The doves return to Al-Arakib

"Just like the demonstrators in Egypt were not deterred by the police violence, never left the square, so will we stick to Al-Arakib. This is the Negev's Tahrir Square. Just like the demonstrators in Cairo won in the end, so will we win" said the young man who greeted us when the activist convoy - a full bus and a string of private cars - reached the hills northwest of Be'ersheba. The cries of joy in Cairo at the fall of the regime of tyranny had been clearly heard also in this desolated place.

"The day before yesterday, Thursday, was a particularly hard day. While we ate breakfast, the police arrived and surrounded us on all sides. Their commander said: 'You have two minutes to clear the area, or we will use force'. At the end of the two minutes they assaulted us with great violence, at the men's tent and the women's tent alike. Screams were heard on all sides. My eyes are still smarting, after two days, from the pepper gas which was sprayed directly into them. When a child was injured , it took hours until we received permission for an ambulance to pass through the police cordon and evacuate him. But they had not broken us. In the evening, just after the police left, we went back and re-built our sheds, "said Aziz Abu Median.

"Look at this photo from a year ago. There, over the hill, we had our olive groves. Arakib's 4500 olive trees. The trees gave us a livelihood, olives and oil. We treated them like children, with great effort and dedication, day and night. In the summer, six months ago, they were all uprooted, not a single one was left, not a trace that they had been there. Look, what beautiful trees they were, is it not a pity to destroy such trees? The JNF now says that they want to plant a wood here. What kind of wood? A wood of trees which bear no fruit and bring no benefit to anyone? This is what is going to replace our olive trees and our homes? Why? Such a nasty stupidity. They want to grab ownership of the land, and they don't care how much they hurt people. "

The huts which were built after the last demolition wave were scattered through the field, made of blue plastic and canvas sheets. Young villagers together with activists from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem went around with spray paint cans and decorated the huts with large inscriptions in Arabic and Hebrew and English: " Al-Arakib will not fall!", "JNF – the destroying fund, the dispossessing fund", "From Cairo to Al-Arakib - Solidarity, Solidarity, Solidarity! "," Please do not destroy my home - thank you! ". One of the young men underlined three times the word "please."

Sheikh Sayah al-Turi spreads on the hood of a car copies of decades old documents, some of them from more than a century ago. "We bought much of this land in 1906. And I have another acquisition document, from 1929. Everything is here – name of the seller, of the buyer, the amount paid for the purchase. 1350 dunams of land, which were duly purchased and where we lived long before there was an Israel." The documents were translated into Hebrew, printed on large sheets of paper. The government authorities do not recognize any of these documents, proving land ownership by Bedouins. As far as the state is concerned, this is "state land" , and the Bedouins living on it are "squatters" who should be removed so that the JNF could continue its forestry work.

"We are squatters? Tel me, who is buried here in the cemetery? The cemetery which opened in 1914? None of Netanyahu's ancestors are there, nor of Lieberman, nor of Shlomo from the Israel Lands Authority. Everybody buried here are members of the al-Turi Tribe, our grandfathers, our great-grandfathers. And what is the government offering us? To get alternative land at Rahat for twenty percent of our land, and compensations for the reminder. What compensation? 2500 Shekels per Dunam. 2500 Shekels! What a joke! Do they think we are idiots? "

"Why should we go to Rahat?" A young man intervenes. "What is there in Rahat? A very high unemployment rate and a very high crime rate. And why? I know guys whose families had gone to Rahat. They have no income, just a dole which barely allows them to survive. Is it any wonder that many of them deteriorate to crime? Is this what the government offers us? The government is constructing here in the Negev what they call "individual farms", giving to anyone the best of land and water , the best of conditions, provided only that he is Jewish. Let them divide Arakib's 1350 Dunams into "individual farms" and give them to us. You will see what flourishing farm we will create with our own hands! ".

Ya'alah Ra'anan, a prominent advocate of the "unrecognized villages", had given birth a few weeks ago – which did not prevent her from coming on the scene with her baby girl, and giving an explanantion: "It's not really important to them whether or not there would be a forest here. This is no more than a cynical manipulation, in order to safeguard the land theft. Sixty years ago the government expropriated the land 'for public use', but since then made no use of it. Judicially, this creates the possibility of a demand that they return the land to its original owners. So, they quickly set the Jewish National Fund to plant a forest here. They don’t really care if a forest truly grows here, or just thorns, as long as they can come to court and claim that the land is indeed used for a public purpose – forestry!. And Al-Arakib is only the beginning. If Arakib falls they plan to do the same in other places, in Ujan, in Umm al Hiran. There is a village called Umm al Hiran which is unrecognized by the government, where people live, but the government already has plans to build an officially recognized and approved community named Hiran at the same location – a community for Jews only!" The baby nestling in a hanging basket on her mother's body continues to sleep peacefully throughout this fiery speech.

Along with several young men from the village, the activists march two kilometers out to the compound surrounded by barbed wire where the Jewish National Fund bulldozers are parked under police protection. "Here is the tractor which destroyed my home" points a young woman. "There is nothing left of it, even the rubble was taken away. Nothing was left. I had a house with a kitchen and a bathroom, like everybody, like city people. We did not have a connection to piped water, but my husband placed a big water tank on the roof, and we had a house. A beautiful house, a good life. Now it is all destroyed, this tractor here destroyed it. Now we have only a hut to live in, and they destroy even the hut every few days again."

A journalist who accompanied the convoy records her words. "It will all be on our website tommorow" he promises the woman. Suddenly there is shouting from the front of the line: "Hurry! Hurry! Come here quickly! They arrested three of us!" At the gate of the bulldozer compound, the conflict is already underway. Dozens of activists are sitting on the ground, facing a bunch of policemen. "I, Captain Haim Cohen, inform you that you are on private land. This is trespassing. If you want to demonstrate, go to the other side of the hill!" In response, there is a wave of chanting "The JNF is tresspassing!" / "Release Danny and lilach!" ("What is the name of the third one whis was arrested?" asks someone) / "We all came here together - we will only leave together!" / "When the law is illegal - civil disobedience is the answer! "/" We want equality, equal rights - equal rights, and nothing less! "/" Arakib shall not fall – the bulldozer shall be to no avail! "/" Fascism will not pass, no, no, will not pass! "

The big sign at the entrance to the compound reads "Jewish National Fund. Danger! Building site, entrance is forbidden. Works carried out by the Department of Forestry, Southern Region." Activist pull out bumper stickers from backpacks, and the amended sign soon reads "Jewish Racist Fund - Danger!"

Captain Haim Cohen appears again, promises to release the detainees, retracts the promise to a chorus of loud boos, and a few minutes later makes the promise again. "Go on sitting, we are blocking their only entrance, and they can’t arrest seventy people. We have the advantage!" After half an hour Ezra Nawi returns from negotiations inside the compound and announces "This is it, they are going to be released". The three are received with applause and hugs.

On the way back to the Arakib huts, villagers come with trays full of food: hummus, pita bread and ordinary bread, tomatoes, olives, onions, chicken legs. "Sit down, eat, you are our guests, very honored guests!" All sit down on the ground in a circle, eat and talk. "My son started to say "the Jews are bad, the Jews destroyed our home. I told him 'Those were the government people, but there are also the Jews who come to help us and are struggling together with us." Now he only says only 'the government are bad people, the government are nasty bastards'. It is more than a month since I heard him cursing the Jews. "

"Yesterday, after we held the Friday prayers, suddenly our pigeons returned. They had flown away and escaped when the village was destroyed. Also their dovecotes were destroyed, like our houses. And still, they came back, they also know that Al-Arakib is their home.

Where things now stand

After the visit on Saturday, the veteran Ya'akov Manor and several other activists stayed the night, in case the police and the JNF bulldozers return on the next morning. In practice, Al-Arakib had had since then several relatively quiet days, and the huts are still standing. But yesterday afternoon a new urgent message came om the activist action alert network: "The next demolition of Al-Arakib may occur at any moment, and the early morning hours are the most vulnerable" followed by a request to those who can to come over and spend the night with the villagers, those able and willing to call Arik 050-5607034 or Kobi 050-2345251.

Meanwhile, activists have visited the house of Nuri al Ukbi, the Bedouin activist born in Arakib, to modestly celebrate his release from jail. At least one piece of good news.

The village and the forest - and a bit about God

Yesterday at seven A.M., large police forces, accompanied by bulldozers and many trucks, were observed at the Kama Intersection northwest of Be'er Sheba. Residents of Al-Arakib village instantly understood that they were the target for these forces.

Al-Arakib had already been destroyed 12 times within less than a year, and each time the residents returned to set up shacks and huts at the site of their destroyed homes. Yesterday was the 13th time.

Police forces surrounded the area on all sides, to prevent any villager or Human Rights activist from interfering with the demolition operations. Members of "Bimkom" – an association of architects and urban planners who are trying to formulate alternative zoning plans to those of the political establishment - were stopped by the police, their I.D.'s were taken and they were informed: "The area is closed, entry forbidden"

"How far does the closed area extend?" asked activist Alon Cohen-Lifshitz, and was told "From horizon to horizon." He was not satisfied with this answer and stated: "If you close an area, you must present a precise map." The answer to this was immediate and decisive: the activist was dragged to the police patrol car to spend seven hours in detention, on suspicion of "insulting a police officer" and "failing to obey a police officer."

Meanwhile, behind the police cordon, the bulldozers continued their work. The twelve miserable huts where the villagers had lived were pulled down, as was the protest tent where they had received guests who came to visit them from Israel and abroad. Every remnant, from this and previous demolitions, was loaded on the ten trucks and taken away, to make sure that Arakib villagers would not recycle them in the next reconstruction. Residents watched the destruction from the cemetery where their ancestors had been buried in the past century, and which remains (so far?) untouched by the bulldozers. The Mosque in the cemetery remains the only structure still left standing, providing children with a bit of a shelter in the cold Negev winter nights.

The Police does not have enough manpower to keep the area permanently closed. Tomorrow or the day after, the police will leave and the residents return to the land which they have no intention of giving up. They will erect new huts and live in them until the next wave of destruction, a month or two hence.

Why is the government of Israel, the only democratic state in the Middle East (?), so insistent upon repeatedly destroying a small village which existed long before Israel itself came into being? The answer is well known: to make the desert bloom. Yes, it is the proclaimed and outspoken intention of the Jewish National Fund to plant a forest on this site. This damned unrecognized village called Arakib poses an obstacle to their noble forestry plans. .

A forest? Is it really possible to let a forest grow in this arid area, even if a lot of water is pumped there from other regions. Possibly the JNF might manage a little grove, should the police ever manage to rid them of the stubborn villagers. Maybe.

In fact, the Jewish National Fund already intended to embark on planting several weeks ago, on Tu B'Shvat, the Tree Holyday. But the villagers disrupted these plans by rebuilding the huts in their destroyed village and demonstrating in front of the JNF headquarters in Jerusalem and appealing to the court in Be'er Sheba.

Judge Nehama Netzer-Shalom did not order the JNF to stop their work, although she did note that "the JNF should avoid planting on the site, as it is doubtful whether such planting is consistent with preserving the existing situation. She also stated that "There can be no doubt that the time has come to regulate the construction problem , so that also such people as the Bedouins of Al-Arakib would be able to build legally and establish communities without being later declared to be "unrecognized villages". All this, however, are but recommendations without the power of a verdict – and in this enlightened democratic country, the authorities are often very tardy in carrying out even explicit judicial rulings. (The residents of Bil'in have been waiting for more than three years already for implementation of the Supreme Court ruling to move the "Separation Fence" - but that's another story ...)

God is also involved in this story - at least, GOD TV - established by American Evangelical churches based in the United States – has been providing generous funding to the tree-planting project. "It is an apostolic, prophetic act, to restore the desert places to the lush green land it once was, make the deserts livable (sic!) once more, preparing the Holy Land for the return of the King of Kings" so did God declare yesterday by means of a communiqué published in the website of his TV station. .

And what about the uprooting of the Arakib villagers from their land? Well, this is between the villagers and the government of Israel, not the business of GOD TV. Of what importance are a few villagers compared with the return of the King of Kings to the Holy Land?

http://www.god.tv/negev

A historical perspective

In 1066, more than a thousand years ago, the adventurer William the Conqueror, also known in his lifetime as William the Bastard, invaded and conquered England at the head of his Norman army. For centuries afterwards, the Saxon inhabitants of England endured harsh oppression and exploitation under Norman rule.

Of the many aspects of the Normans' oppression of the Saxons, one became particularly notorious and was remembered with a shudder for centuries afterwards: the demolition and total destruction of Saxon villages in the county of Hampshire, in order to plant on their site a forest – "The New Forest" – where the conqueror king and his courtiers could go hunting deer to their heart's content.

Two of William's sons died in the Forest, Richard and William Rufus. Local folklore asserted that this was punishment for the crimes committed by William when he created his New Forest, as told by the Seventeenth Century writer Richard Blome:

"William the Conqueror, for the making of the said New-Forest, caused the Parish Churches, with all the Houses thereto belonging, to be pulled down, and the poor Inhabitants left succourless of house or home. But this wicked act did not long go unpunished, for his Sons felt the smart thereof; Richard being blasted with a pestilent Air; Rufus shot through with an Arrow; and even Henry his Grand-child, as he pursued his Game, was hanged among the boughs, and so dyed."

In England it is now a horror story from ancient history. At the heart of the forest, which still exists, tourist guides point to the stone erected where a mysterious arrow pierced the heart of King William Rufus, son of William the Conqueror.

What will tourist guides point to in the Negev, in thousand years from now?

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLZhVMGV0Tw&feature=player_embedded

From darkness to light

It happens again and again in history, and each time it comes as a surprise. People endure severe repression for decades, sometimes centuries, and see no choice but resignation, with the ruling power crushing anybody who dares to protest or revolt. And suddenly, without anyone expecting or predicting it, a spark sets off a great conflagration. The oppressed wake up and unite and rebel and discover how powerful they are. Suddenly the chains break and the apparatus of oppression is smashed to pieces and falls down and those who were oppressed yesterday breath the intoxicating air of emancipation.

So it must have been in 1789 in Paris when the crowds stormed the grim fortress and prison called the Bastille. So in the Berlin of 1989 when thousands of enthusiastic youths people celebrated at the top of the Wall where just days before anyone approaching faced being shot to death forthwith. One of the first known cases in human history was in Egypt thousands of years ago, when a subversive revolutionary named Moses led an enslaved people to face one of the great empires of the time and come out from slavery to liberty, from oppression to redemption, from mourning into celebration, from darkness into a great light, as we are reminded in the Hagada of Passover. And again, this very day at Tahrir Square, Liberation Square, in the heart of Cairo, where the millions gathered to overthrow the rule of tyranny.

Who can oppose the demand and aspiration of the massed Egyptians - young and old, men and woman, secular and religious, Muslims and Christians - to change their lives and live in a democracy and win basic rights? Who can object their having the same rights which citizens of Israel take for granted - the right to freely express their opinions, to organize politically as they please and choose their own government and parliament in free and democratic elections?

Who can object to that? In the state of Israel many can and do, a lot of politicians and journalists and commentators and experts until a week ago never imagined what was about to happen in their field of experience. All as one they express concern and worry and anxiety over the spectre which is haunting the Middle East — the spectre of democracy, the fierce storm blowing out of the streets of Cairo and Alexandria and Suez and the other cities of Egypt. Democracy? In Egypt? In an Arab country? What a disaster, what a nightmare, a real nightmare!

Indeed, who can tell what will happen if free elections are held in the land of the Nile? Truly free elections, truly democratic elections to which all candidates can present themselves and all parties contest in a country with eighty million citizens? Who can tell? That's the problem with free elections. You can only be sure of the result after all votes had been counted.

Certainly, there is no certainty and no guarantee that in free and democratic elections – in Egypt or in any other country – it will always be good and worthy candidates who get elected. Here in our State of Israel, which until now boasted of being the only democracy in the Middle East, one can see a living example of how fanatic religious nationalists can penetrate the political system and gain power and influence far beyond their numbers. Also a very concrete example of how a racist demagogue can establish a political party and conduct a campaign of pure incitement and gaining the role of Minister of Foreign Affairs immediately following the elections. On this very day we saw at Knesset in Jerusalem how parliamentarians duly elected in democratic elections can engage in a witch hunt and attempt to gag Human Rights organizations and try to undermine the democratic system in which they were elected.

And still, with all the faults and difficulties, Winston Churchill said of Democracy: It is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried."

Congratulations, Democratic Egypt which was born today! Congratulations from the depth of the heart!

And what about the peace?

"Only Hosni Mubarak and the members of his close associated are truly committed to the peace between Egypt and Israel. If power passes out of this circle, the peace will be in great danger" wrote in the pages of "Yediot Ahronot" one of the experts who are so confused and at a loss over the past week.

Indeed, already for many years the peace between Israel and Egypt is a cold peace, a peace without a soul, a peace with the regime and not with the Egyptian people. This; for a clear and manifest reason - the continued occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people by Israel. In his historic speech in the Knesset thirty-three years ago, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat called for an end the occupation and peace between Israel and the Palestinians, seeking to bring down the psychological walls separating the two peoples. Successive Israeli governments instead insisted on the repression of the Palestinians. From the Sabra and Shatila Massacre, a bare few months after the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty was implemented, to the bombing and mass killing in Gaza during the "Cast Lead" war, Egyptian citizens have witnessed on their screens scenes of horror which made them regard their country's peace with Israel as a disgusting phenomenon.

At this moment, the struggle going on in the streets of Egyptian cities is mainly directed inwards, aimed at a deep change in the regime and society, and relations with Israel play only a marginal part in it. Only by at long last ending the occupation and reaching peace with the Palestinians can Israel preserve and even strengthen the peace with Egypt, under whatever government and regime will emerge from the current popular struggle.

The cat is bleeding

Another poem dictated from prison by Nuri

http://toibillboard.info/bleeding.htm

We are not loyal - to a government of racists!

"The Slumbering Majority wakes up" proclaimed large signs as the human river flowed from the entrance to the Gan Meir Park and unto the streets. Later on, KM Nitzan Horowitz would proclaim from the podium, to the crowd overflowing the Museum Plaza: "Look around you: We are not small and we are not weak, and we have no reason whatsoever to despair!".

In recent years, this part of the Israeli society indeed often felt isolated and marginalized. Often, the dominant atmosphere in its demonstrations was of a brave challenge flung out by those determined to swim against an overwhelming tide. Tonight's change in atmosphere was brought about precisely by the most audacious manifestation to date of nationalistic aggression: The resolution to launch an "investigation" of the peace and human rights organizations, which was initiated by Avigdor Lieberman and his Knesset emissaries and passed by a large majority, and which followed upon the "Loyalty Oath Bill" and "Admissions Committees Bill" and various other notorious judicial initiatives which have been proliferated uncontrollably in the current Knesset.

It was their manifest arrogance, their feeling that they can stain Israel's law books with any piece of racist or anti-democratic they choose, which aroused the people who had stayed home in recent years. A sense of urgency, a sense that it might be the last moment to build a counter-force and try to change the direction of the murky stream. "Demonstrate! Get out into the streets - as long as it is still possible!" read the demonstration calls put out by the Democratic Camp, which last week spread rapidly across the net - before published as paid ads in the press.

"No, no, no - Fascism will not pass!" echoed the old familiar chant along King George Street – and was answered with a new and more ominous one: "People, wake up! - Fascism is passing right now!". "Democracy cries out: Help," read a big placard and the next one had "The Murder of Democracy in Israel - a Foreknown Crime!". "Racism? We don't raise our hands!" read the posters prepared by Mossawa Center, one of the organizations targeted in Lieberman's investigation. Another long-threatened group, the New Israel Fund, provided signs with "Investigate me, too!" and "We will not shut up!". A young woman held up a sign with the words "A Leftist in the Crosshairs" with a target board drawn besides. "Yesterday I sat for an hour at home until I made it exactly as I wanted, I always prefer to make my own sign then to have a printed one."

"A Leftist Patriot" read a new sticker made by Peace Now ahead of this demonstration. Israeli national flags fluttered above the marchers, as well as Blue- and-White flags with the Star of David replaced by the big word "Peace." Protesters with a different political orientation raised Palestinian flags, and one of them stopped to wave the flag ostentatiously in front of the Metudat Ze'ev Likud headquarters. (Later, holders of Palestinian flags were detained by police, who apparently forgot that since the Oslo Accords this is no longer a crime in Israel - or maybe the police is expecting new guidelines soon?) And there were in the march the Gush Shalom signs showing the two flags together, Israeli and Palestinian, and the Red Flags of the Communists and the Green ones of Meretz, and drumming by several of the regular demonstrators at Sheikh Jarrah, and someone was also blowing a trumpet. Very prominent in their absence were any marchers with a sign identifying them as Labor Party adherents - though there were probably quite a few among the crowd who had still voted Labor in the last elections.

"I am Yonathan Pollak" read large signs, as did smaller black stickers which many wore on their shirts. The call for the release of Pollak - imprisoned for participating in a cycling protest two years ago – was voiced also by many people who had never come to demonstrate against the Separation Fence in the fields of the village of Bil'in together with Pollak and his fellows. The Hithabrut-Tarabut movement provided signs entitled "Release the Political Prisoners", where Yonathan Pollak was mentioned alongside Nuri el-Okbi, the Bedouin Rights activist sent to jail on charges of "running a business without a license" as well as Israel Bondak of Jerusalem, veteran of the Israeli Black Panthers and the only one, among many operators of "pirate" radio stations, to be sent to prison for his broadcasting activities.

"Jews and Arabs - Refuse to be Enemies!" read many signs, and the words were shouted loud and clear when the march wound its way up the old section of Dizengoff Street. The blend of accents among the voices testified that these were indeed Jews and Arabs who were chanting it together, again and again and again.

Those who walked in the later parts of the march encountered an unpleasant surprise at the Museum Plaza: police motorcycles parked to make a makeshift blockage and completely sealed off the entrance stairs. "No more allowed in, the square is full. Danger!" announced a grim-faced police officer.

Many of the demonstrators did not accept the prohibition, and they found roundabout ways, climbing concrete fences and pushing their way into the crowd already filling the square. "We already have been fifteen thousand people in the square, we ask the police to stop blocking our friends who want to join" said the voice from the loudspeakers. About fifteen minutes later, the declaration "We are now above twenty thousand!" was greeted with applause.

It was clear that the list of speakers had been assembled with a view to present a wide range of speakers - Jews and Arabs, men and women, moderates and radicals, Communists and Liberals, Zionists and anti-Zionists and non-Zionists.

Lieberman, the racist demagogue Foreign Minister and would-be Putin, was of course the target of an endless flow of condemnation, but almost all the speakers made sure to direct their fire also at the Prime Minister - "Netanyahu, who promotes the racist laws, who backs up Lieberman, who pays salaries to rabbis who publish letters of racial incitement". And the loudest and most sustained boos were reserved for the Minister of Defense: "Barak of the Labor Party and all your fellows, you sit in this most racist of all Israeli Government and you are an accomplice in all its misdeeds, in the racist bills and the rampant occupation and the destruction of any chance left for peace. Lieberman hopes to gain votes in the next election out of his deeds in this government. What are you trying to gain - a few more miserable months in your ministerial seats?" Meretz KM Nitzan Horowitz concluded with a Zionist credo: "I am a Zionist because I believe in the values of the Israeli Declaration of Independence. My Zionism is the aspiration for a sane Israel, an Israel of civil equality and human rights, an Israel which ensures equality to all its citizens regardless of religion, race or gender". In a similar vein, Yariv Oppenheimer of Peace Now declared his hope to see the day when it would be possible to say with pride the words "I am an Israeli."

"There is no cliche more outworn than 'The Occupation Corrupts' - and equally, there is no truth which is still as clear and pure as on the day it was first uttered" stated Hadash KM Muhammad Barake. "Those who deluded themselves that the suffocating oppression of the Palestinian people would always stop at the Green Line were proven very wrong and mistaken. Now, this oppression is coming here, and we all feel the tangible threat. It is by no means certain that a demonstration such as this would still be possible a year from now. But we who stand here in this plaza, Arabs and Jews, Jews and Arabs together in the struggle against galloping Fascisation, we can win! Yes, we can win, as the people of Tunis just yesterday won a heroic struggle against sinister tyranny!"

Attorney Bana Shoughry-Badarne of the Public Committee against Torture, speaking on behalf of the threatened human rights organizations, gently chided those who did not feel danger as long as its victims were mainly among the Palestinians. "More than a decade ago, when I first started to be active, all the phenomena were already highly visible: political detentions, killing of civilians, the expropriation of land, all the forms of oppression. But some people thought that since they belonged to the dominant ethnic group, the tyranny of the majority will not touch them. Now it is obvious that a country which does not define itself as the State of All its Citizens cannot have real democracy. We did not come here to demonstrate against an ephemeral inquiry, which is supposed to discover sources of funding that are open and visible to anyone bothering to surf the web sites of the organizations concerned. We are demonstrating against occupation and oppression and discrimination, for solidarity and for basic human and civil rights to all". (Prolonged chanting "Human Rights - For All! For All! For All!"

"Two weeks ago, Israeli women won a great victory, and the victims of the rapist and sexual abuser Moshe Katzav were vindicated in court. Yet the patriarchal governmental structure which rules over us has chosen this very moment to launch an offensive in a different direction" said feminist activist Dorit Abramovitch. "We have in this country a White Male Jewish regime, harking back to the romanticized comradeship of the 1948 fighters, a regime which was established long before Lieberman or Bibi appeared on the scene. As a feminist I am committed to pointing out the inextricable connection between governmental violence, occupation and sexual oppression. They are all part and parcel of the same. I want to say something that is not agreed by everybody here: There cannot be a Jewish and Democratic state - the two contradict and are incompatible with each other. The Palestinians in Israel never had democratic rights. We should not talk about restoring the glories of an old democracy, we should create a new democracy which until now never existed."

In terms of immediate political impact, the most significant and most unexpected speaker was MK Meir Shitrit of the Kadima Party – which so far had taken, to say the least, a most ambiguous position towards the Lieberman initiatives. "Jabotinsky is turning in his grave to see Likud members support this piece of anti-democratic folly. Jabotinsky always opposed the tyranny of the majority, always declared that the individual who courageously stands against the crowd is a king. What has possessed these Likud people to let Lieberman draw them to the extreme right? The Knesset does not have any authority to conduct such an investigation. You left-wings organizations need not appear, need not to answer any question, you can treat this investigation with the utter contempt it deserves. They have no authority to investigate you! (Applause). True, some Kadima members also voted in favor. It is easier to extract people from the Likud than to extract Likudness from these people. I want to announce here that Kadima decided on a strict party discipline. The next time the issue returns to the Knesset plenum, we will all oppose it, unanimously! (Applause)

"Many years ago I was active on the Left in France," said a mustached, white haired man standing on the side. "Among us in Paris we used to say: When you see the opportunists suddenly come over to your side and join you, it seems that the wind is changing direction."

Social TV video on the demo (Hebrew speaking, but you can see what it looked like)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSn8Irks3R0

Nuri behind bars, or: how an activist for Bedouin rights is treated

I already had several occasions to write here about Nuri el-Okbi, head of the Association for the Defence of Bedouins' Rights in Israel, a honest and just person whose like cannot be easily found.

Nuri was born, 1942, at al-Arakib in the Negev. As a child he saw the army of the new state arrive at the area, and three years later, in 1951, that army's troops expelled him and his family from their home and their village. Only for six months, they were told, but they were never allowed to return.

After growing up Nuri, like many Bedouins who had lost their lands and traditional life style, went to live in the city of Lod. There he opened a garage in 1964, to support his family - but he never forgot the village from which he was uprooted. A few years ago, no longer young nor in the best of health, he took action: returning alone to Arakib and setting up a tent near the ruins of the house where he was born. There he lived for several years, enduring the heat of the day and the cold of the desert night.

Until the police came to arrest him, and in the Beersheba court he was charged with being "a serial invader of state lands" and his release was conditioned upon his undertaking never again to set foot in the place where he was born. With an effort, his lawyer got for him the right to at least go travel on the road from Beersheba to Tel Aviv, from which that place can briefly be seen from afar. "Thou shalt see the land before thee; but thou shalt not go thither unto the land ..."

Nuri painfully resigned himself to the decree of renewed exile, devoting himself to what he was still allowed to do – to spend some more time with his family, and join the struggle of his people and his community. For example, the struggle of the Arab residents in Lod, whom the municipality considers to be a nuisance and "a demographic threat", in token of which it periodically sends bulldozers to demolish their "illegally built" homes. But also in the city of Lod the law enforcement authorities soon took an interest in Nuri, and he was charged with maintaining a business without a permit – to wit, that modest little garage which was established nearly fifty years ago.

The court ruled that since the Lod Municipality cancelled Nuri's business permit, for reasons which remain undisclosed, he should have immediately closed down the garage, that he failed to do so and that city inspectors found him working there. Nuri claimed that on the day the inspectors carried out their inspection he was undergoing a medical examination at the hospital. Nevertheless, the court found him guilty. The judge noted that prison sentences of up to six months could be commuted to community work and specifically advised Nuri to find a place where he could do such work. Nuri did find a Ramla soup kitchen whose managers were happy to have him.

However, when he arrived at court to hear his sentence, Nuri got another unexpected blow. He was not sentenced to six months but to seven – one month more than the maximum which can be commuted to community service. A pity for the soup kitchen, but Nuri will be seven months behind bars for the crime of continuing the garage whose permit the Municipality of Lod withdrew. In addition, Nuri is to pay a fine of 40,000 Shekels, failing which he would be held for an additional 400 days in prison.

Judge Zacharia Yemini stated explicitly in his verdict the reasons why he chose to deal so harshly with Nuri el-Okbi. Precisely because he is active in defense of the rights of the Bedouins he must be punished far beyond others, so as "to send a message to the Bedouins that they must obey the law".

Adv. Avi Dubin, Nuri's lawyer, asked the court to delay implementation of the sentence pending the lodging of an appeal. As is common in the Israeli judicial system. As was granted on the same week to a rather famous defendant named Moshe Katsav, who was found guilty of several charges a bit more serious than running a business without a license. But the judge conditioned Nuri's release upon the immediate depositing of 30,000 Shekels in cash, a sum he did not have. On the way to prison he collapsed, and spet some days in Assah Harofeh Hospital - under heavy guard.

How Nuri feels you can read in his own words, in two poems which he wrote inside the walls of Ma'asiyahu Prison and dictated over the phone to Haya Noach, activist of the Negev Coexistence Forum.

 

Sent to Prison by The Law

The man asked for six days off,

Before seven months in prison undergoing.

I'll grant you this, said the Justice

If 30 000 Shekel you instantly produce!

Otherwise, prison for you and no mercy.

Seven months

And also 40 000 Shekels

Or 400 more jail days in jail!

Flu and a heart condition,

Bound hand and foot in hospital

Bound to the bed,

Two prison guards for the patient,

With chains and pistols,

No visitors,

No talking, no friends.

Prison doctor and hospital doctor consult

Conclude: back to jail.

There to wait many days

For medicine and treatment.

Stuffy little cell, full of smokers.

This punishment you deserve

Having worked for publics

With no license of municipal government.

Ma'asiyahu Prison, Ramla, January 8, 2011.

Good morning

Good morning!

People crammed into small cells

Cockroaches running

Industrious vermin

Climbing the walls

Guards shouting

Good Morning prisoners

Count, count they say

Get up, get counted

Hassan and Sameh stand up

Mohammed and Shlomo are sleeping

Guards threaten

Take out red card

Writing report

Hundreds Shekels fine!

Small cockroaches run

Odor of smoke

Report writing

Standing on guard

Stand up, the warders count

Prisoners dressed in orange

Guilty, not guilty

Weak, sick or healthy

Everyone, everyone is equal.

.Ma'asiyahu Prison, Ramleh 01/13/2011

Afterwords: Nuri el-Okbi is still at this moment in his Ma'asiyahu cell. The first of his appeal will be heard on Monday, January 24, 2011 at 10:00 am before Judge Dr. Eliakim Stoller of the Petach Tikva District Court (20 Hess Street, Petach Tikva).

Meanwhile, Nuri's friends and well wishers managed to convince him to let the sum of 30,000 Shekels set by the court could be deposited and his release pending the appeal be gained. Nuri only consented after being completely convinced that the money would only be deposited temporarily, pending the end of the judicial proceedings, and be eventually returned to its owners.

Those willing to participate in raising the bail needed for the release of Nuri el-Okbi are asked to contact Yoav at +972-(0)522-673467, yh44@walla.com.

This afternoon, after having already started writing this blog, Nuri called me from the pay phone in the prison courtyard with an urgent request: "Please call the Animal Welfare Hotline on my behalf. Here in Wing Two of Ma'asiyahu Prison there is among the buildings a wounded little cat. I feed him and do what I can for him, but he needs to be taken to the vet."

See also: Palestine Chronicle: The Imprisonment of Nuri al-'Oqbi - by Nasser Rego



To err is human

On the first day of the new year, January 1, Bil'in resident Jawaher Abu Rahmah died after having inhaled large quantities of tear gas during a demonstration against the Separation Fence on the day before. The army initially expressed regret and said the soldiers did not mean to kill her, and then the army discovered that the Palestinians and the Israeli leftists had been lying and she had not been there, and then the army discovered that they might have made a mistake about that, too, and that after all she might indeed have died from the gas she breathed. And then the issue dropped from the headlines to the great relief of the IDF spokesman who is soon due to be replaced anyway.

On the second day of the year, Mahmoud Muhammed Dharaghma from the town of Tubas made a fatal error and walked near an army checkpoint in the Jordan Valley while holding a bottle of mineral water in his hand and the soldiers thought it was a petrol bomb and they had been given orders not to take chances and to shoot first and ask questions later and just in case they shot him eight times and then there was nobody anymore of whom to ask questions. What can we do? Mistakes happen in life, only those who do not act make no mistakes.

And also on the same day died the Gazan student Anas Salah who was critically ill and who wanted to get to the Mukassad Hospital in East Jerusalem for a treatment not available in Gaza and who waited many hours at a checkpoint on the Gaza border and eventually reached the Next World instead of the hospital. And this too was an unfortunate mistake, but after all he was already very ill and might have died also in the hospital and then there would have been no accusation leveled at the state of Israel and its armed forces.

A few days passed and on the morning of Friday, January 7, a military force arrived in the Hebron region to detain members of Hamas whom the state of Israel very much wanted to host in its prisons, and the force was fairly accurately briefed and only a small mistake was made when soldiers were told that the wanted man was on the second floor when in fact the he was on the ground floor. And the soldiers went to the second floor and broke open the bedroom door and saw a figure straightening up from the bed and as we know the policy is not to take chances and to shoot first and ask questions afterwards and the soldiers fired several shots on Amr Qawasme, before he could completely wake up and there remained nobody of whom to ask questions, there only remained a bloodstained bed in the bedroom of the Qawasme Family. And this certainly was a regrettable mistake and General Avi Mizrahi of the IDF Central Command even ordered an investigation into the circumstances of the case and perhaps by mistake some results would even be published once upon a time.

And later in the evening of that day the army received a warning that dangerous terrorists were gathering at the border of the Gaza Strip and immediately a detachment of soldiers was sent there and the sophisticated new computerized targeting system was activated, where you just need to feed in the coordinates of the target and the computer would direct deadly mortar fire to precisely the right spot. And it just happened that the sophisticated computer system made a slight error and the mortar shell flew just off the intended target and Sergeant Nadav Rotenberg was killed by the friendly fire of the army which he had joined with a very high motivation. A mistake, certainly a tragic mistake. Even a sophisticated computerized system may occasionally make mistakes.

A little over seventeen years ago the State of Israel signed with the Palestine Liberation Organization an agreement under U.S. government auspices called the Oslo Agreement. According to that agreement's timetable, the occupation should have ended in May 1999 and by now the State of Palestine should have been nearing its eleventh Independence Day and Israeli soldiers would not have been firing tear gas in Bil'in or standing at checkpoints in the Jordan Valley or controlling the access of patients to the Mukassad Hospital in East Jerusalem or detaining wanted people near Hebron or conducting shooting incidents on the Gaza Strip border. Had this agreement been implemented at the specified time, it is likely that Jawaher Abu Rahmah and Mahmoud Muhammed Dharaghma and Anas Chalach and Amr Qawasme and Nadav Rotenberg would all still be among the living today, as would several thousand others, Palestinians and Israelis.

But the State of Israel has made a big mistake - did not implement the agreement and did not end the occupation and instead did build settlements and roads and fences and walls and hatred. A very great deal of hatred was sown and stored up.

Can we still correct that mistake?