guitars not connected to any amplifier. They will sing with us in pain and hope, for all of us have no other country - except the State of Israel.

Millie Duluoz: There is no such thing as a silent protest. 

Ori Milstein: That's exactly what they want. Be quiet. We're good kids. God forbid that we should demand defense budget cuts. A silent protest is an oxymoron. Like was said here before, there is no need to apologize, no need to reduce our force.
I'm personally going to cry out when I get there. Otherwise it will simply be a  surrender, a nail in the protest's coffin. If they manage to silence us now, what would happen if riots break out in September?

Hila V Goldstein: Dear firebrands! People were killed today. In the South there is a kind of war. A silent protest is the best now. 

Bar Hefetz: It should not be silent and not be in Tel Aviv, it's time to express social solidarity, go the Gaza border communities and cry out that we're not afraid, not afraid of Hamas, and also not afraid of this evil government which is just trying to scare us and silence us. No, don’t be silent!
    *
David Bochris: We undertake to continue the protest even if military operations begin. Protest all over the country! 

Ido Daniel: TV stopped talking about the incident and broadcast a miserable  program on cooking ..... And the football games have a moment of silence and the players put on a black band to honor the dead, and then go on playing...  Power is in the continuity, must show that we are continuing!

Gil Orlev: I understand all who are angry that it is to be a silent rally (why quiet? One terrorist attack. Life goes on, including all the junk programs on TV). I want to say on record that I much more sympathize with you than with the other side to the debate. Yet we must not ignore all the people who feel uncomfortable with a shouting rally when such things happen. Do not argue with feelings. There are situations where it is impossible to please everybody. I think the organizers deserve credit for trying to think of everybody and find a creative solution. There is room for two voices. We have a silent action, demanding peace and social justice.

Einat Doz'ovni: I have the experience of a quiet walk with only 200 people, which had a mesmerizing intensity. There is no need to shout in order to be heard.

Star Rajuan: I live in Gan Yavne, I was woken up twice this night by the sound of sirens. I they to keep optimistic also under air raid alarms, I hope you do too.  We will continue to cry out - loudly or silently, each in their own way. To demand both justice and peace.

Peace will mean that fewer people would be killed. And justice will mean that fewer people will die because they do not have money for medications, treatments or food.

There is no turning back

2011-08-09T20:23:00.000-07:00

"I have no doubt that what happened here on that evening is the beginning of a new era in Israel`s history and in its political arena."

This Hagai Matar says in his Aug.7 MySay article (fresh from the huge demonstration). I translated it and included the translation of the speech by Shira Ohayon, which he mentions.

http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=48080

So, who is the leftist here?

2011-08-07T04:44:00.000-07:00

Who are they and what are they, these young people who set up a tent encampment on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv which then spread to the whole country and succeeded in organizing huge demonstrations and rallies for the third consecutive week? What sort of people could they be, what might they be if they go out into the streets and chant at the top of their voices "The People Demand Social Justice"? What kind of people are not willing to leave economics to the free-wheeling free market game played between the great capitalists, on the assumption that when the rich become even more rich there will fall down some crumbs also on the table of those who are down the social ladder? Who are demanding the creation of a welfare state, where the government would ensure fair housing at affordable prices to all, and take care of education and health and all public services, and fund all of this by imposing higher taxes on the rich and the well-to-do?

Everywhere else in the world it would be obvious and unequivocal: these are left wing activists and this movement is a left-wing movement, by its very nature and essence. The call for social justice and for a welfare state is the kind of demand associated with the left since the concept "Left" came to be known in human social and political life. So it had been for centuries, even long before the birth of a man named Karl Marx. But in Israel, all of this is considered as "A Social Issue" which is considered politically neutral, a subject unrelated to the struggle between Right and Left and on which they can struggle together.

Left and Right in an ethnocracy

As was the common wisdom in Israel for decades, the division between "Left" and "Right" in this country, those considered "Political", are the occupation of and construction of settlements on the West Bank, the siege of the Gaza Strip, the need of going to war versus the possibility of reaching peace with the Palestinians and all Arabs. Also the status of Arabs inside Israel had somehow gotten into this slot, whether they are citizens with equal rights and what status they can have in a "Jewish Democratic State"; whether the Bedouins in the Negev are living on what remained of their ancestral lands or are "squatting on state lands".

On all such issues the dividing lines are sharp and clear: right-wingers are those who regard Israel as a state for Jews and Jews only; on the left are those who uphold and defend the rights of non-Jews, who heartily despise the occupation and settlements, as a moral abomination as well as destroyers of the Israeli society itself.

In recent years, there also came up the issue of refugees and migrant workers from Third World countries, especially Black Africa. Naturally everybody slipped into their obvious positions. The right-wingers shifted right away from purveying Arab-hatred to spreading crude stereotypes against the immigrants and calling for their immediate deportation and establish a "Neighborhood Watch" to physically attack them on the streets, while activists from the left worked intensively to help them and defend their rights as human beings (and taking care to remind that we Jews were ourselves persecuted unwanted refugees, not so long ago).

But what has all this to do with "Social Problems"? If we dig a bit deeper, we could see that in the common Israeli terminology, "Social Problems" means problems in the relationships of Jews among themselves. And by this definition, a right-winger can regard himself as as a full-fledged social activist, and to offer neat right-wing solutions to social problems. Just expropriate more Palestinian lands in the Territories and built huge new settlements, and the housing problem is solved. And for those who don’t want to go there, the right-wing has more to offer – just throw the Sudanese and other Blacks out of South Tel Aviv, and presto – there are thousands of apartments standing free! So Barcuh Marzel, disciple and successor of Rabbi Meir Kahane, could declare without hesitation and without blushing "Where social issues are concerned, I am more left than the left-wingers."

The racists' challenge

Last Thursday the extreme rightists, Kahanists and settler "hilltop youth", invaded the Rothschild Boulevard encampment and marched among the tents and chanted insults against Arabs and Blacks, and at the corner of Allenby Street set up their own tents decorated with such signs as "Tel Aviv for the Jews" and "Sudanese, go back to Sudan". Which set a fundamental challenge for the protesters. Would this be accepted as a legitimate and natural part of the protest, in which "there is no distinction between Left and Right "? Could racists join the march and chant along with everybody "The People Demand Social Justice", in between their own specific chants of "Death to the Arabs"? What would be the point and the value of such a protest?

But the protesters stood the test. In between the intense preparations for the big march to the government offices on Kaplan Street, the tent encampment's general assembly adopted a resolution to strongly condemn any group calling for the expulsion of another group on racist, ethnic, religious, sexual or geographic base. Now it was needed to implement the resolution. As reported in the struggle's Facebook page, where the racist tents had stood, there was set up an encampment specifically dedicated to democracy and the equality of all human beings, with its byword "Say No to Hatred!".

Now, the struggle for social justice can resume. Marzel was a nuisance, back to the main target: at the offices of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance.

Wrath of the revolution

The section above I wrote before I left for the rally, but had no time to translate and publish it. And just before I set of to Tel Aviv I saw on the struggle's Facebook page an exhortation worth quoting in full:

Anyone who is tired of the protest, cheer up the protest really works it makes a change people from all walks identify with the struggle but of course the government waits for the protests to fade away they are waiting for the revolution to get tired and fall down by the roadside. Today our wind becomes a storm, a tornado! We want to see half a million people in the streets screaming and kicking and shaking things up! We will show them that we are serious and that spirit of the revolution will not evaporate so quickly, not before it becomes a devastating storm which sweeps them away! Do not give up, never give up - tonight we hit the streets!!

Well, it was not quite half a million people (at least not this week). But three hundred thousand is not nothing...

See photos from The Mother of All Demonstrations in +972 Magazine

Another tsunami

2011-07-27T14:25:00.000-07:00

It was not Binyamin Netanyahu who started the occupation. Keeping millions of Palestinians under military rule, constantly expanding settlements throughout the Occupied Territories, diverting the country's best resources for it - many previous governments have done the same, including governments headed by the Labor Party. But Netanyahu's watch happened to be the last straw, and the Palestinians are no longer ready to listen to empty promises and wait until it would please the State of Israel to graciously free them from the yoke of occupation and dismantle the settlements which go on swallowing ever more of their land. They are fed up with going thought round after round of negotiations leading precisely nowhere. Now the Palestinians are going to the UN to demand international recognition of their right to establish a state - not just a state in the abstract, but a state in the 1967 borders, and Israel's military and police are preparing for large scale demonstrations and clashes, and a day before yesterday Likud Minister Yossi Peled described in concrete words the diplomatic tsunami which can be expected in September: "The isolation of the State of Israel is likely to intensify, some countries might prohibit Israeli ships to unload goods, Israeli companies will be damaged, and the opponents of Israel will get a boost". And PM Netanyahu is sweating and running around from one country to another in order to rally support at the UN against the Palestinian proposal and is making speeches and more hollow promises.

It was also not Netanyahu who first embarked on dismantling the Israeli welfare state. Undermining the public health system, public education, social welfare and organized labor, privatizing everything in sight and selling assets for next to nothing to a select group of Tycoons - all this, too, was also done by many previous governments, among them Labor governments, though hardly ever with as much enthusiasm and conviction as Netanyahu brought to the job. And also here, Netanyahu's watch happened to be the last straw. Also the citizens of Israel - especially the young ones - are fed up with empty promises, fed up with waiting until it would please the government to provide them with affordable housing and functioning health services and truly free education for their children. No longer are they content to again and again vote in elections and discover again and again that even if the party in power changes, government policy changes hardly at all.

And protest camps get set up and spread from Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv to places all over the country and young people take to the streets in their tens of thousands and boo and hiss every time when they hear in speeches from the podium such words as "privatization" or "market forces", and they burst out chanting "The People Demand Social Justice!" And Netanyahu is sweating and running around, making speeches and throwing some crumbs - but his promises are just not believed, and the social tsunami is already here in late July. And the Prime Minister was forced to cancel his flight to Warsaw where he intended to mobilize the Poles against the Palestinian proposal in the UN, and instead went to meet the representatives of Israel's student unions and offer them all kinds of inducements aimed at splitting up the struggle but they did not swallow the bait and the PM will have to think about another trick and oh God why did it all have to fall on his head?

Al-Arakib - sixty years, and the struggle is just beginning

2011-07-23T10:20:00.000-07:00

Al-Arakib is a village in Israel, northeast of Beersheba. A village which does not appear on any map published in this country, a village whose existence the Government of Israel does not recognize and does all in its power to make sure that it would indeed no longer be there - and yet, in spite of all that the government can do, the village is very much alive. At just the moment that I write this, the children of Al-Arakib are very loudly singing and dancing at the center of their village.

The village of Al-Arakib existed in the Negev, under the Ottoman Empire, long before a Viennese Jew named Theodor Herzl convened a conference at Zurich, Switzerland to call for the creation of a Jewish state. Sheikh Mohammed Son of Salem al-Okbi owned six thousand dunums of land at Al-Arakib. He employed twelve field hands who plowed and sowed the ground each season and sold the surplus produce to traders from Gaza, Jordan and Sinai. The Ottoman Government did virtually nothing for the villagers, but nor did it interfere much with them and certainly never tried to deprive them of their land.

In 1917 British soldiers who came from the south to conquer the land passed near Al-Arakib. An artillery shell fired at the retreating Ottoman soldiers hit the house of Sheikh Mohammed and destroyed it. But with the consolidation of the British Mandate rule the house was rebuilt, and the new British government also did not interfere much in the life of the Al-Arakib residents and left them to live quietly on their land. And in 1948 a new rule again came to Al-Arakib, the rule of the newly-established State of Israel. And at first the people of Al-Arakib thought that also under this regime they could live as they had lived all those years under the earlier rulers.

During Israel's two first years, the villagers' way of life seemed to be respected. Indeed, the home of Sheikh Suleiman son of Muhammad al-Okbi was used by the State of Israel as a Tribal Court, empowered to settle disputes among the Bedouins of the area, and Israel's National Flag was always hoisted on the roof when the court was in session.

The illusion was shattered on a single bitter day in 1951. Soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces, on behalf of the military government under which Arab citizens of Israel then lived, arrived and ordered the residents of Al-Arakib to leave immediately their homes. After six months they could return, so they were told, but years passed in their place of exile and the day for going back never came. When in 1954 Sheikh Suleiman tried to return to his home, soldiers promptly arrive to take him into custody at Beersheba.

And the village houses were destroyed and razed to the ground, including the house which the State of Israel had used as a court of law and the house in which the polling station had been placed for the first Knesset elections in 1949. And in the Land Registry of the State of Israel it was duly noted that this parcel of land was "an uncultivated and unoccupied property" and therefore it was registered as the property of "The Development Authority", i.e. of the government of Israel. And when the al-Okbis tried again to go back and cultivate their land in 1973, they were charged with trespassing on State Lands. And the same with Nuri al-Okbi, son of Sheikh Suleiman and the grandson of Sheikh Mohammed - who is himself not a sheikh but an activist for the rights of his people, the Bedouins. He had set up a tent on a small portion of the land of his ancestors, and lived in it day and night for several years until the police came to arrest him on charges of trespassing and a court sternly warned him that repetition of that offense might entail a long prison term.

And not just him. Hundreds of the al-Turis, neighbors of the al-Okbis who had also been expelled in 1951, returned in an organized way to their ancestral lands at Al-Arakib, near the cemetery where family members had been buried for over a hundred years - land of which the state had made no use of any kind during all the decades that it was in its possession . And they rebuilt their homes and farmed the fields and planted olive trees and returned at least part of al Araqib village to life.

And the authorities were far from pleased, and demolition and eviction orders were issued against the residents, and the sown grain fields were destroyed by aerial spraying, and after the Supreme Court banned the aerial spraying the Israel Lands Administration began to plow the lands and destroy the newly sprouted corn. And the residents, undeterred, continued to farm the land and sow again and again.

Exactly a year ago, on July 27, 2010, the police and Border Guards and Israel Lands Administration mobilized no less than 1,300 men under arms, accompanied by bulldozers and heavy equipment, to raid the village and surround it on all sides and destroy and raze it to the ground and uproot the olive trees to the very last one and make it again "uncultivated and unoccupied" as it was when the state registered it in its name.

But these are not the 1950's, and this time the land was not left empty for decades. The residents did not give up, and they came back and built their homes again the very next day - if not actual houses, at least huts to give a degree of shelter from the desert sun and the cold nights. And once again the police came and destroyed everything and again the residents rebuilt – and so it went on all of the past year, twenty-four times at least. There was increased police violence during the arrest of villagers and of the Jewish and Arab volunteers who came to help them, and once again the village was rebuilt the next day or even the same night, and again the government representatives came to destroy it, and so on and on and on…

Meanwhile, the government passed a directive to the Jewish National Fund to begin forestry work and plant a wood where the Al-Arakib houses stood, and also where olive trees had been planted by the villagers. (The trees which the JNF plans to plant in their place would bear no fruit...). "Making the desert bloom", the JNF's decades-old slogan, seems now a bit less attractive. And the villagers appealed to the District Court, and the judge admonished the JNF for establishing facts on the ground when the disputed ownership of the Al-Arakib lands has not yet been decided on.

The activities of the JNF's bulldozers at al - Al-Arakib were also heard of beyond the borders of Israel, and British TV aired an extensive item article about it, and the British Prime Minister David Cameron announced the termination of position as "A Honorary Patron of the Jewish National Fund". The JNF was one of various registered charities in which the British PM had this position, but it became a bit embarrassing in light of the Jewish National Fund's less than charitable activities at Al-Arakib...

Actually, the problem should have been solved already years ago, when the Government of Israel appointed a fact-finding commission headed by former judge Eliezer Goldberg, to deal with the Bedouin Problem. It deliberated for more than a year, heard testimonies – including even from the Bedouins themselves - and its recommendations called for giving formal recognition to the "unrecognized" Bedouin villages in the Negev – which might have been applied to Al-Arakib, too. But many influential people in the government and the Knesset did not like that recommendation, and a new committee was appointed, headed by Ehud Praver of the Prime Minister's Office, and this second committee did not bother hearing the opinion of the Bedouins, and decided that most of the unrecognized villages should be destroyed and some thirty thousand people transferred to (jobless) townships.

But these aforementioned influential people did not quite like these recommendations, either, because they did still include some recognition of Bedouin land ownership rights. And so the PM's National Security Adviser, Ya'akov Amidror, asked that publication of the conclusions be delayed, because he wanted to make some changes and amendments. Which are not likely to be changes in favor of the Bedouins...

Meanwhile, at Al-Arakib life goes on as usual, and the latest destruction so far took place on Thursday last week. And yesterday, to mark the anniversary of the 2010 destruction, dozens of activists came over from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and youths from villages in the Galilee who held a summer camp in the Negev, and American Christians peace activists of the CPT, usually based in Hebron, and some Palestinians from the Occupied Territories who managed to gain a rare entry permit. And together they rebuilt Al-Arakib for the twenty-fifth time (some say the twenty-seventh), and twelve strong and sturdy huts were erected. And on Friday afternoon, there was a common prayer of Muslims, Jews and Christians. And three young women activists encamped at the tent camp in Tel Aviv's Rothschild Boulevard came and held a presentation for the Al-Arakib children who received them with great applause, and tonight a delegation of Al-Arakib residents will take part in the protest march of young Tel Avivians who are rendered homeless by the scarcity and soaring prices of housing in their city. And on the coming Wednesday - July 27, 2011, the exact anniversary of the 2010 destruction - villagers and supporters of their struggle from all over the country will at 6:30 pm hold a picket and torchlight parade at the Lehavim Junction, on the highway near to Al-Arakib.

Not that anyone has illusions. The police will come again, and the huts erected now will be destroyed and need to be replaced by new ones. The Government of Israel has not given up its intention to wipe Al-Arakib off the face of the Earth. But the villagers have definitely not given up, either.

We won!

2011-07-21T08:56:00.000-07:00

What a victory! The war against the flotilla, one of the great victories in the annals of the State of Israel! Only one little yacht still managed to escape our remote control and set sail from some Greek island for the shores of Gaza. Even then we did not fall asleep in our vigilance! We immediately set in motion the entire naval power of the the State of Israel. Lt. Gen. Benny Ganz, Chief of Staff of our armed forces, gave the order in person. And the Navy's Commander in Chief Admiral Eliezer Marom took himself command of the operation, and everything worked smoothly like a Swiss watch.
Hundreds of our renowned Naval Commandos blocked that nasty small boat's way and swarmed aboard and took into custody all the fifteen nasty invaders on board and transported them to an Israeli jail, and tomorrow the Attorney General will ask the court to extend their detention on suspicion of attempted illegal entry to Israel. Yes, by no means will we let these people enter our country, Israel is a sovereign state which knows how to guard and protect its national borders, and therefore we will not allow anyone to sail to Gaza - not a flotilla and not a single yacht nor a raft nor even a surfboard. Nobody! No one! No one will travel to Gaza, and that's final! No one would violate Israel's sovereign borders! No one, I tell you, no one at all!

Wait a minute, what are you saying? Gaza is outside the borders of the State of Israel? Sailing to the shores of Gaza is not at all an attempt to enter Israel? Impossible! Really? Are you serious? What makes you say such a thing? What? The State of Israel disengaged from Gaza? When did this happen? In 2005? And it was official? The Prime Minister announced it officially? The Knesset voted overwhelmingly in favor of disengagement from Gaza? A disengagement from Gaza? I don't understand, why is no one telling me anything?

Balaam's curse 2011

2011-07-16T10:38:00.000-07:00

For many years, the Gush Shalom movement (of which, it must be disclosed, the present writer is the spokesperson) was alone in calling for a boycott of settlement products – the products coming from Israeli settlements in Occupied Territory, designed to serve as an obstacle to peace and to prevent the Palestinians from establishing their state. From 1997 to 2011 the movement's volunteers made the constant effort, with a tiny budget and limited resources, of moving between supermarket shelves and checking the small print on each product. Occasionally an activist on a motorcycle went to the settlement industrial areas themselves and carefully noted down the names of all the plants seen. And the data were compiled systematically and published online and distributed at the annual rallies in memory of Yitzhak Rabin, early in November every year. "Do not buy the products of the settlements – every penny for the settlements is a penny against peace" was inscribed in large characters on the cover of these booklets.

Many in the Israeli Left did not really like this activity. Very many times we heard such things like: "I am against the settlements, sure, but to boycott them is really a radical step." Peace Now carefully refrained from declaring a boycott of settlement products. At most, some of its activists sometimes disclosed that privately they were avoiding purchase of settlement products. Absolutely nothing beyond that.

For many years the settler leaders claimed that the boycott did not matter, that it did it not bother them at all, that their manufacturing plants were booming and thriving, and that their sympathizers were actually using the boycott list as a positive guide of things to buy. But it seems that somehow the boycott did touch them and deeply disturb them and punctuate their sleep. The fact is that Knesset Member Ze'ev Elkin, himself a settler and head of the "Eretz Ysrael Lobby" in the Knesset initiated a bill to outlaw this boycott, and pushed and pressed and struggled with all his might until it was inscribed in black and white on the statutes of the State of Israel.

Ze'ev Elkin and his settler friends expected that they would achieve their goal and erase the settlement boycott from the spectrum of political expression and activity in Israel. After all, Gush Shalom simply would not be in a position to continue the settlement boycott campaign – a movement which is far from overflowing with money, which has no funding from any foreign government nor a millionaire supporter such as the settler patron Irving Moskowitz, and subsisting on quite modest donations from private citizens. Rightly could Elkin assume that Gush Shalom could not risk to be flooded with lawsuits under the new law, whereby any company based in a settlement could sue and demand unlimited damages from anyone boycotting them, without having to prove any harm caused to them by the same boycott.

But the unexpected happened. Precisely since Ze'ev Elkin managed to bend the Knesset to his will by disproportionate pressure, the drive for a boycott of the settlements is on an unprecedented rise, flourishing and jumping up as it never did before. From the moment when results of the Knesset vote were published, Peace Now started collecting signatures on the petition entitled: "Prosecute me - I'm boycotting the products of the settlements!" and parliamentarians read out a list of products to be boycotted on the Knesset floor, and the Meretz Youths entered supermarkets and stuck warning labels on settlement products displayed for sale. And day by day there is a lengthening list of public figures and columnists proclaiming that despite - and precisely because of – Elkin's Law they would from now on boycott settlement products and call upon others to do the same.

It would suffice to quote the words of Etgar Keret, in yesterday's Yediot Ahronot: "When elected officials enact violent legislation which violates the individual's basic rights, it is nothing less than a civic duty to break it. Had my country enacted a law prohibiting men from kissing in public, I would look on the street for the first man who does not reek of cigarettes or garlic and give him a passionate kiss. When our country chooses to prosecute and persecute people because they are trying to influence in democratic ways the future of the country where they live, then I must use this forum to call for a boycott of the settlements. "

And a few pages later in the same paper appears the article of Meir Shalev: "By the weekend, when my column appears, quite a lot of good people already preceded me in expressing shame, disgust and apprehension at the anti-boycott law, another piece of legislative folly and injustice, courtesy of the Israeli right-wing.

I can tell you that from now on every visit to my grocery store will take much more time. If in the past I was looking at the packages of products in order to find how many calories and what harmful chemicals I might gorge myself on, from now on I will also look for the place of production. Following the publication of this law, I'm not going to continue giving any support to the settlements beyond what they get from the taxes I have no choice but to pay. By the way, I think that for this it might be possible to claim compensations from MK Elkin under his own law – since it was that law which caused me and others to undertake such a strict boycott.

Uri Elitzur, a sober rightist, expressed on the pages of "Makor Rishon" his fear that this law would not be much enforced. "It is, after all, left to the discretion of the judge, and allow me to guess that judges would not be very welcoming to settlers who claim damages without proving a damage. And anyway, the law first needs to get through the Supreme Court. It could be assumed that even if they don't overturn it altogether, the judges would send the law into a long obstacle course going back and forth between Knesset and Attorney General and judges..."

In fact, at least the religious among the initiators and backers of this law could have foreseen the consequences. Just two days before pushing this law through the Knesset, they have read at their synagogues the Biblical story of Balaam the evil magician and prophet who wanted and tried with all his might to curse, only to have his curse become a blessing...

Welcome to the State of the Police

2011-07-09T13:09:00.000-07:00

I am happy to host here Hagai Matar's eyewitness account of events yesterday at Ben Gurion airport.

(Link to original Hebrew article & photos)
http://www.mysay.co.il/articles/ShowArticle.aspx?articlePI=aaaqqe

Hundreds of police and other security personnel, dozens of Interior Ministry employees, a careful intelligence work, a massive PR campaign. What for? In order to prevent a few hundred peace activists from touring the country and seeing itsreality that, to arrest five Israelis, and drive away from the airport three journalists - including yours truly.

It's not that an excessive use of force is a new motif in the conduct of the Israeli defense establishment. Hardly so. Nor are baseless slander and assault upon non-violent peace activists a new phenomenon which we did not encounter before.

Also, we can hardly be said to be with is also not new to us. Also that we already know a long time. What happened today at the Ben Gurion International Airport was simply and mainly an unrivaled absurdity. Insanity or a total blindness. If you will, a warning sign for a country going completely off the rails. But possibly also a reminder a different choice is still possible.

Anticlimax

The absurdity was already evident on the way to the incoming hall. Dozens of policemen were deployed at the airport railway station and guarded all the entrances in the face of some   imaginary threat. It increased in the hall itself, where more than a hundred policemen stood for hours upon hours, as did a similar number of journalists, all arranged in a neat, disciplined semicircle around the fountains and gazing at the entrance from the baggage claim hall. The door opens and a couple emerges, small children running forward with cries of "Mom, Dad," and hug them. Again it opens, and an ultra-Orthodox family walks rapidly toward the door. Again, for two bands of teenagers spill in with great laughter, all wearing identical t-shirts indicating that they had come from a holiday in the Greek Islands. And nothing happens.

The authorities occasionally took care to provide some action to us journalists. Once Minister Yitzhak Aharonibitz was sent to boast of the great success in preventing activists from boarding flights already abroad. "We're acting as a sovereign and democratic state," he clarified. An hour later, almost on the clock, somebody took care to entertain us with Minister Eli Yishai, who prided himself on the dizzying success in blocking "the enemies of Israel" and "pogromists", those who arrived and those still on their way.

And when we were not entertained we entertained ourselves. Everyone agreed that there were very low chances of an activist managing to pass all controls choosing to demonstrate precisely at the incoming hall, rather than just simply taking a bus to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. Therefore, in the absence of activists, the reporters were trying to create oter points of interest. One of them interviewed the Police's special spokeswoman for the Arab media, who called the activists "supporters" or "identifyers" rather than "enemies of Israel", and who uncomfortably avoided the question whether a T - shirt or bumper sticker would be considered sufficient grounds for expulsion from Israel. Others have tried to draw out innocent tourists, asking them "How does it look in there" and "Did they ask you special questions or made special inspections". The answer was always no.

A more entertaining practice was the spotting the undercover cops wearing civilian clothing. These were mostly in groups, occasionally scratching an ear and glancing at the balcony above and nodding as if to the thin air. Others walked alone, were also easy to identify by the way they scanned those around them, or by the glazed look in their faces when some hidden entity suddenly contacted them and instructed them to change their direction of walking. Quite soon we identified them all, and the boredom and sense of anti-climax again enveloped all of us.

Four A4 signs

An then everything changed, and at last there was something to cover. A group of seven left-wing Israelis placed themselves besides the fountains in the incoming hall, waving a Palestinian flag and four A4 signs with the words "Welcome to Palestine" in Hebrew, English and Arabic. Journalists quickly converged on them, followed by the police - and the crowd. For half an hour, there was action to be seen in plenty: activists being pushed out of the hall by police and beaten by bystanders who shouted "Go to Syria," "Nazis", "Take off their heads", and so on. "When the cameras move off, I'll kill her," said one. "They all should be raped" shouted another.

On their way to the police patrol cars, while being punched and shoved by civilians, activists did manage to say a few words. Beyond calling for the liberation of Palestine, activists recalled that the hysterical reaction of security forces to arriving peace activists not start today, and that already for years entrance to Israel is denied to people who are committed to human rights and to nonviolent action for peace and equality.

The same police officers who arrested the handful of sign holders had not detained any of their attackers. In at least one case I saw a policeman ignoring a young man who was beating one of the protesters, and when he went on hitting her the policeman gently asked him to stop and go stand on the side. None of the attackers was not arrested or detained. A reporter of The Jerusalem Post, on the other hand, found himself under arrest together with the activists because when interviewing one of them he also protected him from the beating by the crowd. The police evidently regarded this as a collaboration with leftists, and carried him off with them.

Then it was all over. Most activists were arrested, the others dispersed, and the last interviews with the attackers petered out. We headed back into the airport, when two policemen grabbed me and my photographer friend, Oren Ziv, an employee of Schocken news network and member of the collective ActiveStills photographers' collective - and asked for our ID's. We presented our Government Press Office journalists' cards, the same documents which a bit more than an hour before had enabled us to approach within less than a meter from two cabinet ministers – but this time the journalists' cards were not enough. The police detained us and also took our ID cards, asked us to stand aside and refused to say what it was about. A camcorder from an American news network, trying to understand out why we were being detained, immediately found herself ordered to give her own documents.

It was not long before senior police arrived, accompanied by neat suited people reminiscent of the Shabak security service. At first we were told that we were ano allowed to take photos in the airport without permission. I explained to them that I was taking photos but only writing,   and that Oren did take photos but only after coordinating it with the Airport Authority spokesperson. After a we were told that due to unspecified "security reasons" and under the Aviation Act, we were not allowed anywhere within the airport compound fences." No further explanation was offered, and no explanation of ours was acceptable to the uniform wearers. A Channel 2 crew filmed the whole incident, and also failed to get a clarification from the security people. Our colleagues - photographers and reporters - were also surprised, though they failed to protest the expulsion. Soon we found ourselves escorted respectfully back to the train station, with two police officers verifying that we get on the Tel Aviv train. At home heard about the special forces and riot police taking over the Easy Jet flight from Geneva, and detaining dozens of foreigners for deportation.

What happened here

Lots of excuses can be offered for today's events. The activists who came from abroad could be dubbed "enemies of Israel" and "hooligans". The detained activists could also be accused of being "disrupters of public order with proven ties to Hamas", as an official spokesperson asserted when journalist Joseph Dana tried to make sense of the detentions. It could be stated that Oren, Lia (the American) and myself are endangering the safety of the flying public because we're leftists, though we came to the airport strictly as journalists and acted accordingly.

It's all possible, but there's something very weak and terribly pathetic in such arguments. How much, and why, can danger be actually posed to the State of Israel by several hundred tourists, who come on a tour of the Negev, Ramla, Jerusalem and Bil'in? Why are they so much more terrible than the group of American teenagers who spilled into the hall full of cops and reporters, and went on a day trip as part of the "Discovery" projects? And can somebody really, honestly justify the detention of four people who stood with small signs and did not harm anybody, practicing a democratic right to protest, while people who assaulted and beat them go free? And is there any conceivable reason, except for a general dislike of left-wingers, which can justify the expulsion of three journalists from a scene of journalist coverage at the focus of national attention?

The answers to these questions are, I think, quite clear. At the same time , it is also crystal clear that the hysterical response of the security forces reflects a mental state which becomes increasingly established in the collective consciousness of this country. September is approaching (which, because of the American vet, would probably become not a defining moment but just another small and symbolic step with no practical importance, on the road to Palestinian independence). With its approach, the feeling of fear, siege, persecution and self-identification as the victim, which dominates political discourse in this country, reaches really scary dimensions. Banner headlines warn of the threatening approach of a few ships carrying medicines and cement. Laws and bills are proposed and enacted to confront the mounting political and diplomatic pressure on Israel by assaulting the local human rights organizations. The army does not hesitate to use dangerous arms in continuing to suppress popular, unarmed protests and demonstrations in the Territories – even when the crowd marching towards the soldiers consists of children with balloons. The PR apparatus issues crazy films of slander against anyone in the world who criticizes Israel. And now - this day madness at the airport.

It is important to remember it is still possible to act differently. It is still possible to organize a struggle against the rise of the police state, against paranoia and violence, and to offer alternative solutions of freedom and equality for all. It is still possible to struggle for true democracy. It is still possible to demand from our leaders a true peace and security. It is possible, and as things looks now – there is no choice but to start now.

Far from being the end

So far, Hagai Matar's testimony. I would like to add a few words of my own.

At this moment, 124 peace activists who arrived yesterday at Ben Gurion Airport are behind bars, divided between two Israeli prisons and awaiting deportation from the country. 124 is a lot less than the 600 who intended to come, but also 124 could have – had they wanted to – staged a fair-sized riot at the airport. In fact, there were no riots and no one had ever intended to start a riot. There did not arrive here any hooligans. Still. of course the State of Israel does not intend to allow them to visit the Occupied Territories and meet the Palestinians who had invited them. Also in the future, anyone who wants to visit the Palestinian territories would have to lie at the airport and pretend to be "just a tourist".

The leaders of our country congratulate themselves for their creative and resourceful ploy: submit blacklists to the European airlines and threatening them with financial damage should they carry any of these "black" passengers. Three hundred activists were left behind in Europe and not allowed to board the flight for which they had paid good money. At all airports – Paris and London and Geneva and Frankfurt and Brussels – the same things were told to them: "By order of the Ministry of the Interior of the State of Israel, we do not allow you to board this flight." "The Charles de Gaulle Airport is under Israeli occupation. Israel runs things here!" cried out the passengers who were stuck in Paris, and what they said was broadcast at the head of the news on all French channels. Was it really worthwhile for Israel? .

And earlier, there had been the equally brilliant gambit of seeing to it that it that Greece did Israel's dirty work, that it was Greek naval commandos who stopped the "Freedom Flotilla" instead of their Israeli counterparts. Indeed, it seems that the flotilla was blocked and would no longer head out towards the port of Gaza. And now, every citizen of Greece knows that with one phone call Israel's Prime Minister can give orders to the Greek Navy and the its commandos, dictate to them how to operate at the Port of Piraeus and at Crete and in Greece's coastal waters.

Benjamin Netanyahu foiled a flotilla of ten small boats, whose arrival in Gaza would have in no way endangered the security of Israel, and prevented several hundred peace activists from reaching the Palestinian Territories – who were no threat either. And in return he enhanced and strengthened all over the world the image of Israel as a dark octopus reaching its tentacles everywhere, with its clandestine forces and agencies and pressures and control levers behind the scenes in all countries. We may feel the results in years to come, long after the flotilla and flytilla are forgotten, after Binyamin Netanyahu is himself forgotten.

PS:Laura Durkay, a writer and activist living in New York City with whom I was in contact during the past few days, is at this moment among the activists held in an Israeli prison. As soon as she is at large again, a detailed account of her experiences is likely to appear on her blog:
http://lauraontheleftcoast.blogspot.com/

Happy birthday, a new country is born

2011-07-09T13:02:00.000-07:00

A great celebration in South Sudan. A new country is born today, and its citizens are dancing in the streets. Omar al-Bashir, a ruthless ruler who certainly deserves the arrest warrant issued against him by International Criminal Court, decided after a long and bloody war to accept reality and resign himself to the aspiration and decision of the residents of South Sudan to declare their independence and establish their independent state. Sudan, which for decades tried very hard indeed to prevent this day from ever coming, was the first country to recognize the independent South Sudan.

Israel is going also going to recognize the independent South Sudan. Netanyahu will probably send an ambassador there, in some spare minute in between his intensive travels the world to mobilize countries to vote in UN against the independence of Palestine.

Mr. Minister, who are you calling a hooligan?

2011-07-06T13:47:00.001-07:00

To The Minister of Internal Security, Mr. Yitzhak Aharonowitz

Dear Sir

According to reports in the media, the Prime Minister has entrusted you with handling what is known as the "Fly-In," i.e. hundreds of peace activists from abroad who are scheduled to land at Ben-Gurion Airport this Friday. You have been quoted as saying that you consider these people to be 'law-breaking hooligans,' without your having bothered to check or find out who they are and what are their intentions. It has also been published that you intend to treat them with brute force, and to this end to fill Ben-Gurion Airport with thousands of police officers. These violent plans may cause a serious and completely avoidable damage to the State of Israel.

I wish to clarify the facts. Several months ago, Palestinian civil society organizations sent an invitation to peace activists around the world to visit the West Bank over the week
of July 8-16. In the framework of the visit, which is called Welcome to Palestine, the visitors from abroad are invited to stay in the homes of Palestinian families and to take part in various cultural activities such as planting olive trees in villages in the Ramallah area; visiting the Freedom Theater in Jenin whose director, Juliano Mer, was murdered several months ago; and visiting the community center in Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem. In no way or form is any violent or provocative action planned. Indeed, the Palestinians have encouraged their visitors to come as entire families with their children, and many of them intend to do so.

The first people to accept the Palestinian invitation were 350 peace activists from France, who have been joined over the last few months by activists from the USA, the UK, Germany, Italy and Belgium, totaling about 600 people – many of them, as stated, entire families including their children.

If the Palestinians had an airport of their own, the activists would have preferred to land at such an airport. However, at present it is only possible to reach the Palestinian Territories by way of Israel, and the activists purchased, at their own expense, tickets for flights landing at Ben-Gurion Airport. They have no intention of creating chaos at the airport, and their only intention is to pass through passport control, like any other traveler, and be on their way.

In many cases over the past years, visitors who have arrived at Ben Gurion Airport and stated their intention to travel to the Palestinian Territories were not allowed to enter and were summarily deported. As the result, such travelers feel that they are forced to use lies and deceit and to conceal the true purpose of their visit from the Israeli authorities. The people who are coming to Israel this Friday do not intend to do that. Each and every one of them intends to act honestly and sincerely and to clearly state that the purpose of their visit is to stay with Palestinians. Moreover, the participants met early this week with representatives of the French Foreign Ministry, and asked them to relay the purpose of their visit to the Government of Israel – evidently, that information has not reached you.

Whatever happens at Ben-Gurion Airport on Friday is entirely in your hands, Mr. Minister. If the peace activists are allowed to pass through passport control and depart for their destination, it will be just another routine day at the airport. If, on the other hand, you decide to act abusively and violently and to deport no less than 600 people at once, including families with children, there will be severe logistical problems and later, political, diplomatic and public relations problems which might continue to plague us for a long time to come. It is not yet too late to decide to act wisely.

Sincerely
Adam Keller

Pyrrhus in Piraeus

2011-07-02T08:42:00.000-07:00

Every morning numerous Israelis on the way to work listen to the two hour news bulletin on the Voice of Israel Radio. In the past few days, hearing veteran commentator Aryeh Golan one could have thought that Israel was facing a major invasion by a mighty fleet of dreadnaughts. After all, listeners were told that the Inner Cabinet is in almost continual session, and that Israel's Prime Minister, Defense Minister, Foreign Minister and National Security Council were all working full steam. All were exerting themselves in maintaining a very intensive contact with their counterparts in various countries, demanding and imploring them to do all in their power to stop the infamous flotilla from its its impending departure towards the shores of Gaza. And the Navy gunboats and Naval Commandos were put on full alert, all leaves cancelled and reserves called, and a special exercise held at sea with the participation of the IDF Chief of Staff in person. And last but by no means least, the famed Mossad dispatched its best agents on unspecified hush hush missions...

Israeli diplomats all over the world were instructed to put on the back burner their other urgent job – opposing the threatening UN vote on Palestinian statehood – and concentrate on the more immediate flotilla threat. Propaganda Minister Yuli Edelstein mounted a major worldwide PR campaign over the sacks of sulfur with which activists on the boats were going to burn Israeli commandos to death. When these turned out to be non-existent, the unfazed Edelstein turned immediately to the information gained from highly reliable that known terrorists (or at least family members of terrorists, or perhaps the bosom friends of family members) were on the flotilla passenger list. And there was also the brilliant stroke of threatening any journalist found on the flotilla boats with a ten-year banning from Israel – a threat which proved a bit embarrassing when issued by the Only Democracy in the Middle East and was retracted a day later.

In fact it had been going on for months. Ship owners of whom flotilla organizers tried to lease boats came under mysterious pressures and cancelled the deals on the last moment – whereupon the organizers bought the boats outright. And then, Lloyds of London and other reputable insurance companies got letters from lawyers, informing them that insuring Gaza-bound boats would result in judicial suits about "support of terrorism". But the flotilla organizers found some insurers who were not intimidated. And the leadership of the French Jewish leadership pleased the government in Jerusalem by nearly getting a restraining order against a boat which was due to sail from Marseilles – but at the last moment the naughty boat escaped by way of Corsica. And the State Department in Washington issued a stern warning for US citizens not to take part in the provocative voyage to Gaza, and that they might be prosecuted, and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton actually stated that Israel would be within its "right of self-defense" in using force to stop the Flotilla. All of which only served the American activists all the more determined to embark on "The Audacity of Hope" and set off (a large part of them having voted for Obama in 2008 and thus having shared in getting Clinton into position to make such threats).

By some kind of deal with the Turkish Government, Netanyahu got the Navi Marmara – largest of the intended Gaza flotilla boats, on whose board last years' bloody confrontation took place – removed from the roster. But still this left ten boats, mostly on the shores of Greece, with hundreds of activists determined to go on to Gaza against all odds – from Canadians, American, Irish, Swedes, Britons, French, Germans, Italians, Australians – all signing a pledge of non- violent behavior towards their impending encounter with the Israeli commandos, a considerable proportion of them being Jewish, including many Israelis and former Israelis. However, Netanyahu had one string left to his bow. In a radio interview he gave "Heartfelt thanks to "My Friend, George Papandreou, for his great efforts on our behalf" – which was certainly deserved.

George Papandreou, Prime Minister of Greece, is at this moment in about the most difficult and precarious position which any head of a government can find himself – being forced to yield to brutal international pressure to sign a deal which many of his fellow Greeks regard as a frontal assault on their standard of living, as well as trampling on the remnants of their country's sovereignty. In comparison, yielding also to the pressure to make life difficult to a band of peace activists hosted in Greek territory would be small change indeed.

And so, there were weeks when Greek authorities subjected the boats to endless exhausting bureaucratic procedures, the filling of one form after another – and meanwhile, boat after boat encountered mysterious disabling accidents, seeming to be the work of expert underwater saboteurs, which were reported with glee on the Israeli media ("Ha ha ha, another boat disabled, are they not careless about the maintenance?"). And yesterday morning, Greta Berlin, spokesperson of the flotilla organizers spoke loud and clear in an interview to yet another morning bulletin of the Israeli radio: "We start feeling that we are under siege, as well as the Gazans. But let it be clear – we are determined to go. If we are given more to fill, we will fill them. If more boats are sabotaged, we will repair them. And then, we are off to Gaza!"

A few hours after this defiant message was delivered, Netanyahu's best friend Papandreou dropped the guise of bureaucratic minutiae and pounced – setting his own naval commandos to do the work of their Israeli colleagues, and take over the boats and brutally restrain them from setting off to Gaza, and generously take upon himself some of the anger which should have been directed at Netanyahu. And so, "The Audacity of Hope" is at this moment held up in a Greek naval base, and its captain is in jail, and protest demonstrations take place this evening in front of Greek embassies around the world, and the switchboard at the Washingtom embassy was blocked by incoming protest calls. Also at the Greek embassy in Tel Aviv there was a protest, with Hebrew and English signs "Let the flotilla go!" and "Stop Greek complicity with occupation and siege!" and especially "Greece, shame on you!" and some scuffles and confrontations with right-wingers who had suddenly become lovers of Greece - as a year ago they had become sworn enemies of Turkey.

Is this the end of the story? Can Netanyahu consider himself to have gotten cheaply off the flotilla hook? I would advise him not to count on that. .

Report on Social TV about protest demonstration at Greek Embassy and extreme right counter-demosntration

http://tv.social.org.il/politics/2011/07/04/demo-embassy-of-greece

What Hitler could not do

2011-06-27T15:57:00.000-07:00

"What Hitler failed to do is going on today in the Diaspora" stated Yaacov Ne'eman, Minister of Justice of the State of Israel. From the podium of the Presidential Conference in Jerusalem, which was convened at the initiative of Israel's President Shimon Peres, Ne'eman sharply attacked the Diaspora Jews, of whom prominent representatives were present in the hall, and reiterated that intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews constitutes the realization of Adolf Hitler's goal. "The problem in the Diaspora is not conversion, is assimilation. Let's face the the truth, what the cursed Hitler could not do is now going on in the Diaspora, where a terrible assimilation is going on".

Intermarriage as the realization of Hitler's dream? Something is a bit odd here. Adolf Hitler was, to say the least, far from enthusiastic about mixed marriages. He expressed his clear opinion in the matter, not only in a long series of speeches full of hatred and venom, but also in a piece of legislation formally enacted on September 15 , 1935 and known as the "Nuremberg Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor": Moved by the understanding that purity of the German Blood is the essential condition for the continued existence of the German people, and inspired by the inflexible determination to ensure the existence of the German Nation for all time, the Reichstag has unanimously adopted the following Law, which is promulgated herewith: Marriages between Jews and subjects of the state of German or related blood are forbidden. Marriages nevertheless concluded are invalid, even if concluded abroad to circumvent this law. Extramarital intercourse between Jews and subjects of the state of German or related blood is forbidden".

Ten years after this infamous law was enacted, Nazi Germany was totally defeated and Adolf Hitler committed suicide among the ruins of Berlin. And three years later, on December 10 , 1948, an international gathering at Paris adopted a document which aimed at being the very opposite of Nazi murderous racism - "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights", enumerating the inalienable rights to which every human being is entitled - including Article 16: "Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family."

The right to marry and to found a family without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion! Did you know that, Mr. Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman? And the State of Israel signed this document, already in 1949. What a scandal! Who was Minister of Justice then?

Minister Yaakov Ne'eman's statement on mixed marriages continuing Hitler's work

Text of the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, forbidding mixed marriages

Text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, guaranteeing the right for a mixed marriage

Picasso in Ramallah, bulldozers in Bir Al-Ad and the fear of missiles

2011-06-24T16:34:00.000-07:00

This week there arrived at the International Academy of Art, Palestine - in Ramallah - the painting "Buste de Femme," which Pablo Picasso painted in 1943 when he lived in Nazi-occupied Paris. The painting is usually located at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven in the Netherlands. Its value is estimated at seven million dollars and it was lent to the Palestinian gallery for one month.

Khalid Horani, director of the Academy of Art, who had conducted the negotiations with the Dutch museum told that it took no less than two years of discussions and coordination and struggles to overcome numerous bureaucratic obstacles and allow the valuable painting to move from the Amsterdam airport to that of Tel Aviv and from there through the IDF checkpoints to Ramallah. "Nothing is normal over here" Horani said. "We planned to get an art work here, but found ourselves going through all the political complications."

Fortunately, the project of the "Picasso in Palestine" exhibition got very energetic assistance from Hourani's Dutch colleague, Charles Esche, who said "Our Picasso was changed in the course of its journey to Ramallah. It gets another meaning, and the story of this travel will remain part of this painting's history."

Never before was a work of art on this level exhibited in the Palestinian territories. (Art Knowledge News ).

On that same day, at almost exactly the same hour that the valuable painting arrived at the showroom in Ramallah, bulldozers of the Israeli Defense Forces made their way to the tiny village of Bir Al-Ad in the South Hebron Hills, and in less than an hour demolished its miserable huts, destroyed sacks of animal food, uprooted plants and shrubs, leaving behind heaps of rubble and ninety homeless people. The nearby caves, also used for housing, were on this occasion not demolished, but the soldiers made sure to cut and sever the electricity cables which the inhabitants had installed to light them. "You here don't deserve to have electricity!" said one of the soldiers to a resident who dared to protest. Ezra Nawi and Rabbi Arik Asherman, Israeli peace activists who arrived at the spot after hearing the inhabitants' desperate pleas for help, were immediately taken off to military detention.

And this destruction was nothing new or unusual in the history of the Israeli occupation on the West Bank. It happens routinely, on one week in the southern West Bank and next week in its east, although such events receive very little attention and are rarely reported in any media. Had I wanted, I could have post here every week - and maybe two or three times a week - the story of the latest destruction, and they would all be alike as two peas in a pod (or two drops of blood), different only with changing name of the most currently destroyed village. As usual in such stories, the land of Bir Al-Ad is coveted by settlers – in this case, the settlers of the nearby Mitzpe Yair. Officially, Mitzpe Yair is an illegal outpost, even by the rather permissive standards of the Israeli occupation. Which in no way disturbs the same authorities to consider its inhabitants fully deserving of a regular supply of electricity which the army takes care to provide.

And two days after these events, the Army's Home Front Command conducted a civil defense exercise in unprecedented dimensions throughout Israel. And in this exercise horror scenarios were postulated of war on four fronts, against the Palestinians and the Syrians and the Lebanese and the Iranians simultaneously and the fall of seven hundred missiles. And citizens were to take the air raid alarms seriously and run immediately to the nearest shelter, if any. And a senior Home Front Command officer expressed dissatisfaction with the indifferent behavior of many citizens, especially the Tel Avivians who ignored the blaring sirens and continued to bathe in the sea. "When real missiles fall, we will see them running" said the officer with some vindictiveness.

But maybe the fall of the real missiles can be averted. If the day comes when e residents of Bir Al-Ad can live peacefully in their miserable homes, and when loaning paintings to a gallery Palestinians would no longer need to struggle through the coils of Israeli military bureaucracy, and when all Palestinians - rich and poor, rural and urban - are a free people in their homeland of Palestine, then might also the officers of the IDF Home Front Command consign the horror scenarios to the archives and take off their uniforms for a refreshing swim on the Tel Aviv sea shore.

Photos and account of the destruction by Rabbi Arik Asherman

Account on the Rabbis for Human Rights website

Send a protest letter to Defence Minister Barak

Why is this year different from all years and this vote from all other votes?

2011-06-18T11:58:00.000-07:00

For decades, the UN General Assembly is meeting every year in the month of September. And every year it adopts by a large majority a series of resolutions initiated by the Palestinians. These resolutions gets reported (if at all) as a minor news item deep down on page 10 and go straight to the UN archives. No one seriously expects them to be actually implemented in reality. This year, it is quite different.

Never did a UN vote get such attention as the vote which is expected in September this year. This year, Israel's Defense Minister expressed apprehension that the expected UN vote might cause a political Tsunami. And the Foreign Ministry embarked on an emergency mobilization of all its diplomats in all countries throughout the world and instructed them, many months in advance, to focus their energies on the expected vote in the General Assembly. And the IDF and the police hold extensive exercises, half a year in advance, anticipating the United Nations vote and its predicted impact on the ground. And the Prime Minister of Israel and his senior ministers are all the time running around the world, from one capital to another, in a non-stop campaign of conversations and speeches and persuasions and pressures, so as to gather and collect a General Assembly vote here and there. And the President of the United States of America in person undertook a trip to Europe and met with the prime ministers of Britain and Germany, in a desperate attempt to formulate and present the Palestinians with a substitute of equal value which may yet convince them to take back their appeal to the UN and save the United States and its President the difficult dilemma of what to do and how to vote in September.

What has changed? It is not the UN itself which had changed since last year. Its prestige was not greatly enhanced, nor did it gain additional concrete powers. UN Member States still determine their vote because of various interests, and the great powers still cast their veto due to similar considerations. Still, the situation did change. It is the situation on the ground which has changed.

44 years have passed since Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza - more than two thirds of the total period of Israel's existence. 44 years, during which the State of Israel has established dozens of settlements and created hundreds of accomplished facts and carefully refrained from annexing these territories and explained to anyone who asked that this was a temporary situation and that the permanent status negotiations shall be held in the future, once upon a time. And after 44 years Israel's PM still asserts that the final status would be determined in negotiations which would start once upon a time, when the Palestinians fulfill all the conditions presented to them, and that such negotiations might even be concluded at an even more distant future date, but that actually there is not much to hope for "since the conflict is in fact unsolvable."

Already for seventeen years the Palestinians have the Palestinian Authority with its President and Parliament, Prime Minister and Ministers duly placed in charge of ministries – everything which a sovereign state has, except for one thing: real power on the ground. Also seventeen years after the creation of the Palestinian Authority, a 19 year old Israeli corporal standing at the checkpoint on the road between Ramallah and Nablus has much more power and influence on the daily lives of Palestinians than the Palestinian Authority's President and its Prime Minister and all ministers together.

No wonder that Palestinians are less and less enthusiastic about the Palestinian Authority which is supposed to represent them. No wonder that fewer and fewer Palestinians believe that diplomatic activity can make the occupation army and settlers go or that it might lead to the creation of a free and sovereign Palestine, whose borders would be based on the 1967 lines and which would have East Jerusalem as its capital.

Palestinian confidence in this option eroded further after the President of the United States called for negotiations based on the 1967 borders and Israel's prime minister rejected this call out of hand at the podium of the U.S. Congress while receiving the prolonged applause of American lawmakers from both parties alike.

The expected UN vote in three months from now, in September 2011, is the final test and the last chance - now or never. The Palestinian Authority's last chance to prove to its people that their hope to be a free people in their land is not lost, that the international community is behind them and that through its support a miserable and hollow Palestinian Authority could be upgraded and turned into a real sovereign state.

In the UN Security Council, the United States has veto power, as is officially enshrined in the UN Charter. In the United States Congress, the Government of Israel has veto power which does not appear in any written document but is enshrined deep within American politics, and which in effect controls the U.S. veto at the UN. And the United States remains the strongest power in the world, and its exercise of the UN veto is a highly significant gesture. Still, in recent years doubts are heard and fissures appear in the US global might, competitors and opponents show up to increasingly challenge the might of the American empire. If its veto is bypassed through the General Assembly, leaving the Americans in a less than splendid isolation in their opposition to Palestinian aspirations, these fissures would become somewhat wider.

And what would happen on the day after? In his famous speech Obama warned the Palestinians that the UN vote by itself would not create a Palestinian state - which is undoubtedly true. A UN vote in itself does not establish states which fail to materialize on the ground. Also the UN vote on November 29, 1947, did not in itself establish the State of Israel, it only provided a framework and legitimacy to the acts of David Ben Gurion and his colleagues. So, what will happen on the ground?

The influential columnist Tom Friedman urged the Palestinians to implement the creation of their state in practice through a non-violent struggle - large processions setting out every Friday to Jerusalem, with olive branches in their hands. For this scenario, Israel's army and police already begun to prepare and practice, and they have a wide spectrum of measures to counter what Army Chief of Staff Benny Gantz termed "The Demonstrations Threat" – from tear gas and stinking water to snipers who are instructed to shoot to kill.

But a state recognized by the International Community has various new possibilities open to it, even when its territory is still under occupation by a foreign army, and even if its full membership in the UN was stopped by an American veto. For example, to lodge a complaint to International Court in the Hague for the violation of its sovereignty by the occupying army and by the settlers illegally introduced into its sovereign territory by that army. Also, start individual international proceedings against particular officers in the occupation army, for personal acts in violation of International Law committed on its sovereign territory.

Once the state of Palestine is recognized, it will be much harder to send Israeli forces late at night into the heart of Ramallah, in order to detain Palestinians wanted by the Israeli security services for the purpose of " interrogation under moderate physical pressure". From the purely military aspect, there would be no problem to bring to bear a tremendous firepower which would overcome all opposition by the Palestinian police forces, but the Israeli officers involved may need immediately afterwards to get legal assistance. Adv. Michael Sfard already pointed out that the diplomatic tsunami of which the Defense Minister is so apprehensive might be dwarfed by the judicial tsunami which the State of Israel might face if insisting upon retaining the Palestinian Territories after September.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/the-legal-tsunami-is-on-its-way-1.358758
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/a-legal-tsunami-on-the-horizon-1.362001

And inter alia, a sovereign state is definitely entitled to issue its own currency. If the Government of Israel insists upon keeping the Palestinian territories within a single economic framework with the State of Israel, there could suddenly flow into this shared economy an enormous amount of Palestinian Pound notes and coins, with vast economic effects unforeseen and uncontrolled by the eminent economist Stanley Fisher, who apparently failed in his bid to head the IMF and will have to remain at the head of the Bank of Israel.

And yet, what if all this does not help the Palestinians? What if their state remains a piece of paper at the UN General Assembly, with no sign of it visible on the ground, with occupation keeping its usual routine and Israeli soldiers standing at the checkpoints through all the highways and the settlers in place, driving bulldozers and building and expanding and bursting out in all directions? A great victory for the Israeli right wing and the vision of Greater Israel. A very great pyrrhic victory,

If the Palestinian leadership is revealed as having given false promises and false hopes and having nothing further to offer to its people, the revolutions in the Arab World would swiftly arrive in the Palestinian streets. The Palestinian Authority which failed to transform itself into a state will collapse like a house of cards, its government and parliament swept away without a trace, and with them all remaining support for a solution based on a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Palestinians would abandon en masse the demand for an independent state, and would instead adopt a call – already gaining support among them – for a single state from the sea to the Jordan, a democracy with voting rights for all. All settlements would remain in place - only that their Palestinian neighbors in Nablus and Hebron, Jenin and Ramallah as in Gaza and Rafah would also send their democratically elected representatives to the Knesset.

And just then, when support for a democratic state from the Mediterranean to the Jordan would spread throughout the world, an Israeli government – terribly fearful of the loss of the Jewish state and the Jewish majority – would very urgently offer all that it refused and rejected before...

From Safed to Rome and Obama can wait

2011-06-13T04:34:00.000-07:00

Beautiful is the city of Safed, a city of picturesque winding alleys at the top of a mountain in Galilee, an ancient city with a history of wars as well as spiritual events. Nowadays, the name of Safed became known in particular due to the famous Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, who from his Safed seat is publishing ever new rabbinical rulings and manifestos strictly forbidding the rent of apartments to Arabs. Young adherents of Rabbi Eliyahu wander the picturesque alleys of Safed, holding petrol cans, ready to set on fire the cars of those who dare to defy the rabbi's ruling.

Two weeks ago Rabbi Eliyahu traveled to Jerusalem on Jerusalem Day, so as to meet Prime Minister Netanyahu and applaud him for his promise to build ever more housing for Jews-only all around Holy Jerusalem. And the Prime Minister quickly organized a return visit to Safed. Not only did Mr. Netanyahu come personally to Rabbi Eliyahu's hometown, but he brought with him all his cabinet ministers with their spouses and partners and the government-loyal Members of the Knesset. And while strolling leisurly through the alleyways of Safed, the Foreign Minister fondly recalled a nice experience associated with Safed. Many years ago, when he was still General Manager of the Likud Party, Avigdor Lieberman had been able to establish the Likud branch in Safed in precisely the same house where Mahmud Abbas was born and grew up, and which, hahaha, the Palestinian Authority President had not seen since he was a young boy. A journalist present described the jolly good spirit.

And suddenly, a weird message from Washington. "President Obama is waiting for Israel's response to his proposal to resume peace talks with the Palestinians on the basis of the '67 borders, with the possibility of swaps of territory. The Palestinians have already agreed, and now the ball is in Netanyahu's court". Come on, who wants to talk with the Palestinians? We have far better talking partners! Directly from Safed, the PM with nine of his ministers set off to another ancient city, Rome, there to meet with good old friend Berlusconi. "We have no better friend than the Italian Prime Minister" declared Netanyahu. (What Italians think about Berlusconi is another subject...)

Latin America from November to September

2011-06-11T08:49:00.000-07:00

Last week, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Eilon (yes, that non-diplomatic diplomat who likes to humiliate ambassadors by seating them on low chairs) went off urgently to the conference of the Organization of American States in El Salvador, in a final attempt to halt the diplomatic erosion among Latin American countries, which are one by one announcing their intention to recognize a Palestinian State at the crucial vote expected to take place in the UN Assembly General in September this year.

It's a bit reminiscent of historical events. Also in 1947 the representatives of the State in Being, the Israel which had not yet come into being, went among the Latin American countries and made great efforts to get their support for a crucial vote at the UN. And at that time, efforts were crowned with great success. Abba Eban, head of the Zionist delegation and future Foreign Minister of Israel, succeeded in creating a solid block of the Latin American ambassadors to the United Nations, a significant bloc of votes in favor of the Partition of the territory of Mandatory Palestine into two states, a Jewish one and an Arab one. Without this Latin American bloc, the Partition Plan would not have been adopted, and perhaps the State of Israel would not have come come into being. The State of Israel gave recognition and thanks to the ambassadors who took part in this great effort - Osvaldo Aranha of Brazil and Enrique Fabregat of Uruguay and Jorge Granados of Guatemala. Streets were named after them in towns and villages throughout Israel, and monuments erected in memory of those friends who stood by Israel at the hour or need.

And what is the situation today? Brazil already supports the creation of the State of Palestine, as do Uruguay, and Argentina. Deputy Minister Ayalon is left like the Dutch boy with his finger in the dike. What happened here? What happened to that friendship? Why do they abandone us in the lurch? But in fact, the Latin Americans have not changed so much. In 1947 they supported the partition of this land into two states, and today they support the same principle. (If anything, now they are willing to grant Israel more territory than in 1947, and the Palestinians – much less).

The one who has changed very much is the State of Israel. Those who sixty-four years ago struggled fiercely to get the United Nations to decide for partition and who danced all night with joy in the streets of Tel Aviv when the Assembly General so decided, are now fighting tooth and nail to prevent the UN from deciding again for partition. No partition, no partition, for God's sake! Dear Mr. Ambassador, can you not grant us this boon and vote "No", just this time? Please, please...

An evening of hope, a day of horror

2011-06-05T15:02:00.000-07:00

Yesterday evening the demonstrators marched through the streets of Tel Aviv and called for peace with the state of Palestine which will arise. Today the snipers shot across the border and acted with what the Government of Israel defined as restraint and moderation and killed "only" twenty unarmed demonstrators. In Syria itself 35 deminstrators were today killed by the army of their own country. 35:20 in the match of bloodshed between Bashar Assad and Binyamin Netanyahau. To be continued tomorrow?

On the march of protest and hope, read here
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/events/1307302934

See photos here
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/galleries/gallery_1307274890

Reaction to the moderate and restrained killing by the Israeli Defence Forces, here
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/press_releases/1307301226

A hot day in Jerusalem

2011-06-05T05:22:00.000-07:00

On the pages of the right-wing "Makor Rishon" columnist Uri Elitzur lamented "I had to spend this year's Jerusalem Day in Tel Aviv, where I felt pretty weird and unusual with my holiday clothes and the Blue and White flags hanging on my car. It must be admitted that this day of celebration has a rather limited impact – and not only on the streets of Tel Aviv. Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, remarked in his speech from the podium that unfortunately only a particular sector marks that day, namely the religious-nationalist knitted kipa wearers. "Alas, the city is not united nor knitted together. Jerusalem Day was defined as a National Holiday by law, but the nature of the festivities in Jerusalem and the identity of those dancing in the streets teach us that the national holiday in its current form is more reminiscent of a sectorial holiday."

Prime Minister Netanyahu was the guest of honor at the Jerusalem Day celebrations at the Merkaz Harav Yeshiva, ideological stronghold of the knitted kippot and the cradle out of which the Gush Emunim settler movement arose in the 1970's. "We came back to Jerusalem as prodigal sons coming home, we returned to Jerusalem as builders" stated the prime minister. "Jerusalem is in one of its Golden Ages. As all can see, residents of Jerusalem walk its streets with security and pride". And the PM concluded "May we meet next year in an even more built up Jerusalem" and was greeted with a thunderous applause.

And several hours later the religious-nationalist youths congregated in great numbers on the streets of East Jerusalem for the Dance of Flags which has become their annual tradition. They had come to show the Prime Minister and the Knesset Speaker and Rabbi Shapira and their other political and spiritual leaders how nationalist religious youths can walk with security and pride on the streets of an ancestral city, to which they had come as prodigal sons rather then as conquerors. "Let your village burn, burn it down!" they chanted while marching and dancing with their multitude of Blue and White flags, and also "Muhammad is Dead! Muhammad is Dead!" and also "Slaughter the Arabs!" (this much of Arabic they knew and used, so as to make their words very comprehensible) and "Jerusalem is ours forever!" and "Death to the leftists!". Some moderates contented themselves with "Death to the terrorists! Death! Death! Death!"

And on one shop's door they left as a souvenir the graffiti "A stinking Arab son of death with a beard full of fleas". And so they continued and continued to march and sing and dance, from the mosque in the Sheikh Jarrah Neighborhood to the Damascus Gate and through the alleys of the Old City, with songs and chants of hate and punching and kicking the closed and locked doors of the Palestinian homes and shops, none of whose residents appeared on the street and only their faces peered from the windows.

With one exception. At the very eye of the storm in the heart of the Sheikh Jarrah Neighborhood, right next to the houses where in recent years settlers have entered in late night hours and threw their inhabitants out and set up residence in the homes and raised on the roof the Blue and White flag and the big sign "The sons have come home." One of the neighboring Palestinian families, who (still?) reside at their home, went out into the street and placed a small table and chairs on the sidewalk and sat down - father and mother and two grown daughters - calmly sipping tea. Between them and the furious crowd, cursing and dancing in ecstasy with flags, interposed dozens of activists who had answered the call of the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement.

Shoulder to shoulder they stood, students from the Hebrew University and veteran activists whose air was streaked with grey and residents of the threatened neighborhood. "Fascism will not pass, no, no it will not pass!" they chanted, and "Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies!" and "Sheikh Jarrah, do not despair, we will end the occupation yet!". An older woman in a traditional Arab dress tapped on a flat pan and cried out: "Obama and all the world, look and see what they are doing to us!", and at her side a bearded Israeli activist held a more standard drum. One of the Sheikh Jarrah children, sitting on the shoulders of an activist, waved a Palestinian flag and called out in Hebrew "Thieves, thieves, get out of the houses now!" Opposite, beyond the police cordon, the forest of flags swayed in the hands of the dancers and from the very long song they sung only the refrain could be clearly discerned: "How I hate you, how I hate you all".

A young and energetic settler with a baby on his arm broke through the police cordon. "No, no, I don't want violence. Just a moment. Wait, I want to talk to you! We are all Jews, aren’t we?" No, here we are Jews and Arabs standing together, and some English people, too". "But let me ask you this, why you are demonstrating only here? What about Jaffa and Ramle and Acre, they all used to be Arab towns, too? "." We are for peace between two states, Israel and Palestine, on the basis of the 1967 borders, as Obama said." "But I just want to have the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, Abraham bought it with good money. It is you leftists who stole the village Sheikh Munis and built on it the Tel Aviv University". "How about this: We will agree on a solution of dividing the land, and the people will decide in a referendum what they prefers to give up, Tel Aviv or Hebron?", "But do you not know that the Iranians want to deploy missiles on the Golan Heights?" "I asked you if you are willing to let the people decide whether to give up Tel Aviv or Hebron, do you have an answer?" The young man mutters "Oh, these leftists" and returns to his dancing partners, from among whom rises the chant "Sheikh Munis! Sheikh Munis! "And "Leftists in exchange for peace."

Suddenly a new factor appears on the scene: Knesset Member Michael Ben Ari, disciple and successor of the notorious Rabbi Kahane, pushed forward through the flag dancers, along with his assistants Baruch Marzel and Itamar Ben Gvir, and entered into an animated exchange with the police commander. It was not possible to hear what he said, but a journalist who stood nearby heard and published it verbatim on the following day's Yedioth Ahronoth: "Don't you see how these leftist Nazis are stirring up the Arabs? What are you waiting for?" The results were soon to come. The police suddenly stirred into action and began to energetically shove the solidarity demonstrators. "Back! Back! Move back!" "Why are you pushing? This is a peaceful and non violent protest!" called one of the organizers on the loudspeaker, whereupon the police intensified their pressure. "The settlers already know - the law is only for the right-winger!" chanted the protesters while being pushed back and back. "They arrested some of us!" - the information passed down the line to those who had not seen it themselves, who broke out into "Beatings and detentions do not break our spirit!". The three detainees were dragged into the police van waiting on the next street.

After half an hour Ben Ari and his aides left the place along with many of the dancers and flags. The street began to empty, and solidarity organizers announcing the conclusion of the protest asked any who could to stay the night with the residents. But first, everybody joined in "We will not stop singing" which had become the unofficial anthem of the Sheikh Jarrah protesters - based on the Israeli song made famous by Yehoram Gaon and to which new words are occasionally added to fit new events.

Click for video evidence of the "Dance of the Flags"

If the officer / puts you in detention / do not be surprised / by soldier of the occupation
All who rise / end behind bars / and for them
We will not stop singing
We will not stop singing
We will not stop singing

If the officer / drags you off to gaol/ don't be surprised / serve the occupation he will
All who demonstrated / a night in Abu Kabir / and for them
We will not stop singing
We will not stop singing
We will not stop singing

They have already arrested / Haggai and Daniel / but will they / turn on settlers who make hell?
They find it easy to catch / Bashar and Samir / and about them
We will not stop singing
We will not stop singing
We will not stop singing

If in Bil'in / Supreme Court rulings are flouted / do not be surprised / It is a soldiers' country
All who demonstrate / immediately becomes prisoners / and for them
We will not stop singing
We will not stop singing
We will not stop singing

If in Hebron / Shuhada Street remains closed / though everyone knows / it is illegal
All who protest / lightly threatened with death / and for them
We will not stop singing
We will not stop singing
We will not stop singing

If you wonder/ When Law is only for the Jews
All who cry out/ wake up the public conscience / and for them
We will not stop singing
We will not stop singing
We will not stop singing

If bombing civilians/ is authorised/ don’t wonder / occupation hates morality
All who dissent / will be widely defamed / and for them
We will not stop singing
We will not stop singing
We will not stop singing

If shacks are destroyed / at Umm el-Hir / Ofra settlement / put off for another time
All who / will pay a heavy price / and for them
We will not stop singing
We will not stop singing
We will not stop singing

If ISM activists are expelled / and photographers all removed
There are those/ who make it known, not left hidden/ and for them
We will not stop singing
We will not stop singing
We will not stop singing

If shamelessly / Apartheid parades / and Foreign Minister/ racist, settler and what else
Get out, get out/ wake the city with great shout/ and for you
We will not stop singing
We will not stop singing
We will not stop singing

If the judge / sends me to gaol / do not be surprised / That's occupation for you/
But if you keep silent / tomorrow you'll be a prisoner too/ and for you / no one will be left to sing
We will not stop singing
We will not stop singing
We will not stop singing

Celebrating United Jerusalem - in Sheikh Jarrah

2011-05-28T09:20:00.000-07:00

On June 7, 1967 IDF soldiers entered the Old City of Jerusalem. This historic event left the famous photos, shown at any Israeli history book, of paratroopers crying with joy at the Wailing Wall. Three days later, in the early evening hours of June 10, the paratroopers were followed by the State of Israel's bulldozers, making an impressive debut appearance in East Jerusalem. All residents of the Mughrabi Quarter, which was founded in 1193 and had been part of the Jerusalem landscape for nearly eight centuries, were ordered to evacuate their homes immediately. The entire quarter - 135 houses were destroyed and completely razed within hours. All traces were removed and the large, impressive Wailing Wall Plaza came into being. It is likely that during this historic event, too, some tears were shed, but the photographers were no longer present.

To commemorate these exciting events, the State of Israel set up the annual Jerusalem Day - "A day of celebration, a day of national holiday, to mark the liberation and reunification of Jerusalem, Israel's capital, a day to supremely celebrate the essence of Jerusalem, the highest of hopes and most sublime of aspirations" to quote the preamble to the piece of legislation by which the Knesset, Israel's parliament, set this additional National Holiday into the nation's calendar. And thus, every year the settler youths and their national-religious friends gather in great crowds to celebrate their great National Holiday, the Jerusalem Day , engaging in the "Dance of the Flags" which has become their tradition, jumping through the streets of Jerusalem with banners in their hands. And the other residents of Jerusalem wait patiently in their homes until the mess in the streets would finally be over.

This year there were those who could not wait until this great day comes on the calendar, and energetically embarked on operations in the spirit of Jerusalem Day already several weeks in advance. For example, the Jerusalem Municipality, headed by the famous Nir Barkat, is very eager to reconstruct the garden of King David, which as is well known existed three thousand years ago in the place which is today the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan. Re-creation of The King's Garden could be so simple and easy, all that is needed is to destroy twenty-two Palestinian homes, and thereupon the area will be empty and the sublime gardening could start. But the Jerusalem City Hall's ambitions were checked and frustrated by a court order prohibiting the demolition of houses for at least two more years. Such meanness on the judges' part!. Fortunately, the judges only forbade the destruction of houses in Silwan and there was no warrant to forbid the shooting of live bullets at demonstrators in the neighborhood's streets. Thus was shot and killed the 17 year old Milad Ayash. (Who exactly fired the fatal bullet? The Police, or the Border Guards, or the security men who stand guard on the settler houses in the heart of Silwan and get paid by the Housing Ministry? Who knows? And does it really matter?)

A few days later, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu chose to celebrate Jerusalem also at his great speech on Capitol Hill in faraway Washington, and with great joy and pride announced that under Israeli rule freedom of worship is preserved for all religions at their holy places. The PM had probably not heard the official announcement made by the Jerusalem police on the radio a few days before his departure: "The police will today restrict entry of Muslim worshipers into the Temple Mount compound. Under the policy guidelines, entry will be permitted only to men aged over 50 and holding Israeli identity cards." Also the Members of Congress who stood up and gave him standing ovations are unlikely to be regularly monitoring the directives published by the Israeli police.

And meanwhile, many VIPs came to celebrate with the settlers living at the heart of the Palestinian Ras al-Amud neighborhood the inauguration of their enclave, sitting on top of the Mount of Olives overlooking the mosques. Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin spoke words of praise for the unity of Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, and congratulated the settlers who live in this beautiful enclave called "Olive Heights" for having established themselves in this magnificent fortified compound, surrounded by a high wall and guarded day and night by armed security men whose salaries are of course also paid by the afore-mentioned Ministry of Housing. A press reporter noticed in the yard of the new settler compound a large pile of children's bikes, for the pleasure of the next settler generation who could pedal to their heart's content between one wall of the guarded compound to the other.

Minister of Education Gideon Sa'ar also took part in celebrating the settlers' joy in setting up their Olive Heights, and by the way he also ordered a profound change in the curriculum under which the subject of "Citizenship" is taught in the schools. Eliminated will be the unnecessary emphasis on subjects of democracy and equal rights, which only arouses discord in the classrooms and poison the atmosphere. Instead, there will be a heavy dose of Zionist history studies with an emphasis on the exclusive right of the Jewish people in their ancestral land and of course in their capital, Jerusalem.

Demonstrators of the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity movement who dared to spoil the joy by picketing the locked gates of the settler compound - in protest of the expansion of settlements in Jerusalem - were dispersed with the full force of Israel's Police. Indeed, massive force and a lot of violence were used against them, including electric shockers. Only this week the Prime Minister announced in Washington that we are a model island of democracy in the heart of the turbulent Middle East. And it was probably just the promo for the splendid Jerusalem Day celebrations, which will take place on June 1 this year (according to the Hebrew calendar).

This year the settlers will hold their traditional Flag Dance on the streets of the Sheikh Jarrah Neighborhood. Apparently so as to display to the Palestinian families expelled from their homes and living on the street how happy and lucky they are to live in "United Jerusalem, the Eternal Capital of Israel which was made whole again".

Have a nice Jerusalem Day!

The dispersal of the demonstration in Ras Al-Amud - on video:

http://www.justjlm.org/1330

I came, I made a speech, I got up in the polls .

2011-05-27T11:30:00.000-07:00

Did you see Bibi? What a man, what a victory! How he went to America and just shoved Obama aside with these 1967 borders of his? Not exactly shoved him aside? Well, maybe not exactly, but more or less. And most important, the speech! When was there ever such a speech? Did you see how they clapped and clapped and clapped, again and again, how they got up and sat down and up and down and up and down. What power, what a great speech! We showed them on their TV screens how all the Senators eat out of our hand, how they clap to every word and every syllable of our Bibi; the great Bibi. Arrogant? Who cares.

And what other bad news do you chronic pessimists try to produce in order to make the atmosphere gloomy? The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange has gone down because a Palestinian state is to be declared in September? Really, what do these brokers understand? And Meir Dagan said it would be better to recognize the Palestinian state because it is inevitable anyway? So he said it. Come on, so he was Head of the Mossad for ten years, so what? And the Egyptians opened the Rafah Crossing? I always knew that you can't trust them.

In short, stop listening to the defeatist leftist media. Enough of gloomy forecasts all the time. Look what a beautiful day it is, our situation had never been better, the sky is blue, the bow pierces the waves, the band is playing on the deck and we have the best captain in the world. No wonder that his ratings in the polls go sharply up. Icebergs? What icebergs? If there is any iceberg ahead of us, it had better move quickly out of the way.

Obama, Netanyahu and the 1967 borders

2011-05-21T10:47:00.000-07:00

President Obama has made his long awaited speech and uttered the magic number which some hoped and other dreaded that he would mention – Nineteeen Hundred Sixty Seven. And Prime Minister Netanyahu retorted with an angry outburst and total denunciation and rejection of the 1967 borders. Israel's newspapers all came out with banner headlines proclaiming "Confrontation!" and "Collision Course!". In the evening, Obama and Netahayhu met at the White House and made a rather pale effort to paper over the cracks and present the TV cameras with a friendly, smiling, hand-shaking façade – what today's Wall Street Journal called "The most undiplomatic moments of international diplomacy ever offered for cameras".

From the shallow perspective of 48 hours after the speech, how are we to gauge it? A historical breakthrough? A tawdry, soon forgotten media gimmick? Or something in between?

To read this rather lengthy text in full click

The writing was on the wall

2011-05-17T08:22:00.000-07:00

Just a few days ago, the unequivocal Foreign Minister convened diplomats in order to unequivocally inform them that settlement construction would not be frozen for three months, nor for three weeks, not even for three hours. The writing was on the wall, but the government could not see it.

The Knesset majority could not see it, either - busily passing ever new anti-democratic and racist laws. The "Nakba Law" was particularly designed to punish anyone who dares to express a feeling of mourning on Israel's Independence Day and remind of the price which the Palestinians had to pay for the creation of this state.

And nobody noticed the Palestinian youths who saw the acts of their peers in Tunisia and Egypt and Syria, and how they too organized through Facebook and held simultaneous demonstrations in Ramallah and Gaza, and forced Fatah and Hamas into reconciliation and called for demonstrations and protests on Nakba Day, May 15. For many years since 1948, Palestinians had been talking about this idea: a large crowd marching, unarmed, to the border fence and breaking through it. They talked of it but until this week nobody ever tried to actually do it.

Standing again in the square

May 15 was one of these days when every news bulletin increases the horror. A 17-year Palestinian boy shot to death and other wounded during the dispersal of a demonstration in the Silwan Neighborhood of what Netanyahu still hails as "United Jerusalem, the capital of Israel" (the police still investigates if this was from a policeman's bullet or that a settler security guard). And an Israeli pedestrian was killed and others were wounded when a truck went widely careening through in the streets of south Tel Aviv (the police still investigates whether the driver did it deliberately). And then an afternoon of deluge, killings and bloodshed everywhere, on the Syrian border, on the Lebanese border, on the Gaza border, until it became hard to keep count. Hardly any attention was given to the Qalandia Checkpoint north of Jerusalem where nobody was killed and there were only hours-long volleys of tear gas with wounded in light and medium condition being taken to hospital.

As always on such days, the urgent phone calls begin - "Did you hear what is going on? We must react, go out on the streets, hurry, hurry!" Under tremendous time pressure a statement and call for action is drafted: "With bloody events happening all over the country we will gather tonight, in solidarity with the masses who oppose the occupation and call: No to the killing of civilians! Yes to popular uprisings! "

The message goes out by phone calls and voice messages and email and Facebook and at eight and a half we are standing in the square in front of the Tel Aviv Cinematheque and directed to the signs at the cars streaming along Carlebach Street, "Stop! War crimes ahead!", "Stop the Killing of Civilians." Hoarse chanting and beating of a dozen drums to the same: "You can't kill popular resistance!"/" You can't kill, the Nakba is real!"/" Barak, Barak, hey hey hey, how many demonstrators did you shoot today? "/" Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies"/" Jews and Arab are faithful to each other"/" We are all together, without hatred and fear "/" Come on, come on, no more tricks, dismantle settlements forthwith!"/" "Democracy is not built on the dead bodies of demonstrators!". (At the cabinet meeting in the morning, Binyamin Netanyahu chided the Palestinians for mourning on the anniversary of the founding of Israeli democracy. At the time when he said it, most of the nonviolent demonstrators killed today were still alive...)

A group of Arab students from Tel Aviv university, holding Palestinian flags, chanted "The people demand to overthrow the occupation!" – a slogan borrowed, with a slight change, from the protests of young people in the streets of Cairo and Damascus. Across the road a small group of Jewish Orthodox girls formed a counter-demonstration, singing the Israeli National Anthem. When they reached the words "To be a Free People in Our Country" one of the demonstrators called in their direction: "That's also what the Palestinians want!". A police photographer emerged from a patrol car and walked along the line of protesters, carefully photographing every face, and was greeted with calls of "Police State! Police State!"

On the edge of the crowd Aliya Strauss, veteran of the Women in Black weekly vigils, was deep in conversation with a passing young man, about which she later told other demonstrators. "He told me that he is serving in the IDF reseves and that he found my sign, 'Murderers in Uniform', very hurting. I told him that just a few hours ago soldiers wearing the IDF uniform had opened fire on protesters, killing unarmed civilians, and that there was a good reason to call it murder. He asked if I wanted my grandsons to be called murderers in uniform when they would be in the army. I told him that there is still some time until they are due to be called up, that I hope that none of them will kill civilians and that I also hope that by then the occupation will end and no soldier will be in such a situation. He said he understood us and that he was willing to talk with me about the situation but still felt hurt by my sign, and I told him it was not directed against him personally. In the end I decided, as a goodwill gesture, to replace my sign. I took up the one which said 'Nakba' in prominent big characters. He wished me health and went away with a sad expression. "

And now?

Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz accused the regime of Bashar Assad in Syria of being interested in diverting attention from its own shooting on and killing civilian protesters on the streets of Syrian cities. He may well have a point. But then, one must note that the the Assad Regime got full cooperation on the part of the Israel Defense Forces, who volunteered to take up their share in the killing of unarmed Syrian demonstrators.

In Ha'aretz, commentator Aluf Benn wrote: "The Arab revolution knocked on Israel's door. The penetration of Palestinian demonstrators from Syria to the Druze town of Majdal Shams at the foot of Mount Hermon completely shattered the illusion that Israel can have a good time at its 'villa in the jungle', completely isolated from the dramatic events in its environment.

And when he goes to Washington two days hence, what will Netanyahu say? No problem, he already said it in the Knesset. He will tell the compromises of true peace are painful, but there is no need to worry about that because in reality there will be no need to experience this pain because we have no real partner for a real peace. A real partner can only appear if the Palestinians first break up the reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas and go back to waging civil war with each other, and if they give up the impertinent attempt to create accomplished facts in the United Nations and the even more insolent demand that Israel stop creating accomplished facts in the settlements and besides and they should agree to a continued Israeli rule in the Jordan Valley and to United Jerusalem being the exclusive Eternal Capital of Israel and of course recognize Israel as a Jewish state. And if a Palestinian would be found to accept all these conditions we would think up something more.

Up to the next disaster...

***

Video reports on breaking through the border and demonstrations
by Lia Tarachansky

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCPR6LlFLfk&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hMbtbw03F0&feature=player_embedded:

Blue and white axes and black balloons

2011-05-10T12:35:00.000-07:00

Israeli Independence Day. Sixty-three years passed since the solemn ceremony in which a leader called David Ben-Gurion read out at the old Tel Aviv Museum a Declaration of Independence setting out an attractive set of enlightened democratic principles, which were immediately violated.

Sixty-three years have passed since six hundred thousand Jews went into the streets in an enormous outburst of joy and nightlong dancing at the news that a part of the country hitherto called Mandatory Palestine would be granted to them, to establish their independent state and be free in their own country. Nowadays, a futile effort is made to recreate that enormous outburst of joy by a night of wandering crowded streets and listening to the magnified voices of mediocre singers and waving of Blue-and-White national flags (to which some add the Stars-and-Stripes of the United States of America) and youngsters hitting each other with plastic hammers. This year was added a new hit, the plastic ax as tall as an average person, and of course the ax's blade also carries the national Blue-and-White.

It is also sixty-three years since the time when the Arab residents in this same country rose in protest and outrage at the news that the UN General Assembly decided by majority vote to grant to a Zionist Jewish state a big part of what they regarded as an Arab country, their own country inherited from their ancestors. Sixty-three years after the time when they tried hard to prevent the implementation of that resolution and failed utterly and suffered a most severe blow and were to pay a painful price (which they go on paying to this very day). And by the law which the Knesset enacted a short time ago, anyone who dares mention after sixty-three years the painful price paid by the Palestinians for the creation of Israel may be punished severe cutting of funds, as determined by the well-known philosopher Yuval Steinitz, Minister of Finance of the State of Israel. (The Coalition of Women for Peace today released hundreds of black balloons with the word Nakba into the air, inviting Knesset Members who object to this word to fly up and catch them.)

Today is also forty-four years less one month after the war in which the military forces of this country swept into the West Bank and Gaza Strip and created the Occupying Settling Greater Israel. The Greater Israel whose Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar appeared today at the opening ceremony of the International Youth Bible Contest and promised to send more and more Israeli pupils to visit the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron in order to strengthen them in them consciousness of our Bible-based exclusive Jewish right to the entire country from the sea to the Jordan.

May, 2011, four months to go in the countdown to September 2011, when the UN General Assembly is to convene and grant to the Palestinians to establish their independent state and be free in their own country and dance with joy in the streets and in later Independence Days make futile attempts to recreate this outburst of joy.

May 9, 2011. The day when Ninyamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, proudly informed his fellow Israelis that Israel is a Beacon of Democracy Lighting the Skies of the Middle East, and President Shimon Peres explained that Israel never initiated a war and wars had always been imposed on us and our hand is of course always extended in peace, and Yoel Shalit was expelled by security guards from the official torch-lighting ceremony at Mount Herzl after demanding that the government bring back his brother Gilad, held five years by Hamas.

May 9, 2011, the Independence Day which Idan Landau, professor of linguistics at Ben Gurion University of the Negev and a political activist, spent behind bars in the Military Prison 6 at Atlit. Idan Landau was born in July 1967, a month after the birth of the occupation, and he informed the military authorities of his refusal to perform reserve service in an army whose main task and mission is to maintain the occupation. At the alternative torch-lighting ceremony, organized by the Yesh Gvul Movement for those who don't feel at home in the official Independence Day ceremonies, Idan Landau was honored in his absence with lighting one of the twelve torches.

When you are united, how can we rule you?

2011-05-07T07:06:00.000-07:00

These Europeans - are they so very generous, or what? Urgently forwarding a sum to pay the salaries of the Palestinian Authority employees, because our minister of finance doesn't pass on to the Palestinians the money which is theirs.

Custom tax revenues on goods entering the Palestinian territories are being collected by Israel, under the Oslo Agreement - as the Palestinians don't control their own borders. Yuval Steinitz, the man placed by Netanyahu in charge of Israel's Ministry of Finance, had an instant punitive reaction to the Palestinians daring to reach a unity agreement, the temerity not to stay divided as so well suited the policy of Israel's government. Imagine: a good guy who could always be accused of being too weak, vs a bad guy who could always be accused of being a heinous terrorist. So, whenever pressure mounted to end the occupation we always waved the trump card: 'There is no partner!'. But meanwhile President Abbas' star is rising: the UN Statehood Recognition Campaign goes well towards September, and now he seems also to be domesticating Hamas into recognition of the '67 borders.

Actually, the Europeans don't have to worry too much: they could get their money back. They just have to ask their Quartet partner in Washington DC to deduct the sum from the billions which Israel gets annually...

Osama and Obama

2011-05-03T08:03:00.000-07:00

I remember seeing a photo many years ago of a respectable and very wealthy Saudi family, the Bin Ladens. At the corner sits Osama, one of the younger brothers. At the time he had no beard, and wore jeans, a cowboy hat on his head. He looked a bit like an American, or rather like a young Arab who wants to look like an American.

Later came the years in which Osama bin Laden went to Afghanistan to fight against the Soviets, with aid and funding from the CIA. At that time the United States did not consider him a terrorist, President Ronald Reagan praised Bin Laden and his fellows as Freedom Fighters. And then came the big change, a desillusioned Bin Laden became a sworn enemy of the United States, full of hatred, and spent the rest of his life waging an uncompromising war on the Americans . Maybe not a coincidence that it was him who conceived the idea of setting hijacked jet planes to bring down New York's highest skyscrapers.

For ten years after 9/11, Osama bin Laden played cat and mouse with the Americans, migrating secretly from the Tora Bora caves to the well-equipped villa near the Pakistani Army's military academy. George W. Bush dreamed in vain of the moment when he would make to the press the dramatic announcement of Bin Laden's death. It fell to the lot of Barack Obama to make it, just in time for the launching of the campaign for the second presidential electoral campaign.

Did anyone seriously mean to catch Bin Laden alive and bring him to an American jail and the Trial of the Century in New York, complete with dramatic courtroom scenes and impassioned speeches from the dock and the international spotlights turned on him for the next five years, until the gallows and after? None of this will happen now, the US Navy Seals came back with a body riddled with bullets, which was taken to a hasty burial at sea, where his final resting place will never be known.

What will be the next step of the U.S. President now that he became the idol of the crowds celebrating the blood revenge in the streets of New York? Will he use it to get out of Afghanistan and end with a resounding Declaration of Victory a long and exhausting war which had not been exactly a success story?

And in our region? Extreme right Knesset Member Aryeh Eldad already warned his fellows not to rejoice too much at Osama bin Laden's fall, stating that "Obama is more dangerous". And in Yedioth Ahronoth Orly Azoulay wrote: "Obama would now apply his might in other arenas around the world. Now, when he will pressure Netanyahu to accept a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders, Israel's leaders will not be able to whisper to each other 'Obama is a weak leader'. The time is over for this kind of talk."

By September we will know more.

"You must choose!"

2011-04-30T06:05:00.001-07:00

The Prime Minister of Israel was quick to respond to the Palestinian reconcilation agreement: "Abu Mazen - You must choose - either us or Hamas!" Abu Mazen could have replied: " You must choose - either us or Avigdor Lieberman! Us or the settlers' Yesha Council".

That is, actually, what Abu Mazen did do exactly six months ago. Binyamin Netanyahu had to decide between negotiating with the Palestinians and freezing settlement construction, or making his peace with the Yesha Council and consigning peace negotiations to a deep freeze. Netanyahu's choice is a matter of well known record.

An Anglican state

2011-04-30T06:03:00.000-07:00

On the Friday night news of the Israeli State TV, the interviewers and commentators took a moment of rest from the daily preoccupations, and turned with a smile to the biggest media show ever - the Royal Wedding in London. Commentator Ari Shavit took the opportunity for a sarcastic remark: "The whole world complains about our insistance on Israel being a Jewish state. But here we see that this ceremony in London is clearly a religious ceremony which derives from a long religious history. Prince William, if he gets to become King, will also head the Church of England - and no-one complains about that. "

Indeed, there can be no doubt that England never implemented a strict separation between Church and State. Officially and legally, the Church of England is still the official State Church there. Still, no one there takes from that the conclusion that Anglicans should have a privileged position in English society. No government policy measures are dictated by the aim of maintaining at all costs the Anglican majority, nor would anyone dream of arguing that state lands should be the unique domain of Anglicans and theirs only. No Member of the British Parliament would conceive of a law setting up "Admissions Committees" which could exclude non-Anglicans from a community on the grounds that "they don’t fit the social fabric." Ireland's independence, after centuries of British rule, was not made conditional upon recognition of "England as an Anglican state", nor was such a condition imposed for India's independence. And England has no religious laws imposing Anglican observances upon those who do not take them up from their own free will.

True, anyone who reads history books can find that once there did exist such laws and practices in England, imposing the Church of England on unwilling people and making non-Anglicans into second-class citizens.

That was once upon a time, long ago, laws which were abolished and deleted from the law books hundreds of years ago and nobody would dream of renewing them.

What, then, is nowadays the meaning of the Anglican character of England? It's mostly a symbolic thing, various colorful ceremonies held from time to time which have no real impact on daily life. Like the Royal Family which has no political power, and is mainly concerned with performing all kinds of ceremonies such as the current "Grand Wedding Show".

If ever the State of Israel consents to reduce the state's Jewish character to the sphere of symbols and rituals, and let daily life be conducted on the basis of full equality between all citizens, it might be much easier to explain to the world.

To be or not to be like England...

2011-04-30T06:01:00.000-07:00

This week an extreme right conference was held in Ramle. The star speaker there was Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, initiator of the famous (notorious) Rabbis' Letter, who was greeted with applause when stating that 'The Rabbis' Letter is working' and that "In Safed nobody is renting apartments to foreigners' (i.e. to Arab citizens of Israel). Thereupon, another guest of honor at the conference – none other than the Minister of Science on the Government of Israeli, Professor Daniel Hershkowitz – rose and presented Rabbi Eliyahu with a Badge of Honor, "in appreciation of his work to preserve the Jewish character of Israel".

Another thing which could not have happened in England. It is doubtful if even one priest in today's Church of England would have taken such positions, not to speak of dozens signing a joint letter. And if there were, it is doubtful if the Minister of Science in the British government would dare to approach this kind of conference. And should a minister dare to do something of the kind, it is doubtful if he were still a minister a day later. And in the unlikely case that he were, he might find it difficult to have British scientists keen to cooperate with a ministry headed by such a minister.

To be or not to be like England. That is the question.

Getting buried at Joseph's Tomb

2011-04-26T16:35:00.000-07:00

Joseph's Tomb. Again, Joseph's Tomb. A cursed place which already caused so much suffering, which already claimed the lives of so many Israelis and Palestinians. A place which, like a magnet, attracts all who dream of establishing an Israeli settlement foothold at the heart of the Palestinian city of Nablus.

One more stupid and unnecessary death. Ben Yosef Livnat, aka "Benyo" - a settler, a Breslov Hasid, a favorite nephew of the Minister of Culture in the government of Israel. A person who, as we heard in recent days, got married and brought four children into the world without having managed to grow up himself. And who now will never grow up.

By chance. journalist Akiva Novick just a few days ago accompanied Ben Yosef Livnat and his friends on a very adventurous trip to the Tomb of Joseph, in what turned out to be the last week in the life of this young man. Today Novick published on the pages of "Yediot Ahronot" a vivid description and full details of this event: "In the video film I took, he sings and dances inside the cave with a shining and a preternatural burst of enthusiasm and a broad smile on his face", "He and his friends encircled the tombstone in a fast dance of ecstasy " , "Traveling the night streets of Nablus we reached the speed of 140 kilomtres per hour. When Rabbi Berland comes along, they sometimes reach as high as 180 km / h", "Occupants of the car began to sing 'Though you walk in the heart of the flame, you would not burn, the flame would not touch you'" When I asked: 'Do you know that the IDF goes here only in armoured convoys?' they answered with full confidence 'The army has flak jackets, we have our prayers and the grace of our ancestors'." Did the Rabbis not teach them that very important rule of Judaism: Never to rely on a miracle happening?

Soldiers and checkpoint. and martyrs

"They behaved suspiciously. They tried to break through the checkpoint by force. We shouted at them to stop and they did not stop, we fired in the air and they did not stop. We had no choice but shoot at the car which was charging at us."

These arguments and excuses sound a bit familiar. When have we heard them before? More than once, in fact.

When the soldiers at the checkpoint were Israeli and the car passenger which they shot to death had been a Palestinian, no one in the government or the military high command thought of casting doubt about the soldiers' version of what happened. Certainly not Limor Livnat , Minister of Culture, loving aunt of Benyo who danced at Joseph's Tomb. She never doubted the word of the soldiers who were placed by the state of Israel in roadblocks on all roads, from Hebron in the south to Jenin in the north. When they had shot, certainly it was necessary, and when somebody was killed it is a pity and there was apparently no other choice.

With a Palestinian checkpoint, our Minister of Culture takes a bit different tack: "My nephew was murdered by a terrorist in the guise of a Palestinian policeman, just because he went to pray on the eve of Passover" Minister Livnat said this morning. "Benyo was a completely innocent father of four, he wanted only to do good. He was named after Shlomo Ben Yosef, the martyr who gave his life for the Land of Israel. Now Benyo gave his own life in the same cause."

For the sake of historical accuracy, it is worth mentioning that the martyr Shlomo Ben Yosef - who gave his life for the Land of Israel and for whom Ben Yoseph Livnat was named - is the man who on April 21, 1938, shot and hurled a grenade at a civilian bus near Safad with the explicit intention of destroying its engine, so that it would fall into the abyss of the road and its passengers get killed. An Arab bus, of course.

Yes, this young man with the shiny eyes, who was killed in a shooting on a car, was named for Shlomo Ben Yosef, who had shot on a bus. And not only him. Also in many Israeli towns and cities, streets are called for Shlomo Ben Yosef. And his picture appeared on a postage stamp, too. In this country you should know which vehicle to shoot at, in order to become a hero and a martyr.

Whose grave?

"The Tomb of Joseph is ours, it belongs to the Jewish people. It is the tomb of our Joseph. We bought it for the full price, 3000 years ago. It is written down in the Bible. Every Jew should be able to come and pray there at any time". This also was stated today by Limor Livnat. In this case, not so much in her role as a bereaved aunt grieving for the loss of a beloved nephew. More in her regular position of the Minister of Culture, committed to instilling in Israeli Jews the values of historical-Biblical territorial rights.

But who is truly buried there?

Joseph - the boy who confronted his brothers and made them angry, who got sold into slavery in Egypt and rose there to great prominence - is one of the most fascinating characters in the the Bible, and his story is told with a considerable literary talent. But has there ever been such a person in reality? And did he really do the things which are told about him? And if so, is he truly buried under that specific structure at the Palestinian city of Nablus? (The place was identified for the first time as the tomb of the Biblical Joseph during the Middle Ages, i.e. at least three thousand years after the fact).

And even if Joseph actually lived in those days, and really did all the things told about him, and is really truly buried exactly at this point - would he truly want his burial place to become. after thousands of years, a flashpoint of permanent tension and friction between Israelis and Palestinians, producing ever new incidents and ever new fresh graves?

And perhaps, it can still be different

After all. Perhaps, the day after the occupation might take away the curse, the day after the city of Nablus is part of the State of Palestine. A day when any who truly wants to come to Joseph's Tomb in order to pray could do so without risk and without complications and without any special security coordination.

The Breslov Chassidim are in the habit of making a pilgrimage to the tomb of their Rebbe in the city of Uman, Ukraine. Once, this had been a difficult, complicated, clandestine and rather dangerous undertaking. Nowadays they fly in dozens of specially chartered planes and conduct ceremonies on the tomb, night and day, as ling as they please. After all, they contribute quite a bit to the flourishing tourism industry in that town...

Oded Pilavsky - 1932-2011

2011-04-16T07:46:00.000-07:00

In June 1967, the occupation regime in the Palestinian territories was only a few weeks old. Most citizens of Israel were still in the grip of nationalist euphoria at the military victory and admiration for the victorious army (including, it must be noted, also the author of these lines). But even in those days there were people - a small group, and at the time very isolated - who came out in protest at the newborn occupation and condemned it in graffiti written at night on the walls of Tel Aviv.

"The Socialist Organization in Israel" was the official name by which they called themselves, those pioneers of the anti- occupation struggle, but the media – which often attacked and condemned them - usually called them "Matzpen" ("Compass"), the name of the paper which they published with considerable effort and sold on the streets (an act often involving a very real risk). .

One of the most prominent among this group was Oded Pilavsky, whom I always saw in demonstrations against the occupation during all the years in which I participated in them - and who had participated in a wide variety of demonstrations and struggles, long before there was an occupation, long before I was born. Last week, his brave and generous.heart stopped beating

From the article which he wrote about his life and his long and complicated political path, I chose to bring two excerpts, which are still highly relevant today.

Taking possession of "the abandoned harvest"

Kibbutz Mashavim (now "Mashavey Sadeh") of which I was a member belonged to Hakibutz HaMeuhad (United Kibbutz Movement), and there was a strong Left Zionist atmosphere. At the celebration marking two years of the Kibbutz's foundation we placed, at the corner of the hall where the celebration took place, a large wooden box inscribed with "Donations to support the Sailors' Strike". Representatives of two Bedouin tribes who lived nearby, Abu-Rgayyek and A-Sana, were also invited to take part in the celebration. They were given seat at the front of the hall, near the stage. (...)

Soon after that, at the end of the planting season in 1950, the Israeli Army expelled several Bedouin tribes from the Tel-Arad region across the Jordanian border. And that was not an isolated case. At the Negev Heights, other Bedouin tribes were deported across the border with Egypt. I was called upon to take part in what was termed "Harvesting the abandoned fields" near Tel – Arad. My participation in that act affected me deeply and sharpened my perception of the Zionist practice of ethnic cleansing.

That is how it was: The winter of 1950-1951 was exceptionally blessed with rain. The barley which the Bedouins had sown before their expulsion yielded a magnificent crop whose like is seen in this part of our country only once in a decade. It was the kibbutzniks, led by the army's Negev command, who immediately took possession and started harvesting the flourishing high corn, fruit of the labor of the Bedouin Arabs who had been expelled from the country after sowing. A tent camp was established there, for several weeks, to provide housing and meals to those who industriously carried out this task." Each Kibbutz was assigned a plot to be harvested. The barley grain was taken by trucks to the market. The proceeds distributed among the participating kibbutzim in proportion to their contribution to the common effort of the stolen ("abandoned"). harvest.

I was among the porters, taking up with great effort the full sacks of barley and transporting them from the fields to the camp and then onto the trucks to the market. Suddenly, in the middle of loading, the scales fell from my eyes and I finally started to comprehend what was happening there. A collectivist bunch imbued with Socialist ideals, equipped with the best of agricultural machinery purchased on credit from the Jewish Agency, was reaping- robbing the fruit of the labor of poor Arabs who had been expelled from their land and their country.(...)

The full article in Hebrew

Who am I?

Toward any anti-Semite, I am a Jew

To adherents of Greater Israel, a Palestinian

To white supremacists, I am black

In face of rampant Israeli nationalism, I am a diaspora Jew

To Jewish megalomania, a gentile

For European Neo-Nazis, let me be an Arab, a Turk and a Kurd

To Xenophobes, a migrant worker

To women haters, a feminist

In the presence of aristocrats, I am a commoner

And with smug generals, a conscientious objector

Oded Pilavsky, 2002

Oded Pilavsky had no funeral. He chose to donate his body to science. Instead, his family and friends will hold a memorial evening on Wednesday, April 27, at 7:30 pm, at Beit Sokolov, 4 Kaplan Street, Tel Aviv.

The long-awaited speech

2011-04-16T02:31:00.000-07:00

Ladies and gentlemen, I can hardly express how excited and pleased I am to appear today before you. Here on Capitol Hill in Washington I feel more at home than anywhere else in the world. Much more at home than on the Knesset floor in Jerusalem. There, I would never have delivered this speech, ladies and gentlemen, no way! No way, am I crazy? To make important political speeches in the Knesset? Of course it is true, thank God, that we have a solid right-wing majority in the Knesset. But still, we have there some black sheep, a few impertinent leftists, nasty people. They might have started heckling me or make some cynical remarks about my peace plans. Here with you, in Washington, such things cannot happen. I can be sure that, whatever I say, all of you will burst out clapping. And anyone who will not applaud loudly enough will be taken care of by AIPAC.

Well, in short, with you I don't need go into great detail. You already know what's what. We are a democracy, the only democratic country in the Middle East, and we share democratic values with you here in America (where's the applause and the clapping? Very good, very good.) We are surrounded by enemies and faced with the most dangerous threats. I've already explained to you a lot of times about the grave danger of Ahmadinejad, that nuclear bastard from Tehran. And there is also the threat of the new flotilla which is going to sail in the direction of the Port of Gaza next month. Just imagine, we have intelligence information that also this time they intend to take with them some kitchen knives! Our good boys in the Naval Commandos are preparing to block this threat. Or shall we actually confuse them and not block them after all? We will see, I have a meeting with the security people about that, next week.

Anyway, this is not exactly what I came to talk to you about today. I wanted to warn you specifically about Abu Mazen, yes, this bastard chick who had grown feathers and has by now become a real wolf in sheep's clothing. He has come up with a really nasty conspiracy. To create facts on the ground! Yes, you have heard right, he actually intends to create facts on the ground! He does not want to go on negotiating with us, that bastard. We are already negotiating for twenty years, and there was a very nice progress in the Peace Process. Another forty years, and we would come to some kind of agreement. Yes, definitely. At most, in fifty years. But these bastards don't want to go on negotiating, they want to create facts unilaterally, these insolent rascals. They want to get recognition as a state by the United Nations, come September. But you will not let them, will you! (More clapping, more clapping! Stronger! Stronger!). Excellent, excellent, I knew I could rely on you. The Palestinians have the UN General Assembly, but what is the UN compared to having the United States Congress in your inmost pocket?

Any questions? Of course not. Everything is clear, you know your mission and you will perform well, as always. See you in September, guys. What's this? Is this how you clap for your platoon commander? I can hear nothing. Harder, guys, harder, more clapping, more applause! Don't forget, when AIPAC is around, Senators have a good reason to shake! Guard your back, guys! See you in September!

Aqaba: the crime of existing

2011-04-12T09:04:00.000-07:00

Last week the IDF was very busy on the Gaza Strip Border, involved in shooting and shooting back and shelling and bombing and firing missiles and intercepting missiles and carrying on the operational testing under field conditions of the Iron Dome counter-missile system. Yet in the midst of all this the military found the time and resources to open a second front at a small village in northeastern West Bank called Aqabah (the same name as the more well known city in Jordan).

Altogether, about three hundred people live there. No missile had been shot from there. Even stones had never been thrown there, neither now nor at the height of the first Intifada, or the second one. Never were people from this village been charged even with the slightest violent act. Nevertheless, even in the midst of warlike escalation on the Gaza border, the Israeli Defense Forces could spare the resources to send many soldiers on a military mission into this village - almost as many soldiers as it has residents.

The soldiers advanced to three houses which were marked for destruction, ordered the families to leave immediately, threw out their possessions and escorted bulldozers to destroy the houses before the frightened children's eyes. And the two roads connecting the village to the outside world were most thoroughly plowed by the soldiers of the world's most moral army, so as to make them impassable to the Aqaba residents' cars. And the electricity poles were uprooted and smashed, as was the fence at the side of the road, and the soldiers also moved into the fields near the road and plowed them and destroyed a large part of crops.

"The Peace Road" the Aqabah residents had named the one-kilometer road that linked their village to the main Jordan Valley Highway. The soldiers who were sent there by the State of Israel did not care by what name was called the road which they were ordered to destroy.

A bit of history

This is not the first time that the village of Aqabah was singled out for a harsh treatment by the State of Israel. In fact, ever since the territory was conquered in 1967, the authorities in our country did not hide their strong feeling that this village should just not be there (it does not appear on any map printed in Israel) and made many efforts to ensure that it would indeed stop being there. Not only were houses destroyed again and again, but for many years a training base of the Israel Defense Forces was located in the middle of Aqabah, with soldiers holding live ammunition training among the houses. No less than nine villagers were killed and others injured by stray bullets. Yet residents refused to understand the subtle hint and leave. They buried their dead and mourned them and continued to live in this difficult and dangerous location.

Only in 2001 did the Supreme Court accept a petition filed by the Association for Civil Rights and ordered the army to remove the base and stop the soldiers from training among the village houses. And still did the authorities hold firmly to their opinion that there should be no building in this location and no building licenses would ever be granted and that therefore the illegal houses built in Aqabah must be demolished, as should the illegal road made by the illegal residents of the illegal village for their illegal cars....

Why are the authorities bothered so much by the existence of a tiny village, of which the majority of Israeli citizens have never heard? Never was an official answer given. One may only speculate that it may have started in some way with Yigal Alon, a senior minister in the government of Israel at the aftermath of 1967, who came up with the idea that Israel should permanently keep the Jordan Valley and settle it with as many Israeli Jews as were willing to go there and discourage in every possible way the presence of Arabs there. The village of Aqabah is unfortunate to be situated on the very edge of the Jordan Valley. If it were gotten rid of, the area earmarked for Israeli annexation plans would become that much wider… Alon is long dead, but the plan that he laid down is still alive and kicking. Very painfully kicking, at times.

In 2003 the army bulldozers visited Aqaba and began to destroy house after house. But peace activists called the U.S. Consulate in East Jerusalem and some phone calls were made from there to senior Israeli officials and the destruction stopped. After this event Aqabah had seven good years, when it was left more or less alone, and the village began to prosper with considerable international assistance.

USAID helped pave the access road to the village, and the British government funded the establishment of a clinic. The kindergarten was financed by an American organization called "The Rebuilding Alliance", and the governments of Japan, Belgium and Norway helped in adding a second floor, so as to enable the kindergarten to take in also the children from other small villages in the area. The Government of Japan also funded the construction of a large water tank for the villagers' use. (There was, of course, no possibility of linking Aqaba to regular water supplies by pipe, as human communities normally are – all water supplies and pipes in this area are controlled by the Government of Israel and its armed forces…)

The village's mayor, Haj Sami Sadek - a man confined to a wheelchair since his youth, after being injured in the shooting of soldiers who carried out live fire training near his home - was invited to lecture tours in the U.S. and Europe and talked to various VIP's and gave press interviews in several countries. For many years it seemed that the authorities decided to leave this village alone. Until last week.

What happened now? Who decided that it was high time to return Israeli bulldozers to the village of Aqaba? Again, one can only guess. Maybe it has something to do with the very highly publicized visit of Prime Minister Netanyahu to the Jordan Valley a month ago, not far from the village of Aqaba, and his firm statements that this Valley must remain under Israeli control. Not that Netanyahu necessarily gave a direct order to the army to demolish homes and plow roads in the village of Aqaba. But sometimes the military administrators and bureaucrats need no more than a hint.

"It was Asher Tzur from the [Army's] Civil Administration. The same man who over many years comes to destroy our homes. It was him again, also this time. What does he want from us? What have we ever done to offend him?" Haj Sami Sadeq, the Mayor, said to me on the phone. "I asked Asher 'Do you have no wife? No children? How would you feel if somebody came to destroy your home?' He did not answer me. After they went away, one of the people left homeless asked me 'You're always talking about peace with Israel. Is this your peace? ' And how can I answer him? "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqabah

http://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/israeli-troops-demolish-homes-in-al-aqaba-village-in-the-jordan-valley/%27%27

http://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/more-ethnic-cleansing-homes-roads-taken-down-near-tubas/

Gaza Chad Gadya*

2011-04-10T15:14:00.000-07:00

I received the following article from Eric Yellin, a resident of Sderot and head of The Other Voice - a group of residents of Sderot and communities near the Gaza Border, maintaining continuous contact with Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, promoting neighborly relations and dialogue in the south. He wrote this article last Wednesday and tried in vain to find a newspaper which would publish it.

At this moment the media reports that a fragile cease-fire is apparently beginning to take effect. We can hope that it will last. The article, written before the current escalation by a Sderot resident who lives there, near the Gaza border, is still very much worth reading. First and foremost, as a warning for the next escalation which might come upon us soon - if we do not take care to prevent it.

Sderot, Wednesday, April 6, 2011

The smell of Gaza War II - Cast Lead 2 "- is already in the air.

Israel calls for calm, but continues to initiate liquidations and disproportionate retaliations upon Gaza.

Hamas calls for calm, but continues to launch missiles, and allow others to launch missiles, at Israeli towns.

For months now, the streets of Gaza are in a condition of ongoing alert. Gazans try to put some food aside and plan where to hide, even though most of the population there have no money for food caches or protected hiding places.

Here in Sderot we are about to complete construction of reinforced protected rooms in every home. We will be the world's most protected city!. Beer Sheva and Ashkelon have gotten the Iron Dome anti-missile- missile system to protect them. Ashdod wants it, too, as does Yavne, and Rishon Lezion, too...

Gaza is again in the headlines, another flotilla is on its way, a Hamas rocket engineer was arrested, and above all - the article by Goldstone, allowing Israel to tell herself once again that we posses the most moral army in the world. What a wonderful timing!

There, everything is ready! What are we waiting for? Are the Emergency Mobilization orders on their way? More than two years have passed without anything interesting happening. Two years already? Really? When are we setting out?

But wait a minute! Stop!

Remember the sounds of war, the salvos from helicopters, the aircraft and bombs, the tanks and the artillery shelling. Remember the buzzing of drones, the air raid alarms the sound of rockets falling and hitting. "Did this one fall on us or on them? On them, how lucky!".

Remember the horror, the confusion and helplessness. The mothers, the fathers, the children, the blood, the dead, the wounded, the families left homeless, the outcry of the father who lost his daughters, the outcry of the children who lost their parents, the non-deliberate attack, the deliberate attack.

Remember the excuses and the detailed explanations. Remember the mumbled apology and the moral explantions. "The goal was to restore our deterrence, not to reach a decisive victory."

Remember the day after, when everyone gathers up the pieces. What has changed by this war? Is everything OK now? What have we gained? Why did we start it? Who is responsible for the fiasco? Nothing has changed really, but we did teach them a lesson, didn’t we?

It is our duty to challenge the supposedly preordained cycle of violence. Our leaders must do some courageous re-thinking, come up with a different solution for the endless Chad Gadya* in which we live.

We must talk to the enemy over there, behind the fence. Yes, talk to the enemy! And not through the gun sights and the targeted killings. The demagoguery of "this is the only language they understand" does not work anymore. It leads us again and again to dead ends, to relative and temporary calm which but sets the scene for the next violent outburst which is followed by another relative and temporary calm and another violent outburst…

Must talk courageously about a long-term truce, and then talk about a real and permanent solution which would give a life of dignity and hope to all residents of the region.

But first, we must stop the next war.

*Chad Gadya is a Passover song about a chain of violence - for the English translation click

Eric Yellin is a resident of Sderot, and represents "Other Voice"

Until the blood quota is filled.

2011-04-09T08:43:00.000-07:00

There was a cease-fire along the Gaza border. We have somehow wriggled out of the previous escalation, and residents on both sides of the border got a few days of quiet. And then somebody decided to send planes to liquidate three senior Hamas members traveling in a car in the southern Gaza Strip.

It was just after a new head was appointed for the Shabak, Israel's Security Service - Yoram Cohen, a.k.a. "The Afghan". A senior Prime Ministerial aide proudly told Yediot Aharonot reporter Nehama Duek that Cohen is the Father of the Targeted Killings Doctrine, and that the Palestinians are afraid of him but also respect him, and that he is indeed the right man to head the Shabak in time of a drastic change in the Middle East because he is "a broad minded person who is able to see beyond the horizons" (Yediot Aharonot, April 2, 2011).

So why was it so urgent to target and kill three senior Hamas members in the southern Gaza Strip? Well, they had been on their way to the Sinai Peninsula, where they intended to kidnap Israelis, and the state of Israel was determined to prevent it. So it was told by the Army and the Shabak to the media, and the media passed it on the public, whose majority accepts this kind of announcement - no questions asked. Also, most Israelis living in the border area, who on hearing the news immediately went on high alert, in the expectation of retaliation.

Several days passed and nothing happened. Then something happened far away, in Sudan, where a mysterious plane emerged from the sea and fired into another car in which senior Hamas members were driving. And exactly who sent that plane? Prime Minister Netanyahu smiled mysteriously at the reporters and declined to comment.

Meanwhile, Police Minister Aharonovitch, of Foreign Minister Lieberman party, visited the border town of Sderot and announced that the ceasefire will not and should not last and that a total war should be launched into Gaza. At least some residents of Sderot, already in a state of high alert, did not like to hear this message and intended to hold a protest vigil at the Yad Mordechai Junction and call for ceasefire and dialogue and oppose escalation.

And then suddenly the blow fell. A Cornet anti-tank missile, a sophisticated missile whose existence in the Gaza Strip was hitherto only rumored, was shot - not at a tank but at a yellow school bus. 16 year-old boy was critically wounded and taken to hospital, struggling for his life. The despicable act of deliberately firing at the bus was condemned througout the world, as it deserves to be.

Israel Defense Forces immediately embarked on a rapid, continuous, open-ended series of retaliations. The immediate first strike killed five Palestinians, including a fifty-five year old civilian (which happens to be exactly my own age). This was an unfortunate, regrettable mistake. In no way was it deliberate.

The Palestinian organizations in Gaza called for an immediate ceasefire and promised to immediately stop shooting. This offer was contemptuously rejected by the Israeli side and the bombings in the Gaza Strip continued and intensified. Alex Fishman, the unofficial IDF spokesman. yesterday wrote in Yediot Aharonot: "Hamas must pay dearly. This time, officials will not accept a Hamas request for a lull via secret channels of UN officials in the area, as happened in the past. In the coming days, the cannons, missiles, tanks, jets and rockets will do the talking. Until the blood quota is filled. "

http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-4054090,00.html

Until the blood quota is filled. As of this moment in which I write, the blood quota filled by the Israeli Defense Forces has reached the number of seventeen dead Palestinians. Including Hamas fighters and launchers of missiles and rockets. Including also a mother and her daughter killed in a direct hit on their home, which was undoubtedly not intentional. Indeed, it was an unfortunate, regrettable mistake which the IDF recognized as such and expressed sincere regrets. And a bit further on, a farmer was killed by a bomb while working his land, and this too was recognized as a mistake and sincere regrets expressed.

Apparently, the blood quota is not yet filled. General Tal Russo of the IDF Southern Command spoke last night on TV and explained that many of the tools in the army's toolbox have not yet been used. And if all these tools are taken out and made use of, more civilians might get killed. But of course, if this happens it will all be an unfortunate and unintended mistake, and no doubt the appropriate words of regret to will be duly uttered afterwards.

A bit more than two years ago, at the Cast Lead time, the number of Palestinian civilians killed through the unintentional and regetable mistakes of the most moral army in the world was about a hundred times the number of Israeli civilians killed through deliberate targeting by nasty terrorists But there is no doubt that this was an unfortunate mistake, or rather an accumulation of several hundred unfortunate mistakes. Even Goldstone this week admitted that it was not intentional.

Incidentally, the police strictly prohibited residents of Sderot and the Gaza border area to hold the planned vigil at the Yad Mordechai Junction, and the area was declared a closed military zone. Now is not the time to demonstrate and wave signs calling for a ceasefire and dialogue with the Palestinians. Let these characters stay in their protected rooms and not interfere with the world's most moral army filling the quota of blood until the very last drop.

Juliano

2011-04-05T10:09:00.001-07:00

Among the old photographs which I kept from all sorts of demonstrations I saw on the wall opposite the computer where I am now writing one which is a bit faded but still very noticeable. It shows Juliano Mer-Khamish and his late mother Arna at a demonstration held in the Lower Town of Haifa. The photographer captured both of them at a moment of a very intense crying out. Juliano is quite young on this photograph, no yet having grown the beard which characterized him in later years. I think I remember this particular demonstration, the chanting and protest and anger, but I can't remember which was the particular act of grave injustice against which we were protesting on that day, and which impelled Giuliano to wear a Yellow Star on his breast and engage in angry shouting confrontations with passers-by.

There were years when a demonstration against the Occupation was incomplete without having Juliano Mer among its participants and organizers.

In recent years he was hardly seen in demonstrations any more. He gave himself totally to the Freedom Theatre which he founded and directed at the Jenin Refugee Camp, the idea that Palestinians can fight against the occupation from the stage of the theater. Not a few Palestinians were drawn in, including some who before only believed in the gun.

Did he come there as an Israeli Jew from his mother's side, who came to express solidarity with the oppressed and occupied? (In fact,.it was Arna who first started going to the Jenin Refugee Camp, starting there a kindergarten in the midst of the First Intifada, for which she later got the Alternative Nobel Prize? Or did he come as a Palestinian from his father's side, a Palestinian with relatively comfortable circumstances who came to help the more blatantly oppressed members of his people? "Both and neither, first and foremost he was a human being," an activist from Haifa who knew him well told me.

Someone, somewhere found the activity of Juliano Mer-Khamish at the Jenin Refugee Camp to be very disturbing. Disturbing enough to send masked assassins to shoot him down. Juliano's marked personality and outspoken message certainly created for him enemies left and right. His co-workers, the young Palestinian actors , the friends of the Freedom Theater of Jenin Refugee Camp will have to carry on without him, strenghtened by the enormous outrage at the terrible news. Also among the Israeli actors Juliano was respected and beloved.

Beware of trains

2011-04-05T09:47:00.001-07:00

It is now finally revealed why the State of Israel decided to undertake a dangerous espionage mission at the Ukraine and send agents to abduct a Palestinian electrical engineer from the Gaza Strip and take him off a passenger train and bring him to an Israeli prison. The severe charge sheet submitted to the court indicates that this is not just an ordinary engineer, but a e senior official of the Palestinian military industry, who for years took care to improve and enhance the Palestinian rockets and increase their range. As experts write in today's papers, for committing such crimes the Gaza Engineer will have to spend years behind bars.

In the military industries of the State of Israel there are is a considerable a number of engineers who worked for years to improve and enhance the IDF missile system and increase their range (not to mention those who helped develop entirely new missiles).

In the coming years, these Israeli engineers better stay out of The Ukraine, and avoid entering trains.

And God hardened the heart of Netanyahu

2011-04-01T14:53:00.001-07:00

It happened thousands of years ago, and is still remembered and still celebrated every year on Passover, to which we will come in a few weeks. When the oppressed demanded to be set free, and their leader cried out "Let my People go!", God hardened the heart of Pharaoh and he refused and refused and refused and would not hear of letting the oppressed ones go free, and he and his people were hit with terrible plagues, and in the end the oppressed were released anyway.

Today the roles are reversed a little, and it is the Prime Minister of Israel Binyamin Netanyahu who is faced with requests and demands and entreaties to let go the Palestinians after forty-three years of oppressive occupation, and God hardens the heart of Netanyahu. No, definitely not! We will not freeze the settlements, ten months of freeze were quite enough and now they kill and we will build and build and build, and you ladies and gentlemen in Russia and Germany please take care not to vote for a Palestinian state in the United Nations, and you Mr. Secretary-General of the United Nations please do not let ships sail to the coasts of Gaza, this is no more than a provocation, our experts in the IDF have determined how many calories every resident of Gaza needs to consume and we do provide them with exactly that many calories, and no' we will not publish this data because it is a military secret, and you leftists with all your allegations of human rights violations had better shut up or we will pass a few more laws in the Knesset to gag you, and you ambassadors stop making trouble and warning of an impending disaster in September when the whole world will support a Palestinian state, no it will not happen, we will find a solution, God is great, I will deliver the Bar Ilan Speech II and also the Bar Ilan Speech III and what will I say? I will think of something, don't worry, it will sound impressive. And what about all these stories about luxurious traveling abroad? Come on, leave all that crap, these are just cheap sensationalist defamations of nasty people who try to hurt me by targeting my dear wife, and it is all nonsense and anyway everybody is doing it, and come on, don’t you see what a flourishing and prosperous economy we have, and in the end everybody will really feel that prosperity, yes once upon a time you will also share in it; and I can't say exactly when that will be but it will, for sure, everything will be perfectly all right, I tell you, everything will be perfectly all right.

Who is not on Facebook

2011-04-01T14:52:00.000-07:00

The social network called Facebook has played a crucial role in the revolutionary processes throughout the Arab World. The young Egyptian protesters communicate via Facebook, and the Tunisians, and the Yemenis, and now the Syrians, too. . The Facebook company in the United States is quite modest, they say they never meant to bring about such revolutions. Still, they do not really regret the publicity.

But what about the Palestinians? A group of Palestinian youths started to communicate through Facebook and call for a Third Intifada on May Fifteen. This, Facebook did not really like. Well enough to organize against Arab dictators, but against the Israeli occupation? The Government of Israel lodged a complaint and the Palestinian Intifada swiftly disappeared from the Facebook spaces.

Hosni Mubarak is gnashing his teeth in envy...

First summer saving time day in Bil'in

2011-04-01T14:50:00.000-07:00

Roy Wagner sent me the following report which I gladly share.

Over 30 Israelis and some 50 internationals joined the people of Bil'in to celebrate the first day of summer saving time while protesting against the wall, resisting the occupation, and expressing solidarity with the people of Syria. Mustafa Bargouthi dropped in surrounded by Mubadra flags, but Fatah and Marwan Bargouthi flags were not absent either.

On the northern fence front the gas and stone exchange started pretty much immediately, but at the main gate the soldiers preferred skunk and stun grenades, forcing a couple of demonstrators who got sprayed while trying to cross the fence to continue the demonstration with their shirts off. The soldiers held the gas back for a while, either because of the unfavorable wind, or because they liked the popular Arab music played from a car-borne loud speaker, or because they have discovered the power of de-escalation and gone hippie on us (scat squirting and sound bombing hippie, that is).

But the gas did eventually come, maybe because the sound bombs scared a flock of storks into circling in the air above the demo, upsetting the fine balance of mother nature, which is surely a definite no-no for our armed friends of the Zionist earth.

During one of the pauses between the relatively thin showers of gas, a red ice-cream car came a-gingling and offered radioactive-colored lumps of sweet frozen vegetable fat which, given the heat, duped some of the demonstrators into buying and eating it.

Eventually, when the shabab was almost done expressing its protest by stoning the skunk truck, the soldiers corssed the fence to scare the few remaining demonstrators away. But while some demonstrators did retreat, others took the opportunity to give the soldiers a 30 minute lecture about the evils of the occupation, describe the soldiers' personal faults, comment on their mothers, and rub skunk-soaked bodies in their noses. This tactic led the army to retreat, repent and promise to end the occupation.

Well, maybe the repenting and ending the occupation thing was a heat induced delusion or an April fool's hoax. A couple of demonstrators required first aid for exposure to gas and a rubber bullet bruise.

Gaza escalation-1: The outcry which was not heard

2011-03-26T13:20:00.000-07:00

A week ago the veteran peace activist Benny Gefen wrote a Letter of Outcry which he sent to the country's leaders as well as to the editorial offices of all newspapers in Israel, and so did he write:

The Prime Minister and Minister of Defense wore their suitable jackets, being photographed with great self-satisfaction beside the great quantity of smuggled arms which Israel's navy seized on board the "Victoria". It is a shame to spoil the fun, but as one who participated in smuggling arms to the Haganah under British rule I know that it is impossible to hermitically seal borders. Sooner or later, Gaza will be strongly armed, like Lebanon.

The country's political and military leadership have not truly come to terms with the fundamental change in the preparations which must be made towards a new conflict in our region. In the next war, if we are not wise enough to prevent it, the Home Front will be heavily bombarded. By media reports, Hezbollah was already a year ago in possession of 40 000 rockets, including accurate Scuds; and the Gaza Strip, Iran and Syria all provide similar threats.

We must remember what havoc was wrecked by 39 obsolete missiles shot from Uraq in the 1991 Gulf War, and how primitive missiles made life in Northern Israel into hell during the Second Lebanon War. The government it trying to reassure us with singing the praises of the Arrow anti-missile-missile, forgetting how hugely expensive each one of these missiles is – in Shekels and Dollars alike.

We invest/bury billions in extremely expensive aircraft and submarines. Just the other day Barak gave voice to the wish that the U.S. will generously come up with an additional 20 billion Dollars to meet our needs due to the upheavals in the region.

The only real solution is to put an end to the hatred which the Arab- Muslim World bears us. A hatred founded upon the continuing occupation and the mutual religious incitements.

We still can act, but time is running out. We do not need any more self-righteous speeches by the Prime Minister, nor any more incisive but hollow words from the Minister of Defence. We need our leaders to take a brave decision and implement it.

The letter did get published in several newspapers, but it's hard to say that it actually reached the ears of the decision makers. In this country, a man recently resigned who served as Head of the National Security Council, who had an explicit role defined by law to advise the decision makers, and who found that even his actual impact on the decisions taken was minimal, to say the least.

Who would listen, then, to a man who spent much of his life in Israel's wars and then became a peace activist, who got safely through many battles but lost his son in Lebanon - a man who accumulated quite a bit of wisdom and experience but never received any appointment to advise the decision-makers?

Gaza escalation-2: Embarking on the Dance of Fire

2011-03-26T13:17:00.000-07:00

How exactly did the escalation start? Even though it happened only last week, it is by no means clear exactly how it started. Commentators argue about who was the first to shoot and who responded, and why, and just who wanted it (if at all anyone really wanted it, on either side of the border).

Alex Fishman, military commentator for Yediot Ahronot, who disposes of very good sources within the army, wrote a week ago a detailed and rather critical description under the headline "You told us to shoot – we shoot":

"It began accidentally, with a miscalculation, an excessive reaction to the shooting of a Qassam missile, which threatens to develop into a new comprehensive conflict. Now both sides already start pasting unto this chain of events their whole series of weighty political and security arguments. Both sides heat themselves up and lead Gaza towards an uncontrolled explosion. The army has in store a whole armory of retaliations to retaliations to retaliations and so on. (...)

The aggressive message sent down from the cabinet was well absorbed in the army – from now on, there should be a smashing response to each event. After a Qassam missile fired by an ephemeral group landed in an open field , the IDF struck at Netzarim, killing two Hamas militants, one of them apparently a senior member. Someone in the Southern Command went a step too far in translating the instructions of the political leadership - . - "You told us to shoot – we shoot".(...)

The army was waiting for a response, and hoping that also this time it will be limited to the shooting of some anti-tank missile. On Friday, the IDF was on alert because of the fog that prevailed in the area. Then, Hamas and Jihad opened up with 120mm mortars, aimed at six locations within Israel - with an emphasis on military camps. The IDF responded by firing rockets, mortars and tank guns at predetermined targets. At noon, when the fog dispersed, assault helicopters also went into action. The Dance of Fire started."

So wrote Alex Fishman on the pages of Yediot Ahronot last Sunday (March 20). On the following days, the Dance of Fire spun faster and faster, and the missiles fell at Be'er Sheva and Ashdod, and the pupils stayed home in fear for their lives in un-fortified shool buildings. Politicians competed with each other in crying out for war and war and war to the bitter end. In the Sajaya neighborhood of Gaza, four members of the Hilo Family were killed when an Israeli shell landed on their house by mistake. Sure, it was an unfortunate mistake by the army. As they explained, they had used an inaccurate mortar system because at that moment the more accurate system was not available. And the Government of Israel was quick to express its regret about the harm to innocents, but its expressions of sorrow were not really well received in Gaza where TV repeatedly broadcasted photos of the body of the 11-year-old Mohammed Jihad Al-Hilo who was killed by the shell. And the next day a bomb exploded on a crowded street in Jerusalem, killing a Christian British woman who came to Jerusalem to learn Hebrew so as to better translate the Bible to an African tongue, and some thirty-passers-by were wounded, some of whom would bear the scars long after we have all forgotten this incident. And banner headlines in Israel's newspapers said that Terrorism had come baack after a long absence, and horrible scenes were depicted on huge photographs of the scene of the attack, and politicians outdid themselves in competing with each other to make cries of war and war and war to the bitter end. And the army went on to kill more Palestinians in Gaza, and since these were confirmed as having been terrorists the government expressed no regret for killing them and in fact took some pride in it.

And in Yediot Aharonot, Alex Fishman played a quite different tune from that in his own article earlier in the week: "The army is pushing for an escalation. In a policy briefing held yesterday morning with the Prime Minister, the army manifested a very combative attitude. As the army sees it, an all-out confrontation with the Hamas government at Gaza is almost preordained. If not now, it will happen in another year or two. Unless we act today, we will pay the price for going gradually into the escalation. Israel, says the army, should restore its deterrence, which has been eroded since the days of "Cast Lead". We should have struck hard at Hamas already a month ago, when the Grad rocket came down on Beersheba for the first time. Now the blow must be even more painful. If not an overwhelming military strike, or a partial ground operation, the obvious next step on the scale of violence should be a return to the era of targeted killing of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaderships. In the IDF's view, this would be the most effective move, speaking the language which the Palestinian leadership understands best. "

So spoke – as of Wednesday, March 23 - Alex Fishman, the man who already for many years serves as an unofficial army spokesman.

"In the IDF's view, this would be the most effective move, speaking the language which the Palestinian leadership understands best." The problem is that this language was spoken quite often before, and where did it lead us?

Gaza escalation-3: Discovering the real danger

2011-03-26T13:13:00.000-07:00

"The Other Voice" is a movement which is active several years already at Sderot and other communities on the Gaza border. With boundless devotion, these activists are trying to make a voice of peace and coexistence heard in a region enveloped by a constant tension, and maintain e-mail contact and dialogue with residents across the border. (A few months they succeeded, with a tremendous effort, to obtain permits for a few Gazans to cross the border, attend a conference and bring a message of peace to their Israeli neighbors from the city of Gaza and the Strip surrounding it.)

Under the sound of sirens and falling missiles, "Other Voice" activists scheduled a demonstration for yesterday noon at the Yad Mordechai Junction. The announcement stated:

Again we are in the same nightmare: Our army reacts to their rockets' reaction to our army's reaction to their rockets – and who pays the price? We, the civilians on both sides of the border.

On Friday, March 25, 2011, at 14:30, we will hold a protest vigil at the Yad Mordechai Junction, with the message:

Stop the shooting! Start Talking! Life or Them = Life for Us.

We, residents of the area, see a close connection between the suffering of our neighbors, due to the ongoing siege and military attacks, and our own suffering. We urge the Government of Israel to halt the deterioration towards another pointless cycle of violence, to end the mutual bloodshed and offer to inhabitants of the region another option: Dialogue, negotiations, and a striving for a long-term agreement, which would make possible a life of quiet and dignity to us and to our neighbors.

The aggressive option has brought us to a dead end! It's time for a political initiative!

The Other Voice Group from Sderot and the Gaza border.

http://www.othervoice.org

The demonstration did not take place at the appointed time. The police informed the organizers that due to the security situation and the dire warnings, it was unable to secure the event. It is too dangerous here to demonstrate for peace at this time, we will not allow it - warned the police commanders.

But in the longer term, is it not even more dangerous to stifle that voice?

Gaza escalation-4: And still, perhaps?

2011-03-26T13:08:00.001-07:00

Just now, the news websites carried the information that, after a weekend during which three missiles were shot at Israel, representatives of the Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip convened and announced their willingness to embark on a ceasefire. The Hamas Spokesperson told Reuters: "The armed factions will be obliged to a ceasefire, as long as the occupation too maintains a de-facto cease-fire".

We will know better tomorrow.