Bugs Bunny in the United Nations, again.

This speech I wrote myself. Who needs speechwriters? I personally wrote it, I have been working on it for a whole week.  I prepared public opinion in advance to tune in to the best show in town. It is not every day that I get again to be the Israeli Ambassador to the UN. Those were the days, the good old days. No need to maintain a government coalition, no need to deal all the time with the economy. Just take the stand in New York and put on a show and go get them!

And the subject? What a question. I told everybody in advance. This subject is Iran, Iran and Iran - and Iran again. That's my greatest achievement. The Palestinians are out! Who's talking about them nowadays? Who is Abu Mazen, anyway? We can throw him some crumbs so that he could pay his officials, and let him shut up. The main thing today is Iran. I'm the one who set the global agenda! I personally did that, nobody can take it away from me.

What a pleasure it is to stand before the cameras and attack the evil Ahmadinejad. Since he started spitting out a new villainy every day, my speeches have become so easy. They virtually write themselves. I hear they are going to replace him next year. A pity, I will really miss him. I hope his replacement will not prove a disgrace, will continue to provide us with juicy gimmicks.

So what do I say now? When do I actually go to war? It will not do to give too close a date. Our dear country people are a bit scared, they take this war a bit  too seriously. And also all these military officers and intelligence personnel and former high officials making so much trouble, chattering and chattering nonstop. Also Barak can't be trusted anymore. So what to say? The Summer of 2013! The Summer of 2013 is now our Red Line. The final Red Line. Completely final. The war will be in the summer! You can take Bibi's word! Yes, that's good. We have nine or ten months until then, that’s virtually an eternity.

In the meantime, until then we can get through elections in Israel. Of course, the elections would be about Iran, Iran and Iran. What a beauty! Let's see that Shelly conduct an election campaign with no economy and no social issues and no housing shortage and no rising cost of living and no suffering workers. Who is interested in all that now? The Social Protest is out, too! Iran, only Iran! The elections campaign will provide more opportunities for fiery speeches about the scoundrels from Tehran. Maybe we will include selected Ahmadinejad appearances  in our election campaign TV spots. For example the Holocaust  denial cartoons. They could not have made it more graphical.

Which reminds me, here too I must have a gimmick to catch the eye. Where did I put it? Here, here is the Iranian bomb, I brought it with me for all to see and understand who we're dealing with. Here you can see, I marked all the stages –the  centrifuges which constantly go around enriching uranium, turning and turning and threatening the entire world. How backward these Iranians are, only now they arrive at this point. We went through all that in Dimona fifty years ago, when I was still a child. But who would dare compare us to them?

Anyway, pay attention to me now. Now is the crucial moment when I pull out my red marker and mark for all the world to see our last and final Red Line. What does it mean? I think it is quite clear, even a little boy who loves Looney Tunes would understand immediately. Once they have finished enriching  uranium to twenty percent, they have already completed ninety percent of the process. That is the time to stop them. That and not a minute later. Here, I marked the red line where it says ninety percent. No, no, I definitely did not mean that they are allowed to enrich uranium up to ninety percent! Absolutely not, absolutely not! Are you crazy? Such stupid people. Oh well. But my picture with the gimmick of the bomb went straight to the front page of the New York Times. That's also something.

Here they are in the stands, all my best friends clapping. What a speech that was! Everybody is here. Here is Sheldon, what a good friend. Without his money, where would I find a newspaper to print the whole text of my speech, word by word, and add three very, very flattering commentaries? There they are, all the good friends clapping for me.

Among them Alan Dershowitz. Alan is such a good guy, doing a great PR job for us voluntarily. But something went wrong this week, he is a little bit freaked out. Why meet with Abu Mazen? With Abu Mazen, of all people? And not just meet him, but talk of a settlement freeze. A settlement freeze? That's really too much. Why the hell talk of a settlement freeze?

Here, just this week the bulldozers went out, to prepare the ground for yet another big neighborhood of Efrat. A beautiful settlement, Efrat. A pleasure to visit. A very dynamic place, constantly growing and growing and growing. They always come up with new projects. I gave a nice speech there, too. A  month ago, when I came together with the Minister of Education to greet the children at the beginning of the new school year. What had I said over there? Oh, yes. "Efrat and the Gush Etzion settlement bloc are an integral and fundamental part of Greater Jerusalem. They are the southern gate of Jerusalem and will always be part of Israel. We are building up Efrat and Gush Etzion with energy, faith and responsibility, and so will we build up education, too."

Well, better not say all this here in New York. No need to go too far. Here it would suffice to say a few general words about Jerusalem being Ours Forever and mention King David. That's it, finished. Get down from the stand. One more Historic Speech which would be Long Remembered etc. etc. Hooray, Bibi!
  
Eran Vered's take:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeOMxtnylR4

    .

King Bibi in the political casino

On the front page of Ma'ariv's weekend magazine appears the headline from a commentary by Ofer Shelah:  “A dangerous gamble" - followed by  a quote “Netanyahu features in the broadcasts of the Mitt Romney campaign, and the Republican candidate anti- Palestinian utterings seem to be direct quotations from Israel's PM. Netanyahu has put all his chips on Romney – but who will pay the bill if Obama is re-elected?"

The Ma'ariv newspaper, a pillar of the Israeli press throughout the county's entire history, is at this moment itself in grave danger. Its fate and that of its two thousand employees hangs in the balance. Ma'ariv - and other newspapers and media outlets in Israel –suffer from  the unfair competition by "Israel Today". Copies of "Israel Today" are spread in huge quantities in the streets and at the entrances to public institutions. Unlike other papers, readers do not have to pay for it. And this newspaper also offers incredibly cheap advertisements, at prices with which no other paper could possibly compete.

So, how can "Israel Today" make a profit under such conditions? It does not. "Israel Today" suffers huge losses every month, but it has an owner with very wide pocket, ever ready and willing to cover the losses. Billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who gets very lucrative profits from running casinos in China and the United States, can afford this expenditure. Not by coincidence, "Israel Today" consistently and bluntly supports Binyamin Netanyahu and the policies of his government, while casualties of its wildcat competition are newspapers taking a more critical stance towards the Prime Minister. And also not by coincidence, Sheldon Adelson is also a major supporter and prime funder in the election campaign of Mitt Romney, the Republican Presidential candidate in the United States.

In yesterday's issue of Ma'ariv also appeared a commentary by Ben Kaspit, which might be one of his lasts: “This week Obama gained a decisive advantage in the polls, and in the Electoral College which actually elects the President his situation is even better. It seems that only a miracle can save Romney and the people who have staked the fortunes upon his. It is for such a miracle that Netanyahu and Adelson are now fervently praying. (...)  Based on the assumption that the miracle does not happen and that Romney is sent despondently home on 7 November, the PM's men understand perfectly well what they can expect from the White House during Obama's second term: the immensity of the disgust which the President now feels for Prime Minister of Israel and all that the PM stands for;  that the effort of rebuilding relations which awaits them is virtually hopeless. This is very bad news for the Right-wing, for the settlers, for everyone who tied their fate to the one who tied his own fate to Mitt Romney.”

Caspit – not  staunch leftist - speculates that Obama's second term would start with “another settlement freeze and a resumption of negotiations with the Palestinians (assuming that Abbas survives until then)."

So, perhaps something would happen, after all? Perhaps, it would still happen after all the disappointments and frustrations and bloodshed, despite the ever increasing desperation and cynicism? Maybe the phrase "Middle East Peace Process" would still cease to be a sad and pathetic joke. Maybe a president elected for the second time, having no longer electoral constraints in settling  outstanding accounts with the Prime Minister of Israel, would at long last devote to this issue a significant part of the enormous power at the disposal of the President of the United States of America? Perhaps it would still happen that the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories would not reach its fiftieth anniversary in 2017, but get its long overdue passing away  during the second term of Barack Hussein Obama?

So, would we after all have reason to a sleepless night on November 6?

Empty-handed in the battlefield

It was a long and detailed ruling which Judge Oded Gershon of the Haifa District Court had composed, no less than 162 pages. Of course, no media outlet published the entire text. But a few selected sentences starred in all the new items, a representative sample:

"The Philadelphi Route was the arena of constant war, of ongoing sniper fire, rocket fire and explosive charges. None other than combat soldiers ventured there... The bulldozer crew was conducting a clearing operation under fire. The late Rachel Corrie chose to take a risk, which ultimately led to her death... The deceased had gotten herself into a dangerous situation... She did not stay away, as any sensible person would have done. The deceased's death was caused by an accident which the deceased brought on herself, despite the attempts of the IDF troops to remove her and her friends from there... Under the circumstances, the IDF unit's conduct was impeccable."

Indeed, the area known as the "The Philadelphi Route" – originally, a  code name randomly determined by an IDF computer - was a war zone. An arena of the most difficult and frustrating kind of war in which a military force find itself, being charged with maintaining control over a very narrow and very long piece of land, locked between the Gaza Strip on one side and Egypt on the other. Moreover, the force's main task there was to maintain a suffocating siege on millions of people in the Strip and deny their access to essential commodities. Which made Gazans desperate and embittered, with every incentive to confront the Israeli forces in every way available to them.

It was indeed the arena of an ongoing war, a war difficult and frustrating even for the soldiers to whose lot it fell to be sent there. Still remembered is the bitter day when we could see on TV soldiers get on their knees on the land of The Philadelphi Route, trying to find pieces of the bodies of their comrades who had been inside a blown up armored personnel carrier.


Still, Judge Gershon was certainly not accurate when he wrote that combat soldiers were the only people there, in the hell of the battlefield called The Philadelphi Route. Very many, civilians were there, too - men and women,  elderly and children – in their thousands and tens of thousands. The civilians  were there because it was their home, the only home they had - even if it was quite miserable. They had lived there before it became the scene of battle and before it came to be called Philadelphi. Many of them had come to live there because their original homes had become a battle zone in a previous war, the one which convulsed this country in 1948. And they stayed there, even when it had become the Philadelphi battle zone and the Philadelphi corridor became an arena of battle, even when some them got killed by the bullets of snipers and the explosion of explosive devices, because they literally had nowhere else to go.

And then somebody conceived a brilliant idea. The man's name was Yom Tov Samia, and he was an outstanding officer in the Israel Defense Forces who climbed fast through the ranks until he became Commanding General South. And General Samia had an idea how to win the lost war along the Route. To take up "clearing" - a word invented by the Israel Defense Forces, the kind of word which armies make up to hide horrors behind neutral words - on a truly grand scale. To create a "sterile" space, completely sterile and without life, a kilometer or two wide. A completely flattened area with no houses and no people and no animals and no plants, nothing but soldiers and weapons of war moving in safety, as they could notice from far any possible threat and take action to neutralize that  threat. In purely military terms, it must be said, there was some logic to this idea. Only, it implied the destruction of thousands of houses in which tens of thousands of people lived, half or three quarters of a  city called Rafah.

Probably General Yom Tov Samia would have liked to do it all at once, in one blow, to erase "shave off" all these thousands of houses in a single day and by the next  complete the sterilization of the area. But this might have caused a bit too much of an international stir, become an instant item of "Breaking News" on CNN and other networks, and the political echelon did not give its approval. So the Caterpillar D-9 bulldozers were set to working by the good old method of creating "facts on the ground" bit by bit, acre by acre. Each time they erased and "shaved off" another row of houses, sometimes twenty, sometimes thirty. Usually the residents of these houses managed to jump out and run at the last minute, but some were not quick enough and were buried under the ruins of what had been their homes. In the city of Rafah, photos of those victims were printed and pasted on the walls, but media outlets in the wider world were not really interested.

That was the time when volunteers started arriving on the scene, the people of the International Solidarity Movement, ISM. Yes, that organization to which Judge Gershon paid much attention in his verdict, stating that it was "abusing the discourse of Human Rights and morality" and that its acts are "violent in essence". Activists from Europe and America and all over the world came to the Gaza Strip and asked where Palestinians were most suffering from the occupation's harshness and were in greatest need of assistance and international solidarity. And they were told that Rafah was such a place. And they came to Rafah and were hosted by families on the very front line, where their hosts already knew that they were next in line for the D-9's.

And there were activists who after months in besieged Rafah went to rest and freshen up in their own quiet and safe homes at Copenhagen or Barcelona or Sydney - or Olympia in the  State of Washington in the United States - and when they returned to Rafah they found that the house where they had stayed the last time no longer existed, not a trace of it left, and the plot on which it had stood had become part of the sterile space.  Another house, which had been further back, was now the new front line.

And then they decided to do what a person who cares, who cares very very much, could to do in such a situation. To go unarmed into the battlefield and arena of war called the Philadelphi Route. To stand with empty hands against tanks and bulldozers, and to scream and cry out towards those who did not really want to hear. To face empty-handed and unarmed the might of the Israel Defense Forces. To interpose with their bodies and interfere with implementation of the brilliant strategic plan of General Yom Tov Samia.

Maybe there is something in what Judge Oded Gershon wrote. A sensible person – the kind of sensible person which Judge Gershon himself is, and his friends and acquaintances - would not have done it. Judge Oded Gershon would certainly not have seriously considered facing with his bare hands a giant bulldozer, nearly as big as a house. "The deceased had knowingly gotten herself into a dangerous situation." There is no doubt that she did. A very dangerous situation. Jewish and world history marks a young boy named David, who knowingly placed himself in a very dangerous situation, facing a fearsome giant called Goliath. It might be that he was not a very sensible person, either.

"The bulldozer driver and his commander had a very limited field of view. They could not notice the deceased" wrote Judge Gershon. One might add that also the commander of the commander had a very limited field of view, and even the commander of the commander of the commander. A very limited field of view, in which only the immediate military considerations and objectives could be seen. A very limited field of view in which human beings could not be seen, a living city could not been as it was being destroyed and razed and erazed and made into a sterile zone. A very limited field of view where it was not possible to see a young woman who followed the dicates of her conscience and came all the way from the West Coast of the United States to Rafah in the Gaza Strip, to risk her life in a desperate act of protest.

At the exit from the Haifa District Court, Cindy Corrie, Rachel's mother, spoke to the journalists. Hurt and shaken by the verdict she said "In that home which  Rachel was trying to protect there were children. All of us should have been there, to stand with her."

Two years after the day when the bulldozer crushed Rachel Corrie to death, Israel's political and military leadership decided to terminate the hopeless fighting on the Philadelphi Route and withdraw the soldiers who have endured  Hell there and made a Hell for others. Media attention had impeded  implementation of  General Samia's grand design, and only a portion of the city of Rafah has actually become an "exposed"  sterile area.  Samia himself left the army in frustration and embarked on a successful career in the business world.

The situation of the Palestinians is far from bright. The occupation continues, with many different forms of oppression manifesting themselves every day. Also for continuing the tight siege of the Gaza Strip, new and creative ways were found even without having Israeli troops holding The Philadelphi Route. But that particular battle scene is now quiet, there are no more soldiers or bulldozers there. The home which Rachel Corrie was trying to protect had been rebuilt shortly after the soldiers left, and also the rows of houses in front and behind it. The children are playing there, more or less quietly.

She did not die in vain.
    

Does a barking dog not bite?

- "Ah, a barking dog doesn't bite."
- "Yes, I know it and so do you, but the question is: Does the dog know?"

Never in the annals of Israel - and only rarely in history in general – was a war talked about so much before it broke out. All moves and counter-moves and counter- counter-moves analyzed at length and in public. All the military and political and economic considerations stated openly and in detail. It quite often happens that generals are trigger-happy and exert their force to drag a  reluctant political echelon into war. There are far fewer cases of the reverse, of political decision makers straining with all their might to go to war while the military remains wary and apprehensive and reluctant. But, this situation is now here.

In "Makor Rishon", one of the Israeli newspapers most identified with Binyamin Netanyahu, the commentator Ariel Kahane explained the warlike turmoil in terms of the struggle between the Prime Minister of Israel and the President of the United States:

After his first meeting with Obama, Netanyahu told his aides: 'If that is  how he is treating us as a freshly-elected President during his first term, when he still needs the Jewish vote, all the more he is going to clash with us should he be re-elected.’ (...) Since the post-election Obama is not to be trusted, the best timing for action is the time between now  and the elections on November 6. Should Israel attack during this time, Obama might be furious, but narrow political interests would require him to come to Israel's aid. A moment before the elections Obama cannot abandon America's ally to bleed under a barrage of missiles from Iran, Lebanon, Syria and Gaza. In spite of himself he would have no choice but going to help Israel defense, otherwise he would  lose the elections."http://www.news1.co.il/Archive/0024-D-75227-00.html

A similar analysis could be heard in the past week from various sources, but a commentary article in Makor Rishon can be considered as a kind of semi-official message from the office of the Prime Minister. And if Obama does not act according to the script  Netanyahu's office prepared for him? If the price of oil rises steeply and the world economy collapses and people around the world  blame Israel? Well, nothing in life is without risks ...

And so, more and more people in this country are beginning to take seriously the possibility that this dog would not only bark but also bite - and in the very next coming months. They take it seriously and start to be very, very worried. And the protest movement against this war which is on our doorstep is growing apace.

The traditional demonstration on the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing,   held at the Ministry of Defense every August 6, the hard-core advocates of nuclear demilitarization of the Middle East were this year joined by many  others. Many who were roused by the drums of war.  The momentum continued in a string of demonstrations at the foot of the residential tower where the Defense Minister lives (alongside some of the richest tycoons in the Israeli economy).  Night after night was the tower surrounded by hundreds of protesters.

"No war with Iran". "No roulette of at least 300 Israeli dead". "No, to war for the sake of maintaining ministerial positions." "Armageddon? No, thank you". "The Defense Minister is leading us to disaster." "Bibi, you have already ruined our lives, do not terminate them." "No, no, we don't want / A government of bombers / No, no, we don't want/ A government of tyrants." "He's crazy, he's crazy, he's crazy."

Yesterday, Israel's ambassador to the U.S., the trusted representative of Netanyahu, declares that an attack on Iran would be worthwhile even if it does not destroy the nuclear program, since "even a delay of a year is significant". And in Tehran President Ahmadinejad presented his view of "A new Middle East, one without the Zionist Cancer". As if seeking deliberately to ignite the flames of war and provide Netanyahu with material for war propaganda. Maybe its' not "as if" - since an Israeli attack may finally put off the coals of internal opposition to the Iranian regime and force the bitterest opponents of the regime to join in "national unity".

Today I saw on the bulletin board at my Holon home an urgent call for  the residents to remove their belongings from the air raid shelter at the bottom of the building, so that it could fulfill its function in case of aerial bombardments …

Voices of protest

Public call upon pilots

(So far signed by 600 academics and public figures - and making headlines in all the media)

http://www.atzuma.co.il/tayasim

To
The Air Force pilots
Israel Defense Forces (IDF)

Greetings,

We issue this appeal to you out of a deep sense of concern and anxiety at the present situation in this country. We know a little bit through the media, and much more is happening behind the scenes, of which we may know only when it is too late. We do not know your names, your family status, your views or your opinions. We do know one thing - at this moment our fate, our very future, lies very much in your hands.

In the near future, possibly within weeks, you may get the fateful order – to man the planes and take off for the task of bombing Iran. You will have, of course, the choice of obeying the order, accepting the arguments and assertions of those who give it without questions, and striving to perform the task to your best professional ability. This would amount to accepting the argument that bombing Iran's nuclear facilities is essential for the defense of the State of Israel, thereby also accepting that you will be firing the first shot in a war whose results might be catastrophic for all of us.

This, however, is not the only choice open to you. You also have the option of saying "no". Certainly, this is not a simple option. It involves profound professional and moral dilemmas, and carries the risk of losing a career which is important to you and also the possibility of being prosecuted. Nevertheless, it is your duty to consider most carefully and seriously the possibility that by saying the little word "no", you will be rendering an important and vital service to the State of Israel and all who live here. This service would be infinitely more important than blind obedience to this particular order.

 (...)No one can make the decision for you. We hope - for your sake as well as ours - that should the moment come, you will be able to make the right decision.

Professor Menachem Mautner, former Dean of the Faculty of Law at Tel Aviv University.
"I understand the far-reaching implications of the petition, and I do not think there is a legal problem about such an attack as such. And I do not think the pilots real the ones to address. But the possibility of a decision being taken to attack Iran is keeping me sleepless for weeks. To the best of my judgement, taking such an action without waiting for the U.S to take the main role would entail disastrous long-range results for Israel. Because I am concerned and  desperate, I have decided to join this petition. I'll do anything it takes to prevent Israel from plunging into what I see as a disaster unparalleled in its history, including even the terrible tragedy of the Yom Kippur War. Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures."


Scary statues of Pharaonic birds
Roy Chicky Arad

http://www.facebook.com/chicky99

Tonight, and also tomorrow, and also the day after tomorrow, at 20:00, a demonstration under the house of the Minister of Defense. Facing the depressing lobby cluttered with scary statues of Pharaonic birds made of hard  stone, and crying out to reach him on the fourteenth floor with a very simple basic message which we learned as children: that this war is bad, like all too many of its predecessors.

A war which is so unnecessary in terms of possible achievements, so dangerous both immediately and in the longer range, so cynical, with so many possibilities for unforeseen entanglements, a war on which the army itself is  not interested in embarking, already smelling the failure and the damage to security. A war which nobody would know how to close down after the fire box opens.

Even those who now give some credence to the scare propaganda of Bibibarak and their communication lackeys and are inclined to let the experts about such things (Barak!) deal with them – even they would show up at the Rabin Square a month after the war, shamefaced, and join us in crying out about this terrible folly. All the opportunist politicians will come then to make speeches…

As in the first Lebanon War, as in the Second Lebanon War, everything is so transparent. Why wait for the disaster to happen? It is clear, it is here, with us, with the foul smell of death. Is there anyone who claims that the home front is ready for a missile counter-strike? And is there someone who does not see how problematic it is to cut the budgets for the collapsing health system just  before embarking on such a war?

This adventurous war can be prevented. Public pressure against the war can make a difference, especially when the majority among the public is known to oppose the war.  A lot of people should reach the demonstation, not just the hard left, but also worried mothers who are not interested in politics but are very much interested in their children. On Facebook I see that also my Likudnik friends ask hard questions to which there are no answers.


Chances versus Risks
Assaf Peretz

http://www.facebook.com/assafon


They say "You have no way of measuring chances against risks". I answer "Perhaps I can't, but what about the Air Force commander, Major General Amir Eshel? And the General in Command North? And the IDF Chief of Staff? Can they measure it? And all of them are opposed.

Do you think there will be a Second Holocaust if we don't attack? Well, you have to persuade of this the Commander of the Air Force, who will need to look into the eyes of the pilots. Then, the Chief of Staff. And for two years already you are pumping up the inevitable threat, then damn it, prepare the home front. To go on an offensive like this breaks all records of cynicism, spitting in the face of social justice.

For who will get hurt? The weak and neglected towns of the periphery, first of all. (Dr. Ron Lobel of the Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon said this morning that the hospital lacks any protection), and those citizens who have no safe room in their apartments and at the first bombing will search in vain for the keeper of the key to the public air raid shelter.

More? The national information network has no head in the past eight months, the Civil Defense Command stopped issuing gas masks because its budget was finished. Incidentally, in the whole country there are only eight beds for burn victims. Who fucking cares?

So anyone who cares, every night at eight there will be a protest in front of the Minister of Defense's home, at the corner of Shaul Hamelech Boulevard and Ibn Gvirol Street in Tel Aviv.
Riki Cohen - Parents Against War

Nothing was shaking in the fancy building where Defense Minister Ehud Barak moved recently, on the evening when some 300 protesters, myself among them, came to hold a demonstration against the planned attack on Iran.  The lobby is designed in expensive modernist statues and seating systems. A  nouveau style of some kind, probably nouveau riche. Around the tower an artificial pool was bubbling behind an engineered garden with well-designed trees. At seven o'clock, Security sevice operatives were already buzzing  around, waiting for the plebs to arrive, later joined by riot police Border Guards. 

A lot of baby carriages were there, and children who had to be carefully preserved against getting lost in the crowd. The children who this fall might encounter for the first time the dubious protection kits offered by the government and get into air raid shelters of questionable utility. Those whose   parents cannot afford the fares to fly away to a safe place until shooting ends. In many homes this debate is going on this week, where, in case of…? Ironically, the communities of the South were mentioned as a possibility.

Would establishing a Parents Against War movement be the right step? "Sure," answered my neighbor in the line of march. "Four Mothers was the only political movement that ever managed to achieve something". He gave me hope, perhaps an exaggerated one. The myth of the Four Mothers, who got the army out of Lebanon, lives on and was not impaired despite some jeering talkback messages from warmongers.

Those parents with prams who last summer went out on the streets in their thousands to protest the cost of living and specifically the high payment for kindergartens, would they now join a movement struggling to preserve the very life of their kids (and of themselves)? Difficult to know, especially when the campaign of intimidation seems to work well on a large sector of the public, those who still  see no alternative to Netanyahu, and who seem inclined to just wait out the deluge and hope for the best. And still, it is hard to believe that they too do not have this nagging feeling, this realization that in just a few weeks, my own life and that of those dear to me would also be laid down the in the roulette of death, Barak's bargain price of 500 dead. How many of us would see the winter?

Yes, at the conclusion you are faced with a grim truth which can not be hidden.  I don’t mind being accused of being a selfish Tel Avivian. That's OK. I really feel no urge to make sacrifices for a crumbling nationalist ethos marred with ambiguity, lies and personal motives. Bibi and Barak, who lead the way to a hedonist capitalist jungle, cannot be surprised about the lack of such a spirit of sacrifice.

Let's make some noise. They don't have a monopoly over wisdom.

Not a single medal

Vardina Salomon
Letter to the editor, Yediot Ahronot August 12, 2012

Israel sent to London its best athletes and was sadly disappointed - not a single medal. This is just a sport, and no one died from it. But we must remember this story in connection with a far more sensitive issue: the bombing in Iran that is so talked about.

Our Air Force has excellent pilots, professional and highly motivated. Nevertheless, success is not guaranteed. There is a great risk of entanglements and blunders, a rain of missiles might fall on the Israeli home front. They are trying to "comfort" us that it be "only" 300 or 500 deaths. Alas for such a "consolation"!

If as a result of this war oil supplies are damaged and oil prices rise steeply worldwide, we might be accused of it, and the consequences can be very serious. The average American is not really interested in what happens outside the U.S. and does not really know who is fighting who in the Middle East, but the price of fuel is very important to him. If the price is doubled because of a war which Israel started, this could cost us dearly. It is doubtful whether in such a situation Netanyahu could once again get applause in the American Congress.

Breakfast on the steps of the ministry building

 At a late evening hour last week I got an urgent call from N., a Palestinian resident of the town of Dura, near Hebron - a longtime personal friend. His cousin, the 47 years old Abdullah Alarjub had been shot and wounded by soldiers, in strange and rather alarming circumstances. Soldiers stopped Abdullah at a checkpoint, conducted a thorough search of his car, found nothing, gave him back his keys and told him to keep going. When he was about 25 meters away, one of the soldiers raised his gun, shot and injured Abdullah in the shoulder.

Had I not known the cousin of the wounded, I would not have heard anything about it. The Israeli media had more important issues to deal with. A few days later a similar incident occurred at another checkpoint, near Jerusalem - only that this time the shooting ended in death. A Palestinian killed by soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces does get a bit of publicity in the communications media of the State of Israel - but only a bit. In most cases, nobody bothered  to publish the name of the person killed. (His name was Akram Dair, and he was 40 years old. All that was required to locate this data was a one minute search of Palestinian news websites.)

Are the soldiers who shot and killed going to be punished? Probably not. They claimed that the car had not stopped at the checkpoint. Under the criteria of the IDF, the most moral army in the world, these are sufficient grounds to shoot and kill inhabitants of those territories which, according to Justice Edmond Levy,  are not occupied at all. What the army did do, right then on the night after the fatal shooting, was to carry out extensive raids on Palestinian cities and villages and refugee camps, and detain people who might have started demonstrations and protests at their communities.

But perhaps Justice Levy was right, after all? After all, South Tel Aviv is not considered to be Occupied Territory, and yet the authorities in our country find no difficulty in implementing a policy of escalating oppression towards the African refugees and asylum seekers and migrant workers who live there (who still live there, until construction of the detention camps in the Negev desert is completed).

So, this week members of the State of Israel's parliament gathered to talk about how to distinguish between people according to their looks. Just so. On July 23, at 8:30 am, the Knesset Interior Committee convened and gave its approval to a bill presented by KM Miri Regev and KM Ophir Akunis, which would impose a fine of up to half a million Shekels to anyone providing lodging or transportation to an infiltrator. But then the amazing question was asked, how would a bus driver determine the identity of a black skinned person wishing to board the bus? Maybe it's an infiltrator – which would mean that, should this bill pass all stages of legislation in the Knesset and be duly inscribed in our law books, the driver would be strictly forbidden to take him. But perhaps it's an Ethiopian, who is a kosher Jew and a full-fledged citizen of the State of Israel? Or, who knows, maybe it is the President of the United States, on a short visit with us, wanting to go incognito on a Tel Aviv bus? So, how to distinguish? Who could help the miserable driver?

The thug who on the same day entered an Internet cafe in the Shapira Neighborhood of south Tel Aviv did not grapple with problems of identification. He came in, knife in hand, stabbed and injured the owner and two of his clients, all three of them Eritreans, threw a computer at the owner, escaped and disappeared. The police still did not get on his trail, and the media coverage given the incident was modest.

There were meor events which the media did not report at all, though you could hear of them from the activists who spoke at the protest rally last Saturday night, initiated by Holocaust survivors and Israeli teenagers. There, we could hear of a 12-year old black girl who got a fist in her face from a motorcyclist passing her in the street, and of the poor black cat who was hanged on the door of an apartment where the human beings had a skin color similar to his. A long list of major and minor assaults which increasingly make into hell the lives of Africans among us.

And what does all this have to do with what did get the headlines this week – the economic decrees resolved upon by the Government of Israel, whose  centerpiece is the increase of VAT, laying a heavy burden on those who have the least? Some people tend to carefully sort out and place separate  issues in separate drawers, or perhaps separate universes. Here are the Palestinians and their oppression, and there the Africans and the repression peculiar to them, and here the ordinary citizens of Israel and their usual suffering under the burden of economic decrees. In my humble opinion one would do well to recall that the government is the same government and the policy makers are the same policy makers. As has become my habit in recent weeks, I can end with quoting from the call for a weekend demonstration, scheduled for this night in Tel Aviv.:

Privatization of school health services. The lie of free education from age three. The raising of beer prices. The raising of cigarette prices. The Border Infiltrators Law. Deportations to South Sudan. Incitement against refugees. Police surveillance. Moshe Silman. 50 millions to the Ariel "University". The attack on radio broadcaster Keren Neubach. Increased penalties for aiding refugees. The crushing of what is left of the middle class. Untaxed corporate profits. Increase in VAT.  Forgiving the tycoons' debts. Non-implemented report of the Commission on Cartels. Drying up the social services. No public housing. Saturday at 20:00 on the Habima Square.

The rope tightens around all our necks. Every day the media inform us about the new decrees, including measures for complete elimination of public housing. The government is cutting through people's dignity, through their  very lives.

We are citizens. This is our country, these are our public assets. We will not give up our lives! We will march through the street, sit down at the entrance to the government compounds and stay the night. We will force the government to wake up. Each with her body and her voice, each with his body and his voice!

This is an emergency! Say no to the austerity decrees which would choke the economy and push us into a heavy recession! No increase in VAT and purchase taxes, no cuts in welfare and health, no further undermining of  public housing!

As it is, we are already paying too much for rent and mortgage!
As it is,  food prices are sky-high!
Do you need money? Go to the tycoons who have robbed us all these years.
36 billions in untaxed profits – take it from there! Not at our expense!
We will take it any longer!

We take responsibility for our lives. We are sovereign. We will return the country to the citizens! We meet in at 20.00 on the corner of Rothschild and Habima and march to the Government Compound on Kaplan Street. Bring signs with your own message, and pots and pans, and also sleeping bags, mats, blankets, pajamas, musical instruments, and everything you need to spend the night. Breakfast at 7.00 am on the steps of the ministry building...

A not so special week

"You have put a mirror in front of our society. A terrible mirror, reflecting how poverty looks in the State of Israel in 2012. Poor people are being shamed and humiliated, must go through an indescribable toil mask of bureaucracy in order to eventually receive a pittance. With not enough to either live or die, they  must  beg in order to survive."  Thus spoke Rabbi Idit Lev of the Rabbis for Human Rights at the grave of Moshe Silman. Ten months she and her friends had tried in vain to get him a modest roof over his head. Silman was buried in the Holon cemetary accompanied by a huge amount of young friends.
http://rhr.org.il/heb/index.php/2012/07/8649/

Following Silman, another man set himself on fire - Akiva Mefa'ai, a disabled IDF veteran in a wheelchair, who tried to protest the way the State of Israel rewards soldiers who went to the battlefield on its behalf. At this moment he is still hovering between life and death. But he has received much less media attention than did Moshe Silman. Soon such events will begin to bore the media, and at most get a few lines on the bottom of page five. And if Keren Neubach would try to devote more attention to it on her radio program, care will be taken to "counter-balance" her  with a broadcaster from the other side of the spectrum, those who just want to get rid of “parasites”.

This week a plane left Ben Gurion Airport for the sixth time, carrying citizens of South Sudan who are expelled from Israel back to their homeland which is still plagued by poverty and war. This, too, no longer captures the headlines. Interior Minister Eli Yishai, "Mr. Refugee Expulsion", no longer bothers to go to the airport to be personally present. Only Israelis who personally knew some of the deportees came to bid them goodbye at the bus taking them to the airport, and pupils in some schools feel the painful loss of classmates.

And just on the day that the deportation plane set out for the capital of South Sudan, Israeli government officials met with representatives of that new country, and in a warm and friendly atmosphere signed several cooperation agreements. French anti-Semites used to say “Nous aimons les Juifs - en Israël”  ("We love the Jews –  in Israel"). Incidentally, just this week the Jewish Agency Chair Natan Sharansky expressed his disappointment that the killings at the Jewish school in Toulouse a few months ago did not lead to a significant increase in the number of French Jews moving over to our country.

And this week the State of Israel officially informed the Supreme Court of  Defense Minister Ehud Barak's decision to destroy eight villages in the South Hebron Hills, 1500 houses in all, and expel the Palestinian inhabitants to make place for soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces to train. But the army is generous and will graciously let the deportees come to work the land on weekends. And not very far from there Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar announced a great expansion of the project bringing high school students from all over the country to stay as guests in the settler enclaves at the heart of Hebron. With their own  eyes the pupils could see the great achievements of the settlers, who had made the lives of their Palestinian neighbors into hell and successfully made the center of Hebron into a ghost town where only the most stubborn and determined Palestinians are left. "It's not a political issue, the pupils must get to know the history and heritage of the Jewish People," stated the minister.

This week, for a change, not so much was heard about the danger posed to Israel by Iran's nuclear program. It was replaced at the top headlines by another serious threat – the chemical weapons in Syria which, with the developing civil war there, might fall into the wrong, the irresponsible hands. As usual we could witness senior ministers competing with each other in making verbal offensives and dire warnings of military operations to seize or destroy chemical weapons in the stormy Syria. And again as usual in this country, it was the military echelon, i.e. Army Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, who poured some cold water on the militant ministers and expressed strong reservations about any idea of sending the troops under his command across the Syrian border.

And all this was forgotten the next day, the Syrian chemical threat making place for Israel's own government intending to raise the VAT to cover the budget deficits. Raising the VAT of course - not, God forbid, the tax on the giant companies. And the tens of billions which they owe to the state treasury are not even collected. But who is counting?

The veteran satirist and columnist Kobi Niv wrote this week: "In this country, even the black and bleak prophecies turn out to have been too rosy. However much I try to be pessimistic, so as to be a bit realistic about what is going on here, I always discover I had still been too optimistic, and reality is so much  worse than I expected. For example, last year (to be precise, on August 2 last year) I predicted that 'the wave of social protest will be drowned in a reduction of VAT by one and a half percent. And look what happens now? The final outcome of the protest is a raising of the VAT by one percent. In short - be realistic, when you make the blackest prediction you can think of, always add at least two and a half percent to reach the real result.”

Yes, as the PM said, there is no such thing as a free lunch. The citizens of Israel must cover the deficit and take care of the fifty millions of shekels needed to fund the new university at the settlement of Ariel and the three hundred million for establishing a network of prisons and detention centers and holding camps over the Negev, where tens of thousands of refugees and infiltrators and illegal immigrants from Africa will be held. The law providing for them to be held three years without trial has already been duly approved by the Knesset, but what use is such a law when there is not nearly enough place in the prisons? In short, there is no such thing as a free lunch and through the VAT all Israeli citizens - and especially the poorest – will get to take part in this important national enterprise.

As on almost every weekend in recent months, there will be a protest on the streets of Tel Aviv. Tomorrow night, Holocaust survivors will join with academics, slum dwellers youths and other concerned citizens, in a march to protest the treatment of refugees and remind of relevant chapters in Jewish history. The march supported by the Assaf Association and by the Migrant Workers support Group.

How much of an effect, really, can people of good will have? They can do all that is in their power. They have to do all that is in their power.

P.S. See description of the protest
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4261493,00.html

Tragedy, and farce, and tragedy again

One evening last year, at the homeless tent encampment on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv. At that time the encampment was already in its waning stages, many had already left it and there stayed mostly those who really had nowhere else to go. We met a not so young man who walked slowly through the boulevard, pulling a bicycle. My wife remembered him from previous demonstrations. For half an hour he told us about the troubled and harsh life which had led him to live in a tent on the boulevard, a fragile and temporary shelter under the hanging threat of the municipal inspectors. He was determined to continue the struggle, as part of the social protest movement, whose appearance was for him a virtual gift from Heaven. I well remember his  determination.

In the past week we try again and again to dredge up every detail which we can recall. Was the man we met Moshe Silman, then unknown, who under appalling circumstances had by now become known to everybody in Israel as well as  to quite a few people abroad? I guess it was indeed Silman, who then still did not wear a beard. But in fact it does not really matter. It might have been him, or it might have been someone else entirely, someone of a similar age and with similar life circumstances and a similar determination to fight - only that it did not quite get to the point of pouring  a flammable liquid on himself and dying a horrible death in a desperate effort to arouse the conscience of the Israeli society.

The activists of the "Haifa Front", who knew Moshe Silman well, wrote of him: "We mourn the premature passing of Moshe Silman – an activist of the front and a dear friend. We had come to know Moshe during the past year.  During this period, Moshe made countless appeals, turned to anyone which he could think of, ceaselessly attempted to get assistance with housing, assistance to function again as an ordinary  citizen in society. To no avail.

Moshe was active in the social struggle in Haifa, struggled militantly for an entire year in the call for social justice, for a state which is responsible to its citizens - both for himself and for many others. Moshe was a proud have-not. He refused to accept the common equation of 'poverty = degradation'. Moshe set himself on fire last Saturday night, in front of thousands of protesters during a demonstration in Tel - Aviv. Blessed be his memory."

Professor Amir Hetsroni had a rather different take on Moshe Silman (whom he of course  never met): "People like him add very little to the Israeli economy. For me, the self-immolation does not make much of an impression. It may even be that we got rid of a parasite, cheaply".

Professor Amir Hetsroni is working in an academic institution located in the settlement of Ariel at the northern West Bank. Of course, immediately after the publication of his words and the ensuing public uproar,  the management was quick to distance itself and emphasize that it was no more than the personal opinion of a single professor. And apparently, such indeed is the case. The fact is that Professor Hetsroni is personally known as a staunch – one might even say, fanatic – upholder of the most strict free market economics. He is an avowed opponent of providing government funds to any and all parasites. On the other hand, the institute where he works and gets a good salary is not averse at all to getting some additional tens of millions more from the state treasury. In order to get this money. It was very very important for them to receive official recognition as a full-fledged university, not just a mere college.

And that is how this week went through the abrupt transition from tragedy to farce. To wit, the farce known as "The Judea and Samaria Higher Education Council". The point is that a Council of Higher Education already exists in Israel, which was established by law. This council debated the issue at length and concluded that there was no need to establish a university in Ariel, out of purely academic considerations (and quite a few respected academics opposed it also and especially because Ariel is a settlement built illegally in Occupied Territory which is not part of Israel) . But, a solution was found, namely to establish a parallel Council of Higher Education under the military governor's warrant.

The one and only role of the Council for Higher Education in Judea and Samaria, for which it was established and its members  appointed, was to give a university status to the college in Ariel. And lo and behold, this Council convened this week and, yes, reached the decision to grant university status, precisely as requested. And Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, the renowned philosopher, immediately opened his usually tightly clenched fist, and fifty millions were duly transferred to the new university.

Meanwhile, we moved to yet another farce - the dismantling of the big government coalition formed by Binyamin Netanyahu and Shaul Mofaz with a majority of 94 Knesset members holding out seventy days exactly. And the government broke up over the firm demand  of recruiting the ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students who absolutely do not want to be soldiers and the army does not need them and Netanyahu never seriously intended to recruit them. And there was left to Shaul Mofaz nothing but to vacate the Deputy Premier chair which had been empty of real content and authority and move to the chair of head of the opposition to which he won’t be able to give real meaning, either.

There were columnists who mourned the loss of what they call "the historic opportunity to create in Israel a government of the sane center.” I myself am rather encouraged by what  I read on the pages of "Makor Rishon" written by Amnon Lord, an associate protege of Benjamin Netanyahu: "The purpose of government opponents is to create ceaseless turmoil, and in this they mark a  success. The king-size government coalition disintegrated surprisingly quickly. The impression is that everything is very vulnerable, everything is shaky, and despite his three and a half years in power, Netanyahu has not managed so far to sit firmly in the saddle ".

In the meantime, an event which did not get any report in the Israeli media took place in the “non-occupied”  dark backyard of the democratic State of Israel. The military authorities decided to release Palestinian Parliament Speaker Aziz Dweik,  held in administrative detention for six months - without trial. Why was he arrested six months ago? The reasons are secret and well-kept by the security services of the State of Israel. And why was he released now? Ditto.

But exactly at the same day troops came to the house of another Palestinian MP, Ahmed Abdel Aziz Mubarak, resident of Al Bireh, and they took him off to begin a six-month detention - without trial. Why was he arrested? The security services know, and only they. And how long will he be held? Ditto. It seems that somebody thinks that at least a quarter of the members of the Palestinian parliament must be held in the prisons of the State of Israel, a quota to be filled.

And still, in every debate you hear the Israeli rightists bring up the clinching argument : "There is no occupation. After all, we don’t rule the Palestinians, they run their own lives in the areas which were given to their control and elect their own parliament." True, Israel Defense Forces can go anywhere in these areas and arrest each of these members of parliament (currently, more than twenty of them are detained). But this is not occupation, God forbid. What is it? Even Justice Edmond Levy himself could not say what it is. Maybe it's a potato?

And suddenly, without warning, after the farcical days, tragedy hits again in our lives, and five Israelis who went on a dream vacation to the Black Sea shore in Bulgaria came home in coffins. And we have all gotten the reminder that Israel is in conflict and war, and it could be any of us, at any moment. And about those who were spared tells the Yediot Aharonot correspondent who went  there: "Dozens of Israelis who had thought that here they could escape from the stress and problems of Israel went on the bus back to the airport with a mixture of fear and relief: "We will never come back here again."

On TV our Defense Minister Ehud Barak stated that "we live in a tough neighborhood" (this time he did not compare the State of Israel to a villa in the jungle "). The army tends to blame especially Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Prime Minister again found good reason to point a finger at Iran. But it seems that conditions did not yet ripen to send the Air Force planes to bomb Tehran, nor even Beirut. The big war will have to wait a bit.

And is it an option to try to make peace in order to safeguard Israeli citizens for the long term? True, the late coalition agreement between Netanyahu and  Mofaz noted down the "re-starting of the diplomatic process" as one of the main aims of the government which they created. But did anyone there took it seriously, even for one moment?

Then, at the last day of the week Moshe Silman died after six days in the hospital, losing the last struggle in a life full of struggle. And so, immediately after the writing of this article is completed we will go to Tel Aviv, to take part in the commemoration march. "We will march in memory of Moshe Silman and for a life of dignity," said the message on social networks in Israel. "We will march to 5, Kaplan Street where Moshe Silman finally lost hope and was overcome by his predicament and cried out on behalf of all of us - for social justice! Then we will march to the National Insurance plaza and we will light candles in memory of Moshe and of other victims who  remain unknown."

Perhaps when the day comes to write the chronicles and annals of this crazy and miserable country, historians will say that Moshe Silman's sacrifice was not in vain.

A media report of the commemoration events
http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=278366