Of malignant hatred and a law of theft

Last Monday afternoon there landed in my email box a message from somebody who is in the habit of corresponding with me every few days, expressing opinions in which moderation and tolerance are conspicuously absent. This time he wrote with glee "Look what your Bedouin friends did this time, already four deaths in the terrorist attack on the Be'er Sheba bank."

I quickly went into the news websites and found extensive reporting on the horrific events unfolding at the Bank Hapoalim branch in Be'er Sheba.

The body of the article had nothing about the ethnic identity of the perpetrators (at the time it was thought there were two). But the talkback windows below were full of dozens of responses by people who already knew as a fact that they were Bedouins, and who were indignantly protesting that the "leftist media" was "concealing" this fact. And thence the right-wing talk back artists proceeded to make various imaginative suggestions about what should be done to the perpetrators, to their families, to their entire tribes, and to all Negev Bedouins in general.

By evening it turned out, clearly and unequivocally, that the bank killings had been the result of a revenge spree by a completely kosher Jewish citizen of Israel (and a former IDF officer, to boot) and the vocal right wingers reluctantly let go the prey they thought they had. One of them wrote, "OK, you won this time, dirty leftists”. But they'll be back, no doubt.

The outpourings of hatred against the Negev Bedouins don’t stop even for a day. You find them not only in the talk backs but also in some of the commentaries on the opinion pages themselves, and in the slant of supposedly objective news items, and also in daily conversations one overhears on a bus or at street corners. The Bedouin are thieves, The Bedouins are violent, The Bedouins build new mosques all over the Negev, The Bedouins take over state lands, The Bedouins are a demographic threat, their camels cause road accidents, Hit the Bedouin and Save Israel!. How did such a malignant and vociferous hatred spring up in the Israeli society?

It was not always so. From my Tel Aviv childhood in the 1950s and 1960s I can’t  recall anyone expressing hatred towards Bedouins. We learned of them as exotic and interesting people, wandering the desert and riding camels. On one visit to Be'er Sheva I was delighted to have a few minutes’ ride on one of these camels, and the Bedouin who led it looked  just like the picture in the school textbook.

Of course, no one bothered to tell elementary school students in Tel Aviv (or  adults, for that matter) about what really happened in the Negev in those years. We were not told that although the Bedouins had hardly taken part in the war of 1948, the state of Israel nevertheless treated them as defeated enemies. They were placed under an oppressive military government and many of them expelled across the Jordanian or Egyptian border. Those who remained within Israel were concentrated by force in a single small part of the Negev which was called “The Sayag” (what would have been called “a reservation” had they been Indians in America). Bedouin villages in other parts of the Negev were razed to the ground and Jewish pioneers came to take up this land and build on it kibbutzim and moshavim and in short "make the desert bloom."

This was the time when a Bedouin youth named Nuri al-Ukbi, who would become the pioneer of the Bedouins’ Civil Rights struggle, got a firsthand experience of expulsion from his home village, Al- Arakib. The Sheikh, Nuri’s father, had expressed support for the young State of Israel as soon as its soldiers came to his village, and hoisted the Blue and White flag when the Tribal Court was in session at his residence. Even so, the soldiers came in 1951 and expelled him and his family and his entire tribe and forced them to move to another location designated for them by the army, many miles away.  The village lands were registered as “State Lands" as had happened to all Bedouin lands. Later, the authorities began denying that any such village had ever existed. Only in the yellowing records of the Israeli Ministry of the Interior were left references to a polling station being placed at  Al-Arakib Village during the first Knesset elections in 1949.

That was also a crucial time for a young kibbutznik  named Oded Pilavsky, who came to settle in the Negev as a pioneer and a believer in Zionism and Socialism and The Brotherhood of Nations. Pilavsky was sent by his Kibbutz to take part in harvesting the fields which had been planted by the neighboring Bedouins and which were left "abandoned" when the army removed these Bedouin and took them far away. It was this event which pushed Pilavsky to leave the kibbutz and altogether break off with Zionism and spend the rest of his life, until his death last year, in the ranks of the radical left in Israel.

All of that was known only to few in the general society. We grew up with the myth of the nomadic Bedouin wandering the vast desert on camel's back, here today and faraway tomorrow. And of course such a nomad could not own any land - and why would he need such ownership, anyway? Almost no one knew that already for centuries the Negev Bedouins were no nomads. Already for centuries they had been settled on well-defined plots, and cultivated them with boundless devotion to make the most of the scanty rainfall at the edge of the desert. Each tribe, and each family within the tribe, and each individual within the family, knew exactly where their plot of land was and what were its boundaries.

Successive rulers over the country, the Ottomans followed by the British, had recognized Bedouin ownership of their lands. In fact, usually there were not so many others interested in these lands – and if somebody did want to buy them, they paid the Bedouin owners the full price, under the tribal land laws. So did also the Jewish National Fund, when during the British Mandate it purchased Negev lands for the Zionist movement. But that was before the State of Israel was established, when at the stroke of a pen Bedouin land ownership was nullified and all their lands declared to be "state lands” – making all Bedouins living on them into “squatters”.

This constitutional coup had already been going on, out of sight, in the 1950s.
But hatred of Bedouins there was not at this time. Why should anyone hate a handful of camel-riding exotic nomads? But in the 1970s and 1980s the situation began to change. First of all, the Bedouins themselves were changing. They no longer lived under a military government, and more and more they began to organize and demand their rights. And an increasing number of young Bedouins were able to get to university and gain an academic degree, though it was much more difficult for them than for their Jewish Israeli contemporaries.

Furthermore, the number of Bedouins rose rapidly, a poor community with a very high birthrate, and they were no longer the small handful left in the Negev in the aftermath of 1948. And this increase alarmed those who are obsessed with the “demographic balance”, a type of accountants busy with constant calculations in which all Jews are entered on the credit side and all Arabs on the debit, and similarly any house in which a Jew lives and any acre cultivated by Jews is considered a gain while any Arab house or acre constitute a loss. Many of Israel’s decision makers are always busy with making such accounts, regardless of which political party got to form the current government.

At that time an attempt was made to concentrate the Bedouins in townships, and let them take up as few acres as possible on the ground. This was presented as a benevolent gesture by a government seeking to do its best for the Bedouins. But the townships were overcrowded and lacked sources of livelihood, quickly becoming mired in poverty and distress. Those who were tempted to go there were required to give up what remained of their land and traditional way of life, and who have not yet moved did not feel any great urge to do so.

The  scattered Bedouin villages were declared "unrecognized villages”, where all buildings are considered illegal by definition, and there is no way to get a building permit. From time to time bulldozers come to demolish the houses, and a law passed at the initiative of right-wing Knesset Members made it illegal to connect "illegal houses" to electricity, water or sewage – dooming generations of Bedouins to grow up without access to such facilities.

At the same time, the government embarked on an extensive effort to induce  Jews from the center of the country to settle in the Negev and increase the Jewish majority there. Since nowadays there are fewer idealistic pioneers who want to establish a kibbutz or a moshav, the government encourages the establishment of "family farms." Any Jewish Israeli family finding in themselves a bit of Zionist pioneering spirit can get a very nice house in the  Negev for next to nothing, linked of course to water and electricity and sewage at government expense, and surrounded by a plot of land larger than that available to an entire Bedouin tribe. For its part the media published feature stories praising and paying tribute to these modern pioneers.

And this is probably the time when Bedouin hatred began to permeate the Israeli Jewish society. It trickled down from politicians who began to find in it a convenient  tool for career advancement. For example, Pinni Badash started his political career as a member of the Tzomet Party, whose leader Rafael Eitan once spoke of Arabs as "drugged cockroaches running around in a bottle". Eitan is long since gone and his party is but a fading memory, but Pinni Badash remains the long-standing mayor of Omer, the affluent suburb of Be’ersheba. And indeed, he made a name for himself in the fight against the Bedouins, in particular in relentless efforts to expel members of the Tarabin Tribe whose impoverished village hindered the town’s expansion. Eventually he did get rid of them, clearing the space for a very lucrative and prestigious real estate development project. Subsequently he won handsomely the municipal elections, following a  campaign in which he voiced dire warnings about the serious threat posed by Bedouin land thieves who take over state lands.

Then came the moment when the government established a Commission of Inquiry headed by Justice Eliezer Goldberg to look into the Bedouin problem.  Goldberg did grapple with the issue and even took the trouble to hear the opinions of some Bedouins. The Goldberg Commission's conclusions included a recommendation to recognize at least a large part of the unrecognized Bedouin villages and give them official status, building permits and basic services such as water and electricity.

The Bedouins were not entirely enthusiastic about the Goldberg Commission's conclusions,  but also did not reject them outright. But there were government officials that very much disliked them. Ehud Prawer was appointed by the Prime Minister to review the recommendations and improve them, and he did a thorough job of deleting any item that might be remotely acceptable to the Bedouins.  And National Security Yacov Amidror declared the matter of the Bedouins to be a serious national security issue, and he got to make still further changes and improvements.

The program eventually left after all these changes no longer included the option of recognizing existing villages. Instead, it included the offer to each individual Bedouin to come and apply for a plot of land, which the government might grant him at an unspecified location according to an extremely complicated table of calculations. It is far from sure that even the officials who drew it up completely understand it), with the underlying basic assumption that the Bedouins have no title to any land and therefore anything given them would be a special favor. Anyone refusing these generous offers and insisting upon sticking to his land would be liable to up to two years’ imprisonment and the loss of further entitlement to land. The number of Bedouins who would be forcibly evicted from their land is estimated at 30,000 to 40,000.

Bedouin organizations got together with Jewish activists who supported their cause, to cry out in protest against the Prawer Plan. Prime Minister Netanyahu then appointed Minister Benny Begin to examine the program again and meet with Bedouins and propose amendments and changes. And Begin, whose political career was nearing its end, did present a revised and improved plan, and stated that its purpose was to ensure the welfare of the Bedouins and provide humane living conditions for their children. He then added that "where possible" recognition would be given to existing villages. However, Human Rights organizations which examined minutely the fine print and the technical clauses and sub-sections concluded that there was no fundamental difference from the Prawer Plan and that tens of thousands would still be uprooted and expelled from their land.

When the cabinet approved the Begin Plan, the right wing protested vociferously, their cri de coeur reverberating in the banner headlines of the twin Ma'ariv and Makor Rishon newspaper. They bitterly accused Begin of having sold out to the Bedouins and warned that Israel was abut to lose the Negev. Their representatives in government demanded that the plan be drastically changed and the far-reaching concessions made to the Bedouins be removed. And indeed the plan was approved at the Ministerial Committee for Legislation only after the Prime Minister and Finance Minister Lapid promised the ministers of the Jewish Home Party that the amount of land to be given to the Bedouins will be cut drastically so as to ensure that the Jewish State of Israel will continue to hold on firmly to the Negev.

And that is the "Law on Bedouin Permanent Residence" which the Government of Israel intends to bring to its first reading in the Knesset on Monday, 27 May 2013. In preparation for this important event, last Thursday there arrived a big entourage at the Bedouin village Atir, which is located in the North-Eastern Negev, not far from the Yatir Forest and from the Green Line. Representatives of the Israel Lands Administration and the Green Patrol came there, accompanied by hundreds of police. Within hours, they destroyed eighteen buildings and uprooted hundreds of olive and fruit trees, leaving dozens of people homeless. They also loaded on trucks and took away agricultural equipment of all kinds as well as household items, among them lifesaving medical devices for children.

It was, it seems, an effort to signal to the Bedouin villagers the merciless fate which they might expect once the law is enacted. Specifically, a similar fate to that of Atir is also in store for its neighboring village of Umm Hiran, which is to be razed, its site to be used partly for building a new Jewish community and partly for extension of the Yatir Forest by the JNF.  After the work of destruction is ended and the construction and forestry work completed, tourists might be invited to see how once more the desert is made to bloom.

This morning, as I sit here writing, a great “procession of protest and outcry” is setting out from the community center at Bedouin town of Rahat and moving through the streets. Protesters are led by residents of  Arakib, who had undergone several times the trauma of destruction and displacement but did not give up their village, rebuilding it again and again. At the end of the procession, Bedouins and Jewish activists intend to go to Atir, to rebuild  destroyed houses and plant new olive trees to replace those which were uprooted.

Days before the expected vote in the Knesset the case was taken up by the Avaaz organization. Avaaz is known for its energetic campaigns against notorious acts of injustice around the globe and has already succeeded in some cases to influence the policies of various governments.  The present campaign aims at  stopping at the last moment the dispossession and destruction planned by the Israeli government against its Negev Bedouin citizens.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/no_to_forced_eviction_of_negev_bedouins/?bWnYcab&v=25020


And what if the law does pass its first reading, and second and third ones as well, and comes to implementation in the field?

Itzchak Aharonovitz, Minister of Public Security, has stated that he would undertake enforcement of this law only provided that the Ministry of Finance undertakes to finance the hiring of a two hundred and fifty new policemen.

Two hundred and fifty extra police to enforce this draconian law all over the Negev? The minister must be an optimist. 

The Stone Age

A few weeks ago a military judge, Major Amir Dahan, acquitted four Palestinians of the charge of “attempted murder by throwing stones at vehicles”. He stated that "throwing stones can, under some circumstances, have the character of a lethal offence, carrying the near certainty of a danger to human life - but under other circumstances it might be no more than a prank without the potential of serious damage, by a young person who had barely crossed into the age of criminal responsibility".

This verdict angered Housing Minister Uri Ariel of the Jewish Home party, who said in the beginning of last week: "This is no way to render judgment in  Israel. It is about such things that we daily utter the prayer “O restore our judges, as of old”. We should not tolerate even one stone. We must not forgive even one stone . A stone kills".

Later this week, the head of the party joined Ariel. The well known Naftali Bennett, Minister of Economy, made a public call to change the rules of engagement so as to allow soldiers a much lighter trigger finger when facing Palestinians, since "travelling the roads of Judea and Samaria has turned into hell."

The press tycoon Shlomo Ben-Zvi, who a few months ago bought the failing "Ma'ariv" paper, also joined the fray. Already for several days the Ma'ariv headlines are mainly concerned with the stone age which had descended on the West Bank. Ma'ariv devotes pages upon pages to the cry of the settlers, stridently demanding that soldiers finally start shooting and killing  stone throwers. The paper’s reporters gathered the shocking testimonies of soldiers asserting that their hands are tied behind their backs by the military orders. "The best guys, the best fighters, salt of the earth", reporter Chen Kutas- Bar called them.

Also columnist Adi Arbel of the Institute for Zionist Strategies added his own account of a terrible event he had witnessed. Last week, at noon of the  celebrated Jerusalem Day, several VIPs of the Israeli right wing camp went to the settler enclave at the heart of Silwan Village, to get there the Moskowitz Prize from the multi-millionaire Irving Moskowitz - the well known settler patron who for this occasion left for two days his flourishing gambling business in California. It happened that on their way to this event, the settlers and their friends went through the Palestinian neighborhood of A-Tur on Mount Olive, where a boy of about 18 threw a stone at their bus. And alas, laments the Zionist strategist, nothing happened to this boy , no policeman and no soldier thought of pulling a weapon and opening fire on him. Adi Arbel’s sad conclusion: even after 46 years, East Jerusalem is not under Israeli sovereignty. Well, with that I am not going to dispute. 

And what about when settlers gather alongside the highway and throw stones at each passing Palestinian car? What happens when they aim a whole  barrage of stones at a school bus full of Palestinian girl pupils and wound some of them? Should that, too, be treated as a case where even one stone could not be tolerated or forgiven, because "a stone kills"? Is that also the kind of situation where the rules of engagement should be changed and soldiers’ fingers become more loose on the trigger? Or perhaps this is exactly the case where stone-throwing is indeed no more than a prank without the potential of serious damage? Well, it’s no use to pose too many questions to the honorable minister Uri Ariel and to the honorable minister Naftali Bennett and to Ma'ariv publisher Shlomo Ben-Zvi and his well-trained reporters.

By coincidence or not, it was just this week that a military court was hearing the case of a soldier who did not feel that his hands were tied and who had no  particular problem to tighten his finger on the trigger. On 12 January this year - just in the midst of the Israeli elections campaign in which hardly anyone mentioned the Palestinians - this soldier (whose name is not published) was stationed in South Hebron Hills at a point where Palestinians are habitually trying to cross into Israel and find work. Many of them do succeed in their attempt. Unfortunately for the 21-year old Uday Darwish of the town of Dura, this particular soldier did open fire and he was hit and died a few hours later in the hospital, his funeral attended by thousands.

http://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/2013/01/12/israeli-forces-shoot-kill-21-year-old-worker-uday-kamil-muhammad-darwish-south-of-hebron/

This particular soldier did not assert that army regulations had bound his hands. "This is the first time I encountered a shooting event, it never happened to me before. I never before got to such a situation of standing in front of 30 people I don’t know. Earlier we had been on the border of Egypt where a lot of Sudanese were passing we were always warned that in any group of Sudanese who come to Israel there is the hazard that one would be wielding a stabbing knife or wearing an explosive belt or something like that. " (As a matter of fact, among  tens of thousands of Sudanese who arrived in Israel until now there had never been any such case...)

The Prosecution wants to treat this case severely, and therefore impose a full  nine months’ imprisonment and also demote the soldier one notch, from Staff  Sergeant to an ordinary Sergeant. However, the soldier's attorney, Yechiel Lamesh, asked the court to content itself with a term of three months, since "We should send a message to the fighters who risk their lives for us. We should understand and make it clear to them that to err is human and that an error, even a severe one, need not draw upon them the full severity of the law .” The defense attorney also asked that his client not be demoted, so as not to hurt the honor and dignity of this fighter of the Israel Defense Forces.

http://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/1.2019449

So, what the appropriate punishment for a soldier who shot and killed (not on purpose) a Palestinian worker who was going to sustain his family? Three months,  or nine months, or something in between? Will he be demoted by one notch, or would the court take care not to hurt his honor and dignity? The Court is to convene again at the end of the month and make clear if they take up the prosecution’s case or that of the defense.

But what about one who did not shoot and did not kill anyone and who in the first place refused to join the army of occupation and wear its uniform and swear allegiance to it? One who altogether refused to get himself into a situation where he would stand armed in front of thirty people whom he has never seen before and have their lives and deaths at the mercy of his finger on the trigger? What is the proper punishment for such a crime of refusal? Half a year? A year? Two years? That is not yet clear.

Half a year has already passed since Natan Blanc arrived at the IDF Recruitment Center on his call-up date, November 19, 2012, and provided the recruitment officer with a detailed and reasoned letter setting out the reasons  for his refusal to enlist. Half a year in which he is going in and out of Military Prison 6, in and out, in and out, in and out and in again.

The army chose not to bring him to a military court, whose proceedings are held in public and where the defendant can have a defense attorney and set out legal arguments and also express from the dock a conscientious and principled position. Instead, Natan Blanc is being repeatedly brought before a military officer who had been authorized to serve as a Judging Officer. A trial by a Judging Officer is a much simpler and easier affair - without the presence of any public, without lawyers and without witnesses and without any complicated legal procedures. Court is held in the normal office of the Judging Officer, with nobody present except the judge and the defendant, and usually lasts all of three to five minutes. In exceptional cases it can drag on up to ten minutes. Natan Blanc has already passed through very many such mini-trials, being sent to jail sometimes for two weeks, sometimes three weeks,  sometimes a month. Each time he gets out of jail and is given another order to enlist and returns again to the office of the Judging Officer. So far he already accumulated 150 days behind bars, which is definitely not the end.

Yesterday, Friday, May 17, 2013, Natan Blanc celebrated his twentieth birthday behind bars at Military Prison 6 in Atlit. The activists of the Yesh Gvul movement came in the afternoon to celebrate with him on the mountain opposite the prison, whose summit was seen from the prison yard by several generations of refusers since the first Lebanon War in 1982. "Let's celebrate! Come with your friends, bring refreshments and party accessories, especially those which can be seen or heard from very far: balloons, ribbons, signs, noise makers, whistles etc. " was written in the invitation.  On Tuesday there will be another demonstration, held in front of the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, and the case of Blanc also gets increasing international attention.

Blanc told the military officers and judges that, once released from the army (and jail) he is going to do civilian service at the Magen David Adom medical rescue service. But when is that going to happen? The office of the IDF spokesman was not very forthcoming "A person liable for military service, whose application for exemption on grounds of conscience is denied, must perform a term of military service as set out in the Defense Service Act. One who refuses to do would be treated in accordance with the regular procedures." Period.

It may very well that the soldier who killed Uday Darwish will be set free earlier.

Never a dull moment in this crazy country

Headlines in Israel’s newspapers earlier this week spoke of the "Winds of War", and the Haifa Airport was closed for several days because the Air Force decided to clear civilian traffic off the airspace in the north. An elderly couple, friends of my parents, called me in a panic at a very late hour: "Did the war start?" They heard an unusual lot of airplanes going above their home, and did not get much sleep that night.  When Prime Minister Netanyahu was a child, did no one ever tell him that to play with fire is dangerous? You may get badly burned,  or ignite a big conflagration.

But the war did not start this week, and those who played with fire did not get  burned.  At least for now. A series of bombing was launched into Syria in order to destroy “Tiebreaker Weapons" before these could be transferred to Lebanon. (Were these truly "Tiebreaker Weapons"?" Several experts cast serious doubts on this.) Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ya'alon and the IDF High Command were all betting that President Bashar Assad has too much trouble with his homemade enemies, and that he would decide to hold back even in face of a public humiliation and a gross violation of Syrian sovereignty by a series of bombings carried out by the Israeli Air Force  not so far from his Presidential Palace. Indeed, the Israeli attack was not answered by a barrage of missiles from Damascus, and after two days the alert was scaled down.

What however did happen is that after precisely forty years, there came to its end the Syrian Government's commitment to prevent attacks against Israel from its territory, a policy which had made the Golan Heights into Israel’s most quiet border of the State of Israel. Bashar Assad now formally invited any interested armed group to penetrate the border at its discretion - and indeed, several such groups, from among both Assad’s friends and his foes, might well take advantage of the opportunity. The United Nations has already announced the evacuation of its observers who had helped keep this border stable over the past four decades.

Meanwhile, what of the massacres frequently occurring in Syria? Well, that's not really a matter of concern for the State of Israel (except when the PM needs a stick with which to beat Human Rights activists who dare to say a word about the Palestinians...) 

Anyway,  enough unto the day. For the time being, the situation on the Syrian border is gone from the headlines, which were taken up instead with the new state budget, and the austerity policy decrees introduced by the new Finance Minister Yair Lapid.   His middle class voters are shocked and frustrated by the severe harm which these decrees would cause them. But do Lapid’s voters have a real reason to feel disappointed, or could they have known in advance that such would be his policies?

After all, even before the elections many articles were published describing the  new budget being prepared by the Finance Ministry officials, and already on the same day that Lapid was appointed Finance Minister in Netanyahu's new cabinet was it predicted that such would be the budget he will submit. 

And what will happen tonight at nine o'clock in Tel Aviv’s Habima Square, the focus of the social protests of two years ago? Will the masses again come out in the protest planned for tonight at quite a few locations all over the country?

https://www.facebook.com/events/119922554878183/?ref=2

http://mapsengine.google.com/map/view?mid=zlfQGU7cv4FY.kf1NaBDSTpg8

In Israeli public opinion it is customary to maintain a water-tight division between socio-economic struggles and the question of wars and military preparations. Eyal Gabai, who was until recently Netanyahu’s Chef de Bureau and knew everything that was going on, broke a bit of the hermetic partition and said that last year there had been  preparations for a war against Iran, which did not take place (at least, not last year), and these preparations had cost about ten billion Shekels. Which happens to be a big part of the "Budgetary Abyss" to fill which the citizens of Israel (not necessarily the richer ones) will have to pay more taxes and receive less social services. Gabai’s remarks were made on a live radio program, but somehow did not get much of an echo.

Finance Minister Lapid then stated in a live broadcast of his own that the new budget he had prepared (or that was prepared for him by the Treasury officials)  would "take out of everybody’s pockets, not just those of the middle class" . There were those who objected the budget would not really touch the settlers and the settlements and the settlement budgets. But this is, after all, no more than the worn out argument of the leftists. 

What of the military budget? Is it really going to be cut? And if it is, will the cuts not be returned with compound interest as soon as a new military emergency of one kind or another catches the headlines again? We will have to wait and see.

In the meantime, the Prime Minister went off to China and looked from a distance at the budget turmoil and was perhaps not so sorry to push Lapid to the front. Relations with China are of strategic importance to Israel, Netanyahu reiterated, perhaps looking forward to a future time when the international balance of power changes and the United States no longer dominates the world and an Israeli PM who had just finished forming a new cabinet will rush off to Beijing before flying to Washington. In the meantime, China's President rushed to publish, on the day before his Israeli guest arrived, a detailed plan for peace in the Middle East, which includes establishing a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders. On the other hand, he also signed many economic contracts which Netanyahu said would give a big boost to the Israeli economy. And is that the best way to make the government of Israel take the Chinese peace plan seriously?

Netanyahu’s most profound impression in this visit seems to have been the Great Wall of China. To most visitors this is no more than an impressive tourist site, nearly two thousand years old, but Israel’s Prime Minister found there a lot of practical, present-day ramifications.  "As the Chinese defended themselves and barricaded themselves behind the Great Wall, so we will continue to fortify ourselves along the southern border, at the Golan Heights and on all fronts" stated the PM as he went though the windings of the old impressive wall. Maybe a historian with a bit deeper knowledge of Chinese history would have told Netanyhau that the Great Wall had not always been enough to protect the Chinese, and that some scholars consider seclusion behind the Wall and isolation from the outside world as having had serious negative effects on China. But probably the guide provided to the entourage of Netanyahu did not enter into such nuances.

And while the Prime Minister toured China and occasionally sent messages to the Israeli media, Jerusalem Day was celebrated in Jerusalem, the Eternal Unified Capital of Israel, marking the forty-sixth anniversary of Jerusalem’s Liberation and Unification in 1967. At least, that's how the official statement from the Jerusalem municipality put it, being echoed in some enthusiastic media reports of "A city full of flags." Nearly only on the pages of "Haaretz" was it reported that the masses of Blue-and-White flags were held aloft by a mass of national religious youths, many of whom arrived in Jerusalem in organized rides from settlements all over the West Bank, and marched through the Old City hurling insults at every bypassing Arab they encountered. Barak Shemehs, a Jerusalemite peace activist, sent out a message on Facebook which deserves to be quoted here:

"Many sectors and communities in the Israeli society have their own distinctive holidays, such as the Kurdish Jews’ Saharana or the Moroccans’ Mimuna. The National Religious have taken Jerusalem Day for their own special and distinctive holiday. This is the most important date on the calendar of their education system. Climax - a parade through the streets of the Muslim Quarter of an  occupied Old City, with the shutters closed, and inside the houses parents consolate their children, reassuring them :'lt will soon be over, they will go away and stop harassing us. (...) The nationalist Flags’ Parade closes off the city for hours, the unilateral “Unification” celebrations preventing  many people from returning to their homes. Jerusalem is not a united city. It is a divided city, at least one third of its residents facing severe discrimination,  political persecution, racist harassment, hate crimes, settler associations  taking over homes, harassing municipal bailiffs, lack of building permits, lack of infrastructure – all this  in addition to the usual difficulties in making a living and raising children. "

On Jerusalem Day this year, as on previous years, Israel’s National Police strongly  "adviced" the Palestinians in the Old City to close their shops and stay indoors and wait out the raging storm of young dancers holding Blue-and- White flags abates in their streets. But this year, unlike previous years, there were young Palestinians who did not follow the police directives and who celebrated a Jerusalem Day of their at the Damascus Gate, center of Old City life, holding aloft the Palestinian  Red-Green- Black-and-White, and police came rushing to disperse them. On  Israeli TV there was a reference to "riots marring the joy of the Jerusalem Unification celebrations" .

The Shamasnah family in the Sheikh Jarrah Neighborhood of East Jerusalem is far from sure that next year they will have even the option of closing themselves up in their home while the settlers and their flags come flooding the street. Settler associations have marked the family home as next in line to be taken over, using various sophisticated legal arguments and tricks and a manifestly unfair system of land ownership laws. It already happened to several families whom the police expelled from their homes late  at night and by the morning the settlers had already taken possession and raised the Blue-and-White flag on the roof. 

http://settlementwatcheastjerusalem.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/sheikhjarrahhouse/

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/04/sheikh-jarrah-evictions-jerusalem-palestinians.html

In a bit more than a week - on May 20, at 9:00 am – the Supreme Court will hear the appeal of the Shamasneh Family. Yesterday morning, there were in several  locations around the world demonstrations to express solidarity with the family. In Jerusalem, protesters gathered in Independence Park, opposite the U.S. Consulate. As it happened, just as they stood there with signs in Hebrew and Arabic and English stating "No to deportation in Sheikh Jarrah", the radio carried the report that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will be here in two weeks’ time - to once more try to renew Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and restart the stalled peace process. And it also happens that the Secretray of State’s plane is scheduled to land at Ben Gurion Airport precisely twenty four hours after the deliberations on the Shamasneh Family home.  

Is the Secretary of State able and willing to prevent this impending expulsion,  even before opening his suitcase to pull out the veteran Arab Peace Initiative which had been on the table since 2002 and about which Binyamin Netanyahu is far from enthusiastic? If he is not, perhaps it would be best for Kerry to board the plane right back to Washington and submit to President Barack Obama a report consisting of four French words: "Aprטs nous le dיluge!".

Note: I have written a lot about this crazy week and did not touch even in a nutshell half of the crazy things which happened. For example, the program for settling the Bedouins adopted by the government, which seems to imply expulsion of 30,000 Bedouin citizens of Israel and destroying dozens of "unrecognized" villages and for whose realization the Minister of Public Security demands the recruiting of 250 new police officers (a very optimistic assessment of the force required). And the Governance Bill which passed its preliminary reading which would place many obstacles on the ability of the parliamentary opposition to act against the government on the Knesset floor and on the ability of small parties to enter the Knesset in the first place. And the "Jenin, Jenin Law", named after a controversial documentary film and designed to prevent the future creation of such films, since their maker might face libel suits for having "defamed the Israel Defense Forces." And the uprooting of nearly a hundred olive trees at the small village of Twani  in the South of Hebron Hills and the nasty graffiti left there by settlers. And the renowned physicist Stephen Hawking joining the lengthening list of international VIPs who no longer feel comfortable about popping in for a visit to this country of ours, and the jokes in bad taste, jokes which some people who call themselves "friends of Israel" told of this man, who suffers from such a severe disability and has been able to overcome it in such a remarkable way.  And the great confrontation which took place at the Wailing Wall because a lot of people who consider themselves as religious and as having a right of possession over this site were ready to resort to violence at the sight of women wearing such Jewish religious symbols as prayer shawls and phylacteries which are supposed to be reserved for men only. And last but not least, the proposed government bill which would prohibit migrant workers from Africa to transfer money to their families – a bill supported by the illustrious Finance Minister Lapid.

And so ends another crazy week in a crazy country - and would next week be any less crazy?

Drones, knives and peace initiatives

This week, the Israeli drones went back into action in the skies of Gaza. The 29-year old Haitham Mis-hal, who had worked as a guard at the Shifa hospital, was shot from the air while riding a motorcycle and died instantly. When the ceasefire was signed half a year ago, Israel took the obligation not to carry out any more “targeted killings”. But the new Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon asserted that Mis-hal had been responsible for – or at least in some way involved with – a rocket attack out of Sinai on the Israeli resort of Eilat. No proof was given or offered for this assertion, based on unnamed confidential sources, and which Israelis in general took on faith.

It did come out that Mis-hal had been a member of Hamas and broke away to join a more radical group because of dissatisfaction with what he considered Hamas’ passivity in face of Israeli aggression. In fact, Hamas chose not to undertake the habitual form of retaliation for his assassination, i.e. the shooting of missiles at Israeli territory, but contented itself by lodging a strong complaint with Egypt, since the Gaza War half a year ago the guarantor of the cease-fire – a forbearance which Israeli public opinion mostly failed to notice or appreciate.

Later that day the life of a settler came also to an end. Evyatar Borovsky, who was nearly the same age as  Haitham Mis-hal, was stabbed to death at a road junction on the West Bank south of Nablus. Borovsky had been an actor, and had gone to live at the settlement of Yitzhar -  which is not especially known as a focus of cultural activity and rather has a reputation for particularly wild and violent acts towards Palestinians who happen to live in its vicinity.

On hearing the news  Borovsky’s fellow settlers cried out vociferously that the authorities’ failure to treat stone-throwing as terrorism was to blame for things getting worse. In proof of which the settlers proceeded to engage in a particularly heavy bout of …stone-throwing, at Palestinian school buses carrying girl students. From there they proceeded to the widespread and indiscriminate setting on fire of Palestinian fields, olive groves and cars.

In the midst of all this came the message that a delegation of the Arab League visited Washington, invited by Secretary of State Kerry in furtherance of his efforts to promote peace between Israelis and Palestinians, Israelis and Arabs.  The Arab delegates had reiterated the commitment of all Arab states to their peace initiative, dating back to 2002, offering once again to make peace with Israel in return for Israel’s withdrawal from all territories occupied in 1967. Remarkably, they added their consent to small, mutual swaps of territory whereby Israel could retain some of the settlements it had built , in return for giving up an equivalent amount of land within Israel’s pre-1967 borders.

Unsurprisingly, the reaction of Prime Minister Netanyahu to this piece of news was tepid, to say the least. For Netanyahu does not desire an agreement based on the 1967 borders, with only small bits of the West Bank retained by Israel and paid for with equal-size bits of Israeli territory. Netanyahu wants to keep in Israeli hands large parts of the West Bank, without paying for them at all. In particular, he is determined to keep the Jordan Valley, which constitutes about a third of the West Bank.

Veteran commentator Shalom Yerushalmi wrote this week on the pages of Ma'ariv: "On Tuesday, the Prime Minister of Qatar declared that the Arab countries are willing to make peace with Israel and in return for Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders, including territorial swaps. The Jordan Valley is a vast area, hundreds of square kilometers. It is filled with land mines since 1968, the time when the army was pursuing terrorists who infiltrated from Jordan. Whole monasteries were evacuated and stand abandoned near the Baptism Site on the Jordan River, sacred to Christians. You may ask, why are the minefields not removed nowadays, in order to extend the touristic sites? The answer is quite simple: If the land is made free, the churches and the Palestinians will claim it. Israel does not want to evacuate land in the Jordan Valley. To the contrary, Israel wants to stay there forever." And what would Secretary of State Kerry and President Barack Obama say to this Israeli aspiration?

And while all this is going on, Natan Blanc nears his hundred and fiftieth day in prison. Since last November, Blanc had been going regularly in and out - and immediately back into - the military prison system. Again and again he is ordered to enlist, again and again reiterating to military officers his reasons for refusing that order: that already for forty-six years the State of Israel is ruling by force millions of disenfranchised Palestinians, willing to grant them neither independence nor the right to vote in its own democratic elections; that the body known as the Israeli Defence Forces was in charge of daily implementing this oppression of the Palestinians; and that he, Natan Blanc of Haifa, was unwilling to take part in this. The officers listened impassively, again and again sending him to spend yet a few more weeks in Military Prison 6 at Atlit – though by now they must realize that he is not very likely to change his mind.

http://wri-irg.org/node/20621

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pinvfnC6gdI

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=455724104505333&set=oa.604683686210691&type=1&theater

This Friday was the fourth (or perhaps fifth) time that a crowd of activists organized by the Yesh Gvul movement climbed the mountain overlooking Prison 6, to call out words of support and solidarity which were very audible in the courtyard below. 
This time, Natan Blanc also got support from an unexpected source – Egyptian activists who support Conscientious Objectors in their own country took up his case as well, in a demonstration held at Talaat Harb square in Cairo. The Egyptian army’s oppressive role at various moments in the country’s turbulent last two years increased the disinclination of Egyptian youths to enter its ranks.

The Egyptian CO movement has long been championing two objectors - Emad Darawi and Mohammed Fathi  - who refused to join the army and under a draconian Egyptian law were placed in an impossible situation: without a document of discharge from the army, they can’t get a job, can’t study in a university and can’t have a passport – and in addition, the army can arrest and try them at any moment it chooses. They Egyptian objectors felt a natural sympathy and solidarity for Natan Blanc – and their own photos and names were displayed on placards carried in the Israeli protest at Military Prison 6.

Will the governments and general societies ever make a significant move to improve the situation? In any case, activists will go on struggling.  


https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=458120297599047&set=a.447166705361073.1073741827.401514489926295&type=1&theater

With an empty stomach

One shouldn’t underestimate the Israeli government’s public relations headache caused by one young Palestinian who is tightly incarcerated behind bars and who confronts the entire might of the state, its government and army and security services, his only weapon being – an empty stomach.

Samer Issawi had already spent many years in prison, with no one in Israel hearing of him. In fact, even among Palestinians he was not very famous, except perhaps at his native Isawiyya in East Jerusalem. When the prisoner swap took place at the end of 2011, he was no more than one of many Palestinian prisoners being set free and getting an enthusiastic welcome and then dropping off the headlines.

He would have probably remained in obscurity, if not for somebody in Israel’s security services deciding to return him to prison some six months after having been released. This was on the basis of his having “violated the terms of his parole” – i.e., he had left Isawiyya, which is part of East Jerusalem and has been  annexed to Israel in 1967, to have a car repaired at a garage in the town of A-Ram just outside the annexed territory. Therefore, he was to be returned to jail and serve a further 14 years. And yes, the security services told the media they were in possession of evidence that Issawi had "gone back to terrorist activity" and therefore must be imprisoned – such evidence being highly classified and therefore could not be presented in public and certainly not shown to Issawi himself.

It was at this point that Samer Issawi used his secret weapon and stopped eating and stated that he would not stop his hunger strike until the Israeli authorities agree to release him. And for two hundred and sixty five days  Samer Issawi was walking on the precipice, balancing on the fine line between life and death. Nothing went into his mouth but some liquids and vitamins which just barely kept him alive while he was growing ever thinner, losing dozens of pounds and becoming a living skeleton on his bed at Kaplan Hospital, to which the security services insisted upon shackling his  arms and legs, even when he was too weak to stand.

"An act of desperation" was how the well known Israeli writer A.B. Yehoshua put it. In a letter which he sent to the imprisoned Issawi, co-signed by several other prominent intellectuals, Yehoshua wrote: "We read with great pain of your hunger strike. The accounts of your ever deteriorating situation terrify and shock us, We feel that the act of suicide you are about to commit will add yet another dimension to the tragic and desperate conflict between the two peoples" .

But this was a mistaken appreciation. It was not a desperate and hopeless man who lay on that bed, and futile suicide was not his purpose. It was a fighter who put his life on the line in a very special kind of battlefield, struggling for his own personal freedom and that of all his people, but certainly with the hope of coming out victorious. There in the hospital bed he knew that his hunger strike was becoming the focus of growing attention by Palestinians wherever they are and increasing the unrest and agitation on the West Bank - just at the time when Israel’s PM Netanyahu was making a special effort to present to the world a situation of calm and tranquility and economic prosperity in the territories occupied by the State of Israel 46 years ago.

In a message taken out of the prison Issawi sent a message to the Palestinian masses: “I draw my strength from my people, from all the free people in the world, from friends and prisoners’ families of those who go on, day and night, crying out for freedom and an end to the occupation. I say to my people: I'm stronger than the army of occupation and its racist laws. My struggle is not only for my individual freedom. My struggle and that of my heroic fellows Tariq, Ayman and Ja’affar is everybody’s struggle, the struggle of the Palestinian people against the occupation and its prisons. Our goal is to be free and sovereign in our liberated state and our blessed Jerusalem. The weak and strained beats of my heart derive their steadfastness from you, the great people.   My darkening eyes draw light from your solidarity and support . My weak voice takes its strength from your voice, which flies higher than the prison walls”.

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2013/issawi170213.html

There came to his bedside the representatives of the security services of the State of Israel and made him a generous offer - to be released immediately if he agrees to be deported to the Gaza Strip. But ever since 1948, exile from home and hometown has been engraved in Palestinian consciousness as the most painful and traumatic of experiences, and Samer Issawi rejected any idea of ​​a release which would not return him to his home at Issawiya in East Jerusalem.

And when representatives of the European Union expressed to their Israeli colleagues their growing concern for Issawi’s situation, someone in the government came up with the brilliant idea to offer that one of the Western democracies take Samer Issawi to its bosom and rid Israel of him – except that  Issawi himself of course rejected this idea out of hand. And he further escalated and exacerbated his hunger strike, causing his health damages which might prove irreversible, and made an even deeper dangerous bend towards the abyss, and the security experts came to Netanyahu with nightmare scenarios of the huge conflagration which might break out among the Palestinian masses should he die in prison .

Then he did what no other Palestinian prisoner had done before him, and sent out  another open letter. This time, it was not addressed to the Palestinians; he made a direct and painful appeal to Israelis everywhere.

“Israelis, I am Samer Al - Issawi, who is what  your soldiers call disparagingly an Arabush,  who is a Jerusalemite that you have put in prison for no more reason than that he went from Jerusalem to a suburb of Jerusalem. I have not heard one of you interfere to stop the loud wail of death, it’s as if each and every one of you has turned into a gravedigger, that everyone is wearing a  military uniform: the judge, the writer, the intellectual, the journalist, the merchant, the academic, and the poet. I cannot believe that a whole society watches uncaring my death and my life, that you have turned into guardians over the settlers who chase after my dreams and my trees.

Israelis, I do not accept to be deported out of my homeland.  Maybe now you will understand that the awareness of liberty is stronger than death. Do not listen to the generals and their dusty myths, for the defeated will not remain defeated, and the victor will not always be a victor. History is not measured only by battles, massacres and prisons, also by the extending of the hand of peace to the other - and to your own selves.

Israelis, listen to my voice, the voice of the time which is left to you and to me. Liberate yourselves of greedy power, do not remain prisoners of the military camps and the iron doors in which you have shut your minds!

I invite you to visit me, to see a skeleton tied to his hospital bed, and around him three exhausted jailers. Sometimes they take their appetizing food and drinks around me. The jailers watch my suffering, my loss of weight and my gradual waning. They often look at their watches, as if asking themselves in surprise: how long will this damaged body still go on living?”

http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=58970

This letter did get some response in the Israeli society. Not among all Israelis – there are quite a few among us who consider all Palestinian prisoners to be “terrorists” and all “terrorist” to be "murderers” and all "murderers” to be “child killers".  Such people were not especially impressed by Samer Issawi’s letter (if they heard about at all...).

But there were some who were  touched deeply in their hearts and consciences by the letter. They went out into the streets of Tel Aviv and sat every day at the traditional demonstration site at the corner of Ben Zion Boulevard and King George Street and there held every day a symbolic hunger strike of their own.

There were those who went to the Kaplan Hospital and made great efforts to overcome  barriers and prohibitions and get to that hospital room which had become a prison cell and where day and night there were sitting three guards around the bed of a frail inmate who could not have risen from the bed even if he were not bound to it.

With some amazement, Yehoshua Breiner of the  Walla news website wrote that "The  hunger striking Palestinian prisoner has become the focus of  pilgrimage." He further elaborated that "A room in the D Internal Ward at  Kaplan Hospital in Rehovot has in recent weeks become a Mecca for left-wing Israelis, who are trying in every possible way to get to one person who is hospitalized there. No, it is not an ailing Rabbi or cultural icon for whom they are concerned, but for the hunger striking Palestinian prisoner Samer  Issawi, which is in danger after losing dozens of pounds of his body weight.

This hospital department, which is typically populated by elderly people with serious illnesses, is now crowded with police, prison guards and hospital security. The hospitalization of Issawi had created a huge  'headache' for the  security system, due to the constant attempts by dozens of activists gathered in front of the closed door or chanting encouragement to the prisoner under his window."

Tamar Fleishman and Ophira Gamliel were among those who caused the greatest headache for the security people, as described by Gamliel:

"Tamar is adept at disarming people and getting at their hearts. I just kept silent and took photos. At the desk, the receptionist repeated the name Issawi in a matter of fact tone and told where he is hospitalized and how to get there A laughing girl sitting at the back said she had a birthday, Tamar wanted to give her a flower, but she stubbornly refused .
We asked the nurses where his room was.
"Who are you?"
"Friends of the family."
"Do you have a permit?"
"No. We just want to bring him flowers."

With a slightly melancholy expression, the nurse suddenly got up and motioned for us to follow. She opened the only door which was closed, got out accompanied by a uniformed prison guard, and went  away  wearing a look of "I did my best, from here on you are in their hands."

The guard repeated the nurse's questions. He got a little upset, but Tamar's smiles can melt a stone.
"You can’t  enter. You need a permit. Who are you? What organization do you belong to?"
"Not any organization, we just want to bring him flowers."
Another guard, smiling, emerged from the room.
"Why have you come?"
All we could say was that we were suffering from a broken heart.
"How do you know about him, anyway?"
"We heard in the media."
I did not say a word because Tamar is much better than me at talking.
The tough guard continued to ask questions and get matter of fact answers from Tamar. Then he went off to make a call, and while he spoke on his communicator with somebody in charge Tamar continued to talk with the smiling guard. His eyes betrayed some empathy.
The tough one came back with a curt "Well, you don’t have permission." But Tamar insisted that he at least pass on the flowers. I think Samer heard it, that he knew there were two Hebrew-speaking women who tried to visit him and give him flowers. (...)

Two weeks later, when we came back, we already knew the way, we did not ask anyone or talked to anyone or asked for permission and just went down the hall. And this time, the door was open when we arrived. In the room there were three guards around the bed in front of the window. A light white blanket hid legs which did not  reach the edge of the bed. Tamar and me were sucked in. They did not notice us.

Tamar tapped lightly on the open door. Two guards stood up immediately with  question marks on their faces, and we were already half inside the room. Samer sat up in bed and looked at us with soft and bright eyes. He nodded  lightly at each of us, and smiled out of his thick beard. The meeting of the looks felt like a strong handshake. We were  together. Despite all.

All this took no more than a brief moment, and then the guards got up, and we took a step back. They did not allow us to give him the flowers, nor the letter.   "Who are you, what are you? Show your papers! You can’t give him anything, you need a permit!"
One prison guard calls for instructions, another one looks at us and mutters something like “With all due respect ...”. Tamar continues to nag, the flowers lie on the floor, and we know that Samer hears it all.

It's not so important – neither the letter nor the flowers. The single moment of looking at each other was a priceless gift. And we hope that our attention to Samer will win him a bit of your attention, too. He is the partner, ladies and gentlemen, he and and his hunger striking fellow prisoners" 

Epilogue: This evening, Saturday night, April 27, a demonstration was going to take place in Tel Aviv, and a major effort was going to be made to gather a decent number of Israelis who would march through the streets and raise banners and loudly demand the release of Samer Issawi. This specific demonstration has become redundant. Already earlier this week Prime Minister Netanyahu approved the agreement placed on his desk by his security chiefs. Samer Issawi is to be released and to return to his native city of Jerusalem and to the neighborhood of Isawiyya and to his own home and nowhere else, and he is willing to wait another eight months for the ensured moment of liberation. Now he can get some rest from the mighty struggle he conducted, and in a gradual and controlled manner start eating, and repair the damage to his health (hopefully not irreversible).

But the tale is far from over and done with.

Video: song and debate in the corridors of D Internal Ward at Kaplan Hospital
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WAew2qv1TVs

Let my people go!

The night of the Passover Seder, the streets of Israel's cities were empty and deserted, and from the windows could be heard the singing of ancient hymns and passages from well-accustomed texts.

Slaves we were, now we are free. Slaves we were, now we are free!  With hard labor, with mortar and with bricks, and with all manner of service in the field the Egyptians embittered our fathers'  lives. We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and our God took us out from there with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm. And if He had not taken our fathers out of Egypt, then we, our children and our children's children would still be enslaved to Pharaoh in Egypt. Not only our fathers did He redeem from Egypt, but also us did He redeem with them. Slaves we were, now we are free. Slaves we were, now we are free!

Already for forty-six year all these things have been read out and sung and chanted also by settlers in the Occupied Territories. Sitting down at armed enclaves surrounded by wire fences and walls and guarded by the soldiers of a mighty army, they told at length of slaves going out of bondage and into liberty. Did the echo of the singing reach the villages nearby whose land was confiscated and their springs clogged and their water taken away and their sons held behind bars and their roads blocked by military checkpoints?

In the city of Hebron Palestinians held a protest march, their faces covered with masks of Martin Luther King, the Black leader who was deeply inspired by the story of the Exodus. When the Palestinian disciples of Martin Luther King dared s to get closer to the fences of the settler enclave at the heart of Hebron, soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces attacked them and beat them up, sprinkling them with tear gas and dragging them into custody, so as to ensure they would not interfere with the settlers’ Passover festivities.

What is it which makes this Passover different from the forty five which preceded it, the forty five Passovers celebrated under an ongoing occupation and burgeoning settlement enterprise? This year, three days before Passover, we got a visit from Barack Hussein Obama. The Black man who managed to do what was long considered impossible and got elected President of the United States of America – elected, not just once but twice. The Black man who tried to remind us of the meaning of the holiday we are celebrating.

(...) I come to Israel on the eve of a sacred holiday – the celebration of Passover. And that is where I would like to begin today. Just a few days from now, Jews here in Israel and around the world will sit with family and friends at the Seder table, and celebrate with songs, wine and symbolic foods. After enjoying Seders with family and friends in Chicago and on the campaign trail, I’m proud to have brought this tradition into the White House. I did so because I wanted my daughters to experience the Haggadah, and the story at the center of Passover that makes this time of year so powerful.

It is a story of centuries of slavery, and years of wandering in the desert; a story of perseverance amidst persecution, and faith in God and the Torah. It is a story about finding freedom in your own land. For the Jewish people, this story is central to who you have become. But it is also a story that holds within it the universal human experience, with all of its suffering and salvation. It is a part of the three great religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – that trace their origins to Abraham, and see Jerusalem as sacred. And it is a story that has inspired communities around the globe, including me and my fellow Americans.

To African-Americans, the story of the Exodus told a powerful tale about emerging from the grip of bondage to reach for liberty and human dignity – a tale that was carried from slavery through the civil rights movement. For generations, this promise helped people weather poverty and persecution, while holding on to the hope that a better day was on the horizon. For me personally, growing up in far-flung parts of the world and without firm roots, it spoke to a yearning within every human being for a home.

 As Dr. Martin Luther King said on the day before he was killed – “I may not get there with you. But I want you to know that… we, as a people, will get to the promised land.”

For the Jewish people, the journey to the promise of the State of Israel wound through countless generations. It involved centuries of suffering and exile, prejudice, pogroms and even genocide. Through it all, the Jewish people sustained their unique identity and traditions, as well as a longing to return home. And while Jews achieved extraordinary success in many parts of the world, the dream of true freedom finally found its full expression in the Zionist idea – to be a free people in your homeland.”

“Peace is necessary. Indeed, it is the only path to true security. You can be the generation that permanently secures the Zionist dream, or you can face a growing challenge to its future. Given the demographics west of the Jordan River, the only way for Israel to endure and thrive as a Jewish and democratic state is through the realization of an independent and viable Palestine. Given the frustration in the international community, Israel must reverse an undertow of isolation. And given the march of technology, the only way to truly protect the Israeli people is through the absence of war – because no wall is high enough, and no Iron Dome is strong enough, to stop every enemy from inflicting harm.

This truth is more pronounced given the changes sweeping the Arab World. Peace must be made among peoples, not just governments. No one step can change overnight what lies in the hearts and minds of millions. But progress with the Palestinians is a powerful way to begin. The Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and justice must also be recognized. Put yourself in their shoes – look at the world through their eyes. It is not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of her own, and lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements of her parents every single day. It is not just when settler violence against Palestinians goes unpunished. It is not right to prevent Palestinians from farming their lands; to restrict a student’s ability to move around the West Bank; or to displace Palestinian families from their home. Neither occupation nor expulsion is the answer. Just as Israelis built a state in their homeland, Palestinians have a right to be a free people in their own land."

Thus spoke Moses Obama to the ears of Israel, the State of Israel which has long since become a collective Pharaoh while continuing to speak at length of the Exodus from Egypt. And the hundreds of young Israelis who heard the speech responded with a prolonged standing ovation.

So, maybe this time the story will be a bit different. Maybe this time  Pharaoh's heart would not be hardened. Maybe the Palestinians would go from bondage to liberty and from darkness into light and will be a free people in their own land, even without our waiting for ten plagues to come upon us.

Perhaps the most important thing we heard from Obama was: " Today, I want to tell you – particularly the young people – that so long as there is a United States of America, Ah-tem lo lah-vahd [you are not alone]. A promise very pleasing to the Israeli ear, but which contains - to those who can listen - also a warning and an alert. As long as the United States of America is there, we're not alone. But nowadays it is no longer science fiction to speak of the decline of America and reflect on the possibility that once upon a time the United States would no longer be the dominant power in the world. The day when the condition of the American Empire would approximate that of the British Empire and that even if it wanted to, America would not be able to offer much help to Israel. And should the Israeli Pharaoh continue to harden his heart until that moment, we might have to refer also to the  continuation of the story. Also to a mighty wave of water descending upon horse and rider.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/21/full-video-and-transcript-of-obama-s-speech-in-israel.html

A government with a civil agenda

After all the grueling and long-lasting negotiations it seems that we have a new government. A government with a civil agenda, focusing on domestic matters – particularly on hitting out at the ultra-Orthodox Haredi community.

And what about the occupation? The Palestinians are supposed to wait for another government.  

 And if they don’t wait?

On Tuesday morning the newspaper headlines had proclaimed the mighty achievement  of Yair Lapid, who forced Netanyahu to agree that the next government will have only 21 ministers, rather than the 30 in the outgoing cabinet. Just at the time when these headlines appeared on the newsstands throughout the State of Israel, a security guard came out of the "Abigail" settler outpost in the South Hebron Hills - and attacked the shepherd Na'al Abu Aram from Susya village. The security guard -  whose name we do not know - beat, punched, kicked and shoved the shepherd, then ran after the flock of sheep, to scare them and scatter them in all directions. Then the security guard went back to the outpost. Who knows, maybe he sat there drinking coffee and keeping track of the negotiations to form a new government. By the way, the Avigail outpost is considered illegal, also under  Israeli law. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, before he fell into a coma, promised to dismantle it.  Nobody took care to keep that promise. Nor is the new government, to be  established by Lapid and Bennett and Netanyahu likely to do it.

On the evening of that same day, Tuesday night , a last minute crisis developed in the negotiations. Conflict got to a very pitch over the issue of who would get the Education portfolio. Indeed, who is better fitted to stand in the vanguard of educating the children of Israel? Should it be Gideon Saar, who sent  school kids on educational tours of Hebron, so as to make them aware that this is the Land of Our Fathers and therefore ours forever? Or is it better to entrust the job to Rabbi Shai Piron who ten years ago expressed his considered Halachic opinion that Jews should not rent apartments to Arabs, but who since changed his mind completely and became a moderate, liberal and staunchly anti-racist rabbi.  At this same time when this great crisis developed in the government coalition talks, soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces - young men who only a few years ago graduated from the Israeli education system – broke into the Fawwar Refugee Camp near Hebron. The soldiers clashed with camp youths and opened fire and shot and killed Mahmoud Al-Titi and wounded several of his fellows. Mahmoud Al-Titi had been twenty-two years old. Two of the years of his life he had spent behind bars in the Israeli occupation’s prisons, and after being released he had studied Media and Journalism at the Polytechnic Institute in Arroub. He  will not get to hear the speech of President Barack Obama who is due to arrive here next week, and will never form an opinion on whether or not Obama's visit would give Palestinians any measure of hope of  breaking free of the Israeli occupation. But probably Al-Titi, like many young Palestinians, did not have any shred of hope from this visit. Certainly not with the new government about to be formed in Israel.
  
Wednesday morning the media was filled with reports of the escalating coaltion talks crisis and the severe threats hurled and ultimatums set by the leaders of the various parties to each other. It was exactly at that same time that an army detachment reached the tiny  and faraway  village of Maghayer el Abeed in the South Hebron Hills, and ordered the villagers to themselves demolish at once the solar power system in their village, erected  by the Comet – ME foundation. Comet-ME is an Israeli-Palestinian non-profit organization dedicated to sustainable rural electrification - i.e. "providing renewable energy services to off-grid Palestinian communities using sustainable methods" – an aim which the military government considers utterly illegal. As far as the Israeli military government is concerned, the entire village of Maghayer el Abeed should not be there. Like several other small villagers nearby it should be destroyed and disappear, making place for “Fire Zone 918” which is needed as training area of ​​the Israel Defense Forces as well as for the expansion of several settlements in this area. Most of these settlers had voted in the recent elections for Naftali Bennett who pledged that “something new is beginning". But his talking about “new things” certainly did not refer to providing a solar power system to a Palestinian village not linked to the extensive power grid serving the flourishing and expanding settlements all around.

In the afternoon of the same day, just at the time when Naftali Bennett embarked on the task of mediation to end the crisis in the government coalition talks, there was held in the Fawwar Refugee Camp the funeral of Mahmoud Al-Titi. Almost all residents of the camp attended, and waved Palestinian flags and chanted angry slogans. The Israeli TV crew covering the funeral did not forget
to remind viewers at home that the young people they were seeing had been incited and that was why they were crying out such nasty things. Meanwhile, Naftali Bennett succeeded in his mission, and a compromise was agreed upon  whereby Lapid's party will win the Ministry of Education for Rabbi Piron and while Sa’ar of Netanyahu's party will get the Ministry of Interior. And for his own Bennett got a handsome mediator’s fee in the form of the Chairmanship of the key Knesset Finance Committee - which is considered as the main faucet  through which state funds flow, and Bennett will of course divert a considerable part of them to his settler constituents. Not that this would really be something new; previous governments have already pumped quite a lot of money to settlements and gave many benefits to Israeli citizens who went to live in them.

Among other things, it was the benefit granted by previous governments which convinced a woman called Adva Biton to move to a settlement called Yakir and raise her children there and win the many benefits offered by the government.  On Thursday afternoon, when formation of the next government of Israel was assured, only minor details left to hammer out, Adva Biton went out on a routine trip with her daughters on the Trans-Samaria Highway, a modern multi-lane throughway built for the benefit of settlers. Her car was in a long string of cars which passed near the village of Kifl Haris, where young villagers hurled stones at settler cars traveling on the road which had been erected on their village lands. A stone struck the truck which was before her car. The truck driver was not hurt, but he abruptly slowed down, and Adva Biton’s car collided with the truck, and her little daughter was injured and taken to hospital in a severe condition. And because it was an Israeli girl the case made the headlines in the Israeli press. The other incident which happened at exactly the same time, when soldiers opened fire for the second time in two days, seriously injuring a Palestinian boy, was set aside. Regardless of all that, the negotiations for formation of the new government progressed successfully and overcame the last minor sticking points.

And just when the party leaders heaved a sigh of relief and prepared to sign the finally completed coalition agreements, the Head of IDF Military Intelligence, Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, rose to speak at the Herzliya Conference and talked of the current situation on the West Bank. As he remarked, "we can all see the bubbling and hubbub on the Palestinian streets in recent months".  He then added that "The economic situation is the primary motive of this phenomenon, along with the issue of prisoners which is fueling discontent.  The settlers’ 'price tag' [retaliatory raids on Palestinian villages] and the stagnation in the political and diplomatic process contribute to the boiling and ferment”. However, the General reassured his listeners that this ferment on the Palestinian streets is of "a limited magnitude" and certainly does not constitute  a Third Intifada. So there is no real reason to worry.

Israel gets a new government, just as the Catholic Church gets a new Pope. Upon his entry into his new job, the new Pope chose a new name, a name  indicating his aspirations and intentions. He chose Francis, the first Pope to ever use that name.

Francis of Assisi was one of the important Saints in the history of the Catholic Church, and well-known also outside the church. Among the things told of him was his unique personal peace initiative. At the very midst of the Crusades, when Christians and Muslims communicated with each other mainly by the sword, St. Francis of Assisi went  alone, unarmed, to meet the Muslim King of Egypt, and was very honorably received .

No reason to worry. This is a source of inspiration for the new Pope in Rome, not for the new government in Jerusalem.