About ambiguity and hypocrisy

In the midst of the intensive debate about the Iranian nuclear program (the uranium enriching centrifuges “turning round and round in underground installations protected with thick layers of concrete”) suddenly, there came nuclear news from Israel’s own past. Simultaneously in the United States and in Israel was published the recorded testimony of the late Arnan Azaryahu  - a former senior ministerial adviser who had been party to many secrets. He told of what occurred on the 7th of October 1973 , the second day of the Yom Kippur War - when the admired Defense Minister Moshe Dayan was badly rattled by the initial successes of the Egyptian and Syrian armies. He therefore asked Prime Minister Golda Meir to authorize a "demonstrative use" of Israel's nuclear arsenal , and brought with him to the Inner Cabinet meeting the Head of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission, so that  preparations for this nuclear demonstration could begin immediately.

What would have happened, had Dayan got the authorization to demonstratively set off a nuclear warhead - probably in the air over an uninhabited area in Egypt or Syria or both? The Soviets had already placed in Egypt (still their ally at the time) nuclear armed missiles of their own. The United States declared at that time a high alert - higher than then  at any other time except for the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Moshe Dayan was definitely playing with fire . Fortunately Prime Minister Golda Meir and her close adviser, Minister without Portfolio Israel Galili , along with Dayan’s great rival Yigal Allon, immediately removed the matches from Dayan’s hands. Which is quite a positive moment in the career of people otherwise remembered mainly for having conducted a policy of nationalist arrogance in the years after 1967 and having laid the foundations for the settlement enterprise in the Occupied Territories.

Ultimately, Israel successfully conducted the war by conventional means and it ended without an unequivocal victory to either side - and such wars are often the ones most likely to end with peace. But Israel's nuclear arsenal remains in place, like a sword hanging over the Middle East , though not pulled out of its sheath.

This is far from the first revelation regarding the history of Israel's nuclear program, what Prof. Avner Cohen called "Israel’s worst-kept secret”. Quite a lot has already come out, in one way or another. It is known that as part of the military alliance which Israel forged with France and Britain in order to launch the attack on Egypt in 1956, then Deputy Defense Minister Shimon Peres gained French assistance in establishing the nuclear reactor in Dimona. It is known that Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion became entangled in a prolonged conflict  with U.S. President John F. Kennedy, who insisted on monitoring what was going on in what Israel  the officially termed "The textile factory in Dimona”. It is known that sophisticated means of deception were used, including the erection of an entire fake floor in the Dimona Pile, so that it could be presented to  the American inspectors who were eventually allowed to get there. (The similarity to the means of deception used forty years later by the Iranians to hide their own nuclear program might not be entirely coincidental.) . And despite all the sophisticated deceptions, it is known that President Kennedy remained suspicious of the Israeli reactor at Dimona right up to the moment when the assassin’s bullet ended his life at Dallas.

In the end, a mutually-satisfying solution was found. Prime Minister Levi Eshkol who replaced Ben Gurion reached an agreement with President Lyndon Johnson who replaced Kennedy, an agreement establishing the  "nuclear ambiguity " which persists to this day. The State of Israel has never officially declared its possession of nuclear weapons nor did it hold any test of such a weapon. ( At least, not a test whose origin can be clearly attributed - the question of who it was who once detonated a nuclear device over the Indian Ocean, thousands of miles from the coasts of Israel, remains unanswered).

So long as the State of Israel does not announce its possession of nuclear weapons , there is no reason to invoke against Israel the clause of U.S. law which mandates the cessation of all aid to a country which developed nuclear weapons. That is, apparently, why the government  of Israel continues to prevent the "Nuclear Whistleblower " Mordechai Vanunu from leaving Israel's territory , even many years after his having served the eighteen- year prison term imposed on him. Were Vanunu to show up on Capitol Hill and hand to Senators and Representatives signed affidavits, testifying to his having witnessed the manufacture of nuclear arms in Dimona , would it cause a stop of all U.S. aid to Israel? That is not very likely. It would, however, cause a headache to American and Israeli policymakers, who would need to find a creative face-saving formula , such as the one found to explain that the seizure of power by the Egyptian Army is not really a military coup . Rather than having to go through that, it is far more simple  and easy to have the Minister of the Interior  extend each April by one more year the administrative decree which prohibits Mordechai Vanunu from leaving Israel's borders and even approaching  the gates of a foreign embassy.

Professor Avner Cohen , an Israeli who dwells in the United States and from there researches the Israeli nuclear program , is a nuclear whistleblower of a completely different type than Vanunu . Not for him Vanunu’s way of entering into an all-out confrontation with the entire military and political hierarchy, disclosing all that he knew and paying  the full heavy price . Avner Cohen is collecting written documents and interviewing people who had been present at crucial decisions and who in their old age agreed to disclose some of what they had heard and seen. Over many years he is writing articles and books and playing cat and mouse games with the state authorities and the military censorship . No one would seriously consider sending Mossad agents to kidnap this  Research Fellow from the Woodrow Wilson Institute in Washington D.C. and haling him to an espionage trial in Israel. He and his associate, journalist Ronen Bergman in Yediot Aharonot , have steadily nibbled at the Israeli Nuclear Ambiguity. So did quite a few other. By now, there is not a lot left to reveal.

On the pages of  "Makor Rishon", the right-wing columnist Amnon Lord this week pointed out what seems to him a grave new threat : "The outlines of the sophisticated new Iranian strategy can already be discerned. It is a strategy similar for that used by the Palestinians. As the Palestinians suceeded in internationally de-legitimizing Israel through the so-called "occupation", so might Iran do in the nuclear sphere . ( ... ) There is reason to think that the Iranians might begin calling upon the International Community to strip Israel of its nuclear option . They might take this as their task for the coming decade”.

 For the time being , this is no more than a small cloud on the horizon . For the time being, the United States is formally committed to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons , by diplomatic means if possible , while at the same time being careful not to look what lies behind Israel’s Nuclear Ambiguity. For the time being, the State of Israel can stridently demand a further exacerbation of the economic sanctions which already brought Iran’s economy to the brink of collapse, and the very same time  strongly demand of the Dutch government to avoid such a minimal step as marking settlement products , a move that could lead consumers in Amsterdam to take their own decision on whether or not to purchase them. It is still possible to demand that the Iranians freeze the enrichment  of uranium while negotiations continue on the fate of their nuclear program - and at the same time firmly reject the demand that Israel freeze settlement construction while it is negotiating the fate of the territory where the settlements are being established.

Still, ultimately, the main argument for the State of Israel to demand a preferential treatment and the exclusive right to hold nuclear weapons in the Middle East is based on its being "The Only Democracy in the Region",  a supposedly respectable and responsible member of the family of Western democracies . With every year that the Israeli occupation of millions of Palestinians continues to deepen, this argument sounds ever more hollow.

Succot in Sderot and Hebron and a temporary reversed destruction

Yesterday morning there was an unusual event in the town of Sderot on the Gaza Strip border . Fifteen activists of Masad, the Social Democratic Coalition, celebrated the holiday of Sukkot. They set up in the town  center a Peace Tabernacle with the declared goal of "Expressing  support for the Peace Talks, as only peace can bring an end to bloodshed”.  And they also came to express support for the factory workers of Sderot ‘s "Negev Textiles ", who stand to lose their jobs .

Workers of the threatened factory arrived, headed by the Arab woman engineer Rodina Milsah who became the leader of their struggle, and held aloft the placard: "Give grants to factories, not  to settlers”. Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, who boasts of the huge budgets he procured for settlements in the Occupied Territories and for Yeshiva seminaries, refuses to transfer the comparatively minute grant of three million shekels required to save the plant.

Still, a public action to Support the Peace Talks is far from a simple thing to undertake in Israeli society as of now (or for that matter, in the Palestinian society today) . Only a very optimistic and tireless person would undertake it, such as the veteran activist Naftali Raz, the driving force of Masad, who always reiterates the words of the Song of Peace from the 1970’s: " Do not say 'A day will come’ – bring the day!" .

Meanwhile, the ongoing peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians do not get much media coverage , and what occasionally leaks out does not exactly arouse a thrill. The talks are conducted quietly and deliberately kept low profile, while the center stage is taken by events that do not really conduct to the spirit of peace.

In the weeks since Secretary of State Kerry managed to let negotiations resume, there are often heard bitter voices on the Palestinian side. " What peace talks are these, when at the same time the Israelis go on building and expanding settlements, when every night their soldiers raid towns and villages and refugee camps, arrest people, shoot and injure and kill?" These kind of voices were heard also this week from Palestinians, but on the Israeli side there were heard parallel bitter voices : "What peace talks are these when they go and kill two of our soldiers?". Within forty-eight hours two Israeli soldiers killed. The Israeli media tended to lump the two cases together, but in fact they were quite different from each other .

Sergeant Tomer Chazan died very far from his place of service and his military capacity. When working as a dishwasher in a restaurant while on leave, a Palestinian fellow worker lured him to come to a Palestinian village in the West Bank and there killed him. A despicable act by any standard, which seems almost deliberately designed to spoil whatever good collegial relations between Israelis and Palestinians there are.

Sergeant Gal ( Gabriel ) Kobi was killed in the line of his duty in the army of occupation. He was sent by his superiors to guard the enclave of Israeli settlers in Hebron, an especially heavy task during Sukkot . On that occasion the settlers every year invite hordes of supporters from across the country, to take part in the aggressive dancing intended to show that Hebron belongs to the Jews and to them only. Sergeant Kobi was conscripted two years ago and had a high motivation for service in the Israel Defense Forces. A few day before he was killed by a sniper shot  he wrote on his Facebook page: " Once again I find myself at night in the villages of the Arabs. What will be the end?"

"Is this a new wave? Is this going to be the new Palestinian modus operandi?" wondered the media commentators. "There is no indication of any coordinated planning. This is a tragic coincidence" stated Chief of Staff Ganz. Did he manage to reassure all the soldiers’ parents? For his part, Netanyahu promised to hasten the transfer of another house in Hebron to the settlers, and generally stated that "With one hand we are fighting terrorism and with the other  we strengthen the settlement of our land."  Negotiations with the Palestinians are apparently dealt with by the Prime Minister’s feet.

Is there a connection between the fact that some Palestinians kill Israeli soldiers and the fact that Israeli soldiers sometimes destroy Palestinian villages? It is likely that the average Israeli, if asked such a question, will  outright and angrily reject any such connection. Indeed, there does not seem any reason to assume a direct causal connection between the killing of two soldiers within 48 hours at the beginning of this week and the destruction of the village of Khirbet Makhoul at the beginning of the previous week. Apart from the fact that it is all connected with the same occupation.

Even very few activists had heard of this village until last week; there was even a  debate about how its name should be spelled. A small place, home to about one hundred and twenty adults and children, living the poor life of shepherds . Like with other villages in the Jordan Valley, the occupation authorities consider Khirbet Makhoul an annoyance to be gotten rid of – especially when negotiations are taking place in which Israel demands to hold on to the Jordan Valley.   Two weeks ago, the Supreme Court issued an unenlightened ruling which did not get much attention, approving the demolition of the village. Within a few days,  soldiers and bulldozers arrived and wiped it off the face of the earth.

It was Gideon Levy, who specializes in casting light on dark places, who arrived on the scene first and met the people who were left homeless and destitute. Levy wrote an extensive report for the Sukkot holiday issue of "Haaretz." The Red Cross arrived and gave tents - but the army returned two days later and confiscated the tents, too. No big news.

Then occurred the incident which made headlines - diplomats from the European Union and France , the UK , Ireland , Spain and Australia all got directly involved, more directly than was the habit  on similar cases in the past. They went to Khirbet Makhoul with a new shipment of tents and emergency supplies, and the troops received them with volleys of concussion  grenades  - which is the long-established army reaction to foreign busybodies from Human Rights organizations . The tents were confiscated by the soldiers, and Reuters flashed worldwide the image of Marion Castaing, Cultural Attaché at the French consulate in East Jerusalem, lying on the ground with a soldier pointing his gun at her.

Probably the soldiers did not know that this was an official representative of the government of France and that they were violating the Vienna Convention which requires states to respect the diplomatic immunity of foreign representatives. The French government filed a protest, as did the European Union. Israeli government officials were far from ready to apologize, but rather threatened to expel Castaing: "The role of diplomats is to build bridges and not to make provocations." However, the French Consulate in East Jerusalem is not accredited to Israel, and serves essentially as the de-facto French Embassy to the future State of Palestine. It could be said that Ms. Castaing did fulfill quite effectively the role of building bridges with the Palestinians.

This morning there was going to be a major show of solidarity by Israeli peace activists, a convoy of buses going to Khirbet Makhoul by the same route where the diplomats were blocked. Ilana Hammerman published in "Haaretz” an  article about this, under the title "There are laws which must be broken".  But yesterday afternoon the news came that Adv. Tawfiq Jabbarin got the same Supreme Court now to issue a temporary injunction, for the time being forbidding the military from destroying houses or expelling inhabitants. The sword was removed from the throat - at least until pending further judicial proceedings.

What is and what isn’t remembered on Yom Kippur

Afternoon , Friday, 13 September 2013. The eve of Yom Kippur . In the street outside the sound of the last cars is diminishing to silence. In a few hours we would hear the happy cries of children racing their bicycles in the center of the road. This is the secular Israeli Yom Kippur which has nothing to do with any Jewish tradition and no parallel in any Jewish community outside this country.  It came about accidentally, due to an odd compromise . Secular and traditional Israelis were willing to accept the demand of their religious fellow citizens: “Can’t you give up your cars, for at least one day in the year?" and so, without anybody planning it, the State of Israel got what environmentalists in Europe and America dream of. A Day Without Cars in which the bikes reign supreme even on the intercity highways. The bikes , and the roller skates, and skate boards,  and baby strollers pushed by mothers and grandmothers and young couples, and the old women quietly walking their dogs in the middle of the road. There are cars to be seen traveling there - but only the tiny toy cars driven by the swinging legs of enthusiastic kids. The Rabbis greatly disliked all this, and have firmly stated again and again bicycle riding is also a desecration of the Holy Day, and roller skates too. But it was too late, the Israelis just refused to listen.

Today could have looked completely different. We might have woken up this morning to a ceaseless stream of the radio news flashes of American Tomahawk missiles raining down on targets in Syria , and an endless debate among experts about whether or not Assad will retaliate by firing missiles at Israel. Right now, our ears would have been straining to hear air raid sirens which might sound any second, and mothers would have sternly warned their children not to dare leave the house , and the little bikes would have remain forgotten in a corner. In such a  situation we would most likely have been, had George W. Bush still been in the White House.

But  President Obama did not really want to stage a military attack, and he deliberately left open the option of a diplomatic solution. While his Presidential visit to Russia looked like a Cold War style direct confrontation, Vladimir Putin was given the time to suggest a dignified way out and prevent the attack which  no one in America really wanted. The sigh of relief could be heard from the White House and Capitol Hill and the American public at large and in fact from most of the world. Only In Israel did ​​the government and many of the commentators voice disappointment and criticism of Obama for not properly fulfilling his duties as a the policeman of the world.

"If I’m not for myself - who will be for me?" said Netanyahu, citing the ancient Rabbi Hillel (some said he grossly misrepresented the intent of one of the greatest of all Jewish sages). So, is Netanyahu worried that one who didn’t bomb Damascus in punishment for the use of gas probably is also not going to send American planes to destroy the Iranian nuclear project ? And does  Netanyahu intend to take this task upon himself and the Israeli Air Force? Meanwhile, in the short term the Prime Minister is going to hold at the UN General Assembly a verbal duel with the new Iranian president. Rohani is going to make a big effort to show to the world a moderate and compromising face. Netanyahu will try to convince everybody that he is cheating, but it will be difficult. Where is Ahmadinejad when you need him?

Meanwhile , Syria has come down from the headlines and Iran has not yet gotten into them, and the media focuses on the traumatic war of 1973,  exactly forty years ago now. Old battle stories come up and get published again, and there are some new disclosures . For example, that on war's second day  Defense Minister Moshe Dayan was filled with panic, felt that all was lost and contemplated using non conventional weapons ( What kind of weapons, exactly? This the now published diaries of General Bar Lev do not specify). And on the last day of the war, after cease-fire had already been declared, Dayan sent troops to conquer the city of Suez, without sufficient planning and preparation, in order  to “gain a prestigious achievement”. A prestigious achievement there was not, and eighty soldiers did not come back alive from the ambush into which they rushed head-on. Moshe Dayan, who had gained unprecedented fame and admiration in six days of war in 1967, lost everything in the three weeks of 1973. Also after him there were Israeli generals who successfully entered politics , but thank God none of them gained so much enthusiastic and blind support as Dayan had between 1967 and 1973.

Very many articles and discussion and commentaries about the fortieth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War . And very few articles on the other anniversary which fell on this very day, the twentieth anniversary of the signing of the Oslo Accords. The twentieth anniversary of the moment when Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat shook hands on the White House lawn and I was sitting here in this room at this table and writing an article entitled "Hope Reborn” .  

Hope was indeed reborn then. There was then an atmosphere of enthusiasm and euphoria among Israelis and Palestinians alike, peace seemed at hand and its opponents were marginalized . An atmosphere which melted away and disappeared long since, buried under a huge pile of disappointments and frustrations and accusations and counter-accusations . And very  much bloodshed - three bullets which were fired at a square in the heart of Tel Aviv on the night of November 4, 1995, and buses exploding in Israeli cities, and a rain of bombs falling on Gaza, and a lot of smaller incidents of bloodshed now remembered only by the families of the dead Israelis and the dead Palestinians. And on both sides people say the "Peace? That’s impossible, they don’t want peace." They, the Palestinians, say the Israelis. They, the Israelis, the Palestinians say .

It happened that exactly on this week, the Twentieth Anniversary of Oslo which  few bother to remember, I had two very similar conversations with two people who have never met each other, though I know both of them quite well.

"These negotiations which the Americans began are not going anywhere" said G., owner of a small electrical appliances store in the center of Holon. "And if we get out of the Territories, what then? They will fire missiles at us, like after we left Gaza. Missiles on Tel Aviv, on Haifa, everywhere. Why give them a chance to do that? Peace? What peace? They will not honor any agreement , we have already seen what they are like." And N., a  Ramallah resident whose husband was involved in the First Intifada and who herself participated in many demonstrations against the occupation, told me :" What if there is an agreement ? Believe me, it will do nothing but make our situation worse. They will not give us a state with territorial contiguity. Not on your life! What could happen is that they will draw for us horrible borders, borders of strangulation. More checkpoints , more pressure, they will put us under siege as in Gaza. I don’t  want my girls to grow up in the same kind of horror as the children of Gaza ! Is that the agreement I am supposed to hope for? "

This week, Secretary of State John Kerry re-affirmed to Arab Foreign Ministers in Paris that the purpose of the negotiations is to reach a full agreement between Israel and the Palestinians within nine months. No partial agreement , nor an interim agreement , nor a "Palestinian state with provisional borders ," but a full, comprehensive peace agreement solving to mutual satisfaction all aspects of the conflict. To do that , he would have to pull a very big rabbit out of the hat...

Meanwhile, on September 13 - the Oslo anniversary - Israeli  troops escorted hundreds of settlers and Orthodox Jewish believers into the Balata Refugee Camp in Nablus , in order to hold prayers at the holy site known as Joseph's Tomb . The entry of the settlers and the army into the refugee camp sparked off riots and clashes and stone throwing and shooting and several woundings. "The IDF is committed to the Freedom of Religious Worship ," said a military spokesman.  But Major Avi Ohayon, who commanded the escorting military force, revealed in an interview with the extreme-right newspaper "Makor Rishon" : "Jews have a deep spiritual experience here at the tomb of one of the Fathers of the Nation, and to the army this gives an opportunity to increase the military presence in Samaria. More than an entire battalion is involved in the accompaniment of the worshipers - regular troops , recon, reserve forces and intelligence. The more soldiers in this area, the better for the settlements’ security”.

Also this week the army closed the investigation regarding Bassem Abu Rahme, Bil'in resident who was killed in April 2009 when hit in the chest  by a tear gas canister during a demonstration against the Separation Fence. Three videos filmed during the demonstration proved that Abu Rahma had not used violence or endangered  the soldiers in any way , but they were not sufficient to identify any soldier who could be held responsible for his death and or stand trial for it.

http://972mag.com/escaping-justice-who-killed-bassem-abu-rahme/78780/

Not so the case of Lieutenant Colonel Shalom Eisner, who had hit a demonstrator from Denmark with his rifle butt and for whose guilt the footage from the event left no doubt. But he did get a plea bargain. He will do two months of community service, will not be promoted any further and retire from the army in a year and a half. Rightists made a loud outcry about this trial and claimed that this was “an abject surrender to Anarchists” and that it may deter officers from fulfilling their duties .

And then some good news from the courts - the verdict rendered in the libel suit filed by the movement “Im Tirzu” (“If You Will It”) movement. Members of this movement waged a widespread public campaign against the Human Rights groups and against theaters and cultural institutions and against anyone who they considered as not being sufficiently Zionist or Israeli patriotic. They demanded of the  universities in Israel to impose a Zionist and Israeli Patriotic control on the curriculum and lectures in the various faculties, especially in the Humanities, and to fire professors judged by them as to be non-Zionist or non-Patriotic or helping Israel's enemies. When the Hebrew Wikipedia defined “Im Tirzu” as  a right-wing organization, the organization so defined threatened to file a libel suit against the Wikipedia editors. And when eight young people organized a Facebook group called " If You Will It, a Fascist movement is here", the movement to whose name a reference was made did file for libel. After protracted and complicated proceedings, the court rejected seven of the eight libel charges, determining that there indeed existed certain parallels between the ideology and activities of “Im Tirzu” and those of Fascist movements . Only one charge was accepted by the judge, who ruled that no correlation was found between “Im Tirzu” and the Nazi race theory, and therefore asserting such was indeed libelous. One should not go too far.

Another good surprise: a hearing was concluded over an  incident which took place in the midst of the "Cast Lead” bombings in the  Gaza Strip. Specifically, on the early morning  hours of January 2, 2009,  beginning at 6:34 am, near the entrance to the Air Force base at Sde Dov in north Tel Aviv. As the indictment noted, "There was a gathering of nearly 20 young people there, including the defendants , [who came] to express protest at the IDF operation in Gaza. Most of them were dressed in white robes stained red and wearing masks on their faces, some carrying signs condemning the operation. Most participants lay down on the road or threw at soldiers standing at the gate flyers with the headline ‘War Crimes’.” According to the police, even if the whole thing lasted just a few minutes, but people "carried signs, on which were written harsh statements about the conduct of the IDF in Gaza, and wore provocative outfits designed to convey the message that the IDF was committing an improper massacre (sic) in Gaza and in this way they tried to inspire others to respond in ways which could have led to disturbing the peace”. Therefore, the police was justified in immediately arresting all of them, keeping them for several days in detention and prosecuting them. The Court, however, ruled otherwise this week, dismissing all charges and finding all defendants completely innocent.

A bit of encouragement towards protesting the next war…

A troubled first week & the good sewage news

Rosh Hashana. The Jewish New Year. A national holiday throughout Israel. People greet each other with “Shana Tova”, Happy New Year, and the media is busy summing up the passing year in politics and economy and sports. Still, few Israelis outside the religiously observant minority could tell without looking it up what year it was which ended and which is the new one. Heh Tav Shin Ayin Dalet, which according to the numerical value of Hebrew character translates into 5774 – 5774 years after the creation of the world. An average Tel Avivian, when asked what year is it, would most likely answer: 2013 – the Civil Year which still has three months to run, and whose end on December 31, the Sylvester Night, would be marked by quite a lot of young Israelis even though it is not a national holiday and though the Chief Rabbinate greatly frowns at those marking it.

Count the coming week as we would  – as the first week of 5774 or the second one in the last quarter of 2013 – it would see some momentous events. Within a few days we might witness the launching of an American military strike at the Assad regime in Syria. And it could turn to be as advertised, a simple and quick affair lasting no more than a few days. Or it could turn out to have unpredictable effects and results and implications and complications, some of which might be quite nasty, and some might touch directly upon us in Israel. (It was Helmuth von Moltke, well-known 19^th German general with a considerable experience of making battle plans and implementing them, who formulated the maxim that "No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy").

Alternatively, the coming week might mark no military confrontation in the Middle East, but rather a major public humiliation administered to the President of the United States by his country’s Congress. And next week’s vote might go further than the issue of what the rest of Barack Obama’s second term would look like, and extend into an effective  abdication of the United States from the Global Imperial role which was assumed in 1945. Which would also carry very many weighty implications for Israel, as for the whole Middle East and the entire world.

All of which does not mean that everybody in this country is waiting with bated breath for the vote due on Capitol Hill. Our own affairs go on full steam ahead, while the world looks elsewhere. For example, a sizeable number of Israel’s Religious Nationalists found the New Year’s eve an auspicious time to stage a major provocation at  one of the most sensitive spots in the whole world: The compound in the Old City of Jerusalem which Judaism venerates as Temple Mount, the site of the Temple destroyed by the Romans two thousand years ago, while for a billion Muslims it is Haram A Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary from where the Prophet ascended up to Heaven.   

To mark the New Year, some three thousand of the “Temple Mount Seekers” marched round and round this sensitive compound, blowing the shofar ram’s horns as loudly as they could. The notorious Rabbi Shamuel Eliyahu, undaunted by his failure to become Chief Rabbi, proclaimed “On Rosh HaShana we crown God, and the Mount will become God’s Palace”. And in order for it to become God’s Palace,  the venerable 1300-year old Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam third holiest site, would “in one way or another disappear”.

Sheikh Ra’ed Salah of Umm El Fahm has long been warning the Muslim faithful that “Al-Aqsa is in danger!”. The shofar-blowing march and Rabbi Eliyahu’s speech added credibility and urgency to the Sheikh’s warning, and many of his followers were aroused to a march of their own. Israeli police promptly arrested Sheikh Salah on charges of “making inflammatory speeches”, but many of his followers did make it to the Mount, and there followed several days of violent clashes, stone throwing and large-scale arrests. Not an auspicious time for the holding of yet another round of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations (but when has there been such a time?). Though unlike on several previous occasions, police took care not to use live ammunition and create new Palestinian martyrs.

There were more jarring notes accompanying this week’s round of talks. Last week’s round was accompanied by the announcement of new construction of houses in Israeli settlements on the West Bank. This week there was its mirror image – the demolition of Palestinian homes.

Specifically, the home of the Rashayda Family in the Jordan Valley.

Unlike the events in Jerusalem, this was not about an especially holy site. It was of importance mainly to the family of twelve who built the house and lived in it, who would have liked to get a building permit from the Israeli authorities but found this to be impossible, and who perforce had built without a permit. Not a holy site, but dear to family members who tried to defend it as best as they could. Also and especially the family’s women. Five of these women were wounded in confrontation with the soldiers and taken to hospital. With them out of the way, the Israeli Defense Forces bulldozer made short work of the family home.

Palestinian Chief Negotiator Dr. Saeb Erakat must have felt uncomfortable going on the same day into the negotiating room with the representatives of the Netanyahu Government. At least, he issued a strong condemnation stating that  “This new act of aggression, today's brutal escalation of Israeli violence against Palestinian civilians, is further proof that members of the Israeli government wish to undermine the negotiations process.”

The veil placed on the negotiations as per Kerry’s guidelines a month ago was this week drawn aside by well-placed leaks from the Palestinian side. As could have been predicted, there was not so much to reveal. So far, it seems that in fact negotiations had not really started, the two sides engaging mainly in a debate about setting the agenda.

Palestinian negotiators wanted to hear a clear Israeli position about the future border between Israel and Palestine, and specifically whether or not Netnayahu is ready to accept the principle of the 1967.  Had Tzipi Livni been speaking for herself, she might have taken up this challenge. Speaking as Netanyahu’s emissary without any real power base of her own, she proposed instead to talk first of “Security Arrangements” – read, continued presence of Israeli troops in considerable parts of the West Bank. Chief among these, and not by chance, is the Jordan Valley where the Rashayda Family home was destroyed, and where there is a long-standing policy to regard the presence of Palestinians as a nuisance to be gotten rid of.

Alternately, there was an Israeli offer to discuss borders – but only “temporary ones”. Netanyhau would be ready to accept  a “Palestinian State in Temporary Borders”, comprising about 60% of the West Bank.

Pending a future discussion of the permanent borders, which would take place, either before or after the coming of the Messiah, Israel would be left in possession of about 40% of the West Bank: settlements, military bases, strategic highways and – once again – the whole of the Jordan Valley. Needless to say, the Palestinians found this generous offer completely unacceptable.

None of this is surprising or unexpected. In fact, it is what commentators predicted virtually unanimously in advance, on the basis of extensive previous experience.  From the start, it was assumed that the negotiations could only bear any fruit if there was a high-profile American involvement . In practice Secretary of State Kerry, having invested considerable  personal attention and energy in re-launching the negotiations, had since then let them drift rudderless.

Reportedly, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has asked for an urgent meeting with Kerry, to take up the situation of the negotiations, and it seems that they are to meet in London, Most likely,  Abbas would bring a copy of the letter which Kerry sent him two months ago, committing the US to support negotiations based on the 1967 borders, and ask how seriously should such American obligations be taken. But that would be on the very eve of the crucial vote on Syria, with Kerry more than any other member of the Obama Administration committed to punishing Assad for the use of chemical weapons in Damascus.  So, it would be quite surprising at this moment to see a full-fledged, high-level US involvement on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

Where the involvement of the American government is uncertain at best, one can look for some flickering lights elsewhere. For example, to the Supreme Court in Jerusalem, of whose composition and orientation the right wing (so far) failed to seize control, and whose rulings on at least some occasions serve to block the most blatant abuses.

A case in point was this week’s proceeding regarding the Palestinians of the South Hebron Hills, which suffer untold daily harassment from army and settlers – due to this area, like the Jordan Valley, being slated for eventual annexation to Israel and Arabs being considered, also there, a nuisance . About a thousand people in this area, have been living for fourteen years under the constant threat of wholesale deportation.  Twelve tiny Palestinian communities, poor and marginal in the Palestinian society itself and with some of them actually living in caves, are threatened with destruction, In the eyes of the state, they are “squatters without rights” and the area, known as “Fire Zone 918”, was proclaimed a vital training area for the army’s ground troops.

Israeli and international peace activists, human rights groups and prominent artists, writers and academics have been conducting an intensive campaign in the media and an ongoing presence on the ground. Towards the crucial Supreme Court session, the signatures of

Nobel Peace Laureates and other international VIP’s were obtained. And for their part, the state representatives made some cynical statements such as that “if the Arabs are allowed to stay, soldiers will have to travel longer to and from training”.

The Supreme Court  judges were plainly unhappy with the entire hot potato falling into their lap, and suggested that the state enter into a mediation process with the villagers and their lawyers. While not completely removing the Damocles’ Sword from above their heads, at least  it was moved  further away. 

http://972mag.com/israels-high-court-sends-south-hebron-hills-evictions-to-mediation/78324/   

A small ray of light also came this week from the Netherlands, concerning such a prosaic subject as sewage treatment.  

Raw sewage in and around Jerusalem is flowing into the Kidron, a creek which had been a nice and scenic place (it is even mentioned in the Bible), Some of this sewage comes from Palestinian communities and others from Israeli settlements – both being inhabited by human beings having indoor plumbing in their houses. Therefore, a respectable Dutch company named Royal Haskoning was asked by the government of Israel to prepare for the  construction of a wastewater treatment plant.

As envisioned by the government planners, a system of sewage treatment would be constructed dealing with the settlements and the Palestinian communities as a single system. Implicitly, the plan took for granted that the settlements are there to stay, that overall Israeli control is there to stay, and that strategic planning decisions (in this as in other fields) would be taken by Israeli officials, who would then condescend to  inform the Palestinians of what they decided.

Like other European companies concerned with settlement-related projects on the West Bank, Royal Haskoning was pressured by its government to terminate such involvement. For their part, the company’s  Israeli government interlocutors asked the company’s directors to “forget about politics and get on with the sewage treatment project”.

To no avail. Yesterday, Royal Haskoning officially “advised the client of termination of the Kidron contract”, since “Royal Haskoning carries out its work with the highest regard for integrity and in compliance with international laws and regulations. In the course of the project, and after due consultation with various stakeholders, the company came to understand that future involvement in the project could be in violation of international law.”

It’s harder and harder to get rid of occupation sewage.

http://www.royalhaskoningdhv.com/en-gb/news/royal-haskoningdhv-terminates-its-involvement-in-the-wastewater-treatment-plant-in-east-jerusalem/727

Gas masks and dancing soldiers

 "The U.S. Army awaits orders reads one headline." “The countdown has started" announces another; on a photo of submarines and aircraft were superimposed Obama and Assad facing each other, like two in a Wild West showdown.  

Israeli citizens were not impressed by experts telling them that there is only a "low probability" of a Syrian attack on Israel in retaliation for an American assault. The demand for gas masks immediately jumped up, and there was revealed again what was already known - that the government had not taken care to provide enough masks for all Israeli citizens. Personally, I did not join the race. After all, since the end of the First World War nobody in the world has used chemical weapons against an enemy who could respond in kind… 

Meanwhile, the countdown slowed down a bit after the British Parliament's vote and accelerated again with the speech by  Secretary of State Kerry. A speech rather similar to  the "smoking guns" speech which Colin Powell delivered at the UN ten years ago on behalf of George W. Bush  – with not a trace of those Smoking Guns found after the Americans invaded and occupied Iraq. But that does of course not mean that again now the evidence is false.

Had Obama been really enthusiastic to intervene in the Syrian Civil War, he could have found plenty of reasons and justifications for his actions in the gory acts of Bashar Assad over the past two years - even before the massive use of gas in the suburbs of Damascus . But this is a president who prides himself on having brought American troops back from Iraq and who prepares to evacuate Afghanistan as well. He certainly does not wish to wade into a new, particularly murky, Middle Eastern swamp. In fact, over the past year Obama had chosen to overlook several instances of the "minor" use of gas resulting in "only" dozens of casualties. 

Still, it is hard to see how Obama can avoid adhering to the Red Line set by himself, and ignore the harrowing photos of children suffocated to death which flooded the global media . Unless ... unless the unexpected happens when Obama comes to Russia on his scheduled visit in the middle of next week. Unless the Americans and Russians overcome the Cold War which has returned to our world also without Communism , and Obama and Putin roll up their sleeves and impose some kind of political solution on their respective clients in Syria. Or at least a more or less stable ceasefire, which would save the lives of many. What are the chances of that? Higher or lower than the likelihood that superpower intervention will lead to an end of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict? 

And meanwhile, what is really going on between Israel and the Palestinians? Over the decades, Israeli governments have always tried to exploit situations where the spotlight was directed elsewhere , and create new accomplished facts while the world was not looking. In 1956, when international attention was focused on the Soviet invasion of Hungary, David Ben Gurion – supported by Britain and France - launched a war against Egypt and occupied the Sinai. And in 1981, when the Polish government moved to suppress Solidarność, Menachem Begin was quick to enact within a single day the annexation of the Golan Heights. 

Uri Ariel, Minister of Housing and Construction in the Netanyahu government, tried his best to continue the tradition. With the world focused on Syria, he inaugurated a new settlement called "Leshem" , in the northern part of the West Bank, where forty settler families entered solemnly into their new homes . The guest of honor at the ceremony was the minister, and his words left no room for doubt : "This is a moving occasion, the laying down of one more brick in the building of the Land of Israel. Let me say it in the clearest way: I'm here in order to build you a home. We are building here in Leshem another  300 housing units. The Jewish People needs apartments everywhere in the country, and we can meet everybody’s needs! This is the right thing to do, from the  Zionist as well as the socio-economic point of view. Anyone who is present here today can understand why the two-state vision is unrealistic and will not happen. It should be obvious to any thinking person: there will be no two states west of the Jordan River. Such a thing will not happen. Even if we are involved in negotiations, this is not on the agenda”. 

And of course, Minister Uri Ariel did not neglect  to claim the moral high ground and from that location arouse the conscience of the world against the war crimes taking place in Syria. “Go to the murderous doctor of Damascus and leave alone the Israeli settlement enterprise.” 

There is no doubt that  the ongoing atrocities in Syria had the effect of distracting the world from the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Indeed, the media did not pay much attention for example to what happened this week in the Kalandia Refugee Camp north of Jerusalem. 

“Entanglement" the military authorities called it. "A detention operation which had gone wrong”. Every night the army goes out on such operations, five to ten of them at various locations throughout the West Bank. The goal is not to engage in all-out confrontations with the Palestinians. Rather, the soldiers are to arrive in the wee hours of the night to the door of a “wanted” person and as quickly as possible get him, bound and blindfolded, into the waiting military car . In many cases the force is able to leave the area before the neighbors are aroused and get the detainee to interrogation under "moderate physical pressure" at the facilities of the Shabak Security Service. One hardly hears about such routine operations. 

But for the second time within one week such a routine detention went wrong, and local residents rallied and took to the streets at this nightly hour and actively expressed their opposition to the arrest of a neighbor by the occupation army’s soldiers. As per routine, the force came to the Kalandia Refugee Camp to arrest a “wanted” Palestinian, in this case a person who had just a month ago been released from prison in Israel . On what charges was he wanted ? This we cannot know. The regulations issued by the Commanding General (Center), who is since 1967 the sovereign legislator in the West Bank, do not require detaining officers to inform the detainee what he is suspected of, nor does he have the right to call a lawyer. 

Some unfortunate disruption happened and the operation did not proceed smoothly. Within minutes the Kalandia Camp was aroused. The soldiers - artillery soldiers converted into detentions troops – faced a large and angry crowd , first numbering some three hundred and swiftly increasing to as many as 1500. "There was a very violent riot, the military jeeps were pelted from the roofs with stones, iron bars, and even burning carpets and washing machines" stated the military communiquי. Whereupon the soldiers opened fire and killed three residents of the camp - Jihad Aslan, 21, Yunis Jahjuh, 24, and Rubin Zayed, 34.years old and a father of four. 

”It was an act of self-defense" said the IDF Spokesperson – which does have some plausibility, as long as one assumes that the Israeli military has the right to enforce its rule. Probably, the  Palestinians in Kalandia saw themselves as acting in self-defense against armed intruders, representatives of an oppressive occupation rule which had imposed itself on them for 46 years. But such a way of seeing things did not get expressed in the Israeli media.

Coincidentally or not, the settlement inauguration by Minister Uri Ariel and the deadly raid on Kalandia both occurred on the day before the scheduled third meeting in the series of renewed peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. There was an angry mood among Palestinians, and the bureau of President Mahmoud Abbas announced the cancellation of the negotiations meeting: ''The string of Israeli crimes, and the continued settlement activities, constitute a clear message about Israel’s true intentions regarding the peace process.” In the end , the meeting did take place on that day. In fact, it was the first time that the peace talks were held in Palestinian territory, in Jericho. 

What was said there, in the peace talks held at the same time that three funerals were held in Kalandia? What was the atmosphere? By the rules prescribed by the Secretary of State John Kerry, the lid was kept on and no information given to the media. In fact, the media did not show any great interest in what was kept hidden. And probably John Kerry himself, the man who initiated and pressured Israelis and Palestinians to meet and talk, was this week busy with other things and only skimmed the report submitted to him of the meeting in Jericho.

On the following day, however, news came of a very different and unexpected kind of a meeting between Israelis and Palestinians.  A group of combat soldiers of the Rotem Battalion of the Givati ​​Brigade patrolled the Ja’bari Neighborhood of Hebron. Suddenly they heard, coming from a Palestinian wedding held in one of the houses, the famous  “Gangnam Style” of the South Korean singer PSY. The song which had swept young people across the globe,  regardless of religion, race and nationality, also swept the patrolling soldiers. Against orders and in contravention of their set task, the soldiers decided to enter the hall and join dozens of celebrating young Palestinians. These were from the Jabari Clan who are defined by the military authorities as “Hamas supporters”, but who did welcome the soldiers and invite them to join the dance.

The publication of this event  on Channel 2 of Israeli TV, and especially the video showing soldiers carried on the shoulders of dancing young Palestinians,  aroused the ire of the military authorities. Unlike the soldiers who shot and killed at Kalandia, defined as having acted in accordance with the military orders and regulations, the entire patrol of dancing soldiers from Hebron were suspended and are expected to be punished severely. "This is a very serious incident. The soldiers are being interrogated, the brigade and battalion commanding officers are conducting an investigation and the soldiers will be treated accordingly”. 

The event could have ended differently, the military authorities asserted. The young Palestinians might have also attacked the soldiers who entered the wedding celebration, to injure or kill or kidnap them. Not a completely baseless assertion . Still, what did happen was different. For a single moment, the soldiers did not come to the Palestinians as occupation troops but as fellow young fans of the South Korean PSY . And for that moment , the Palestinians received them as such. 

http://972mag.com/watch-soldiers-on-patrol-dance-at-palestinian-wedding-get-suspended-by-idf/78059

Settlement boycott on the Supreme Court Agenda

The following article appeared on Wednesday, August 21, 2013, in the op-ed section of the Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/Supreme-Court-to-rule-on-legality-of-settlement-boycott-323718

Israeli settlement on the West Bank, always a hot issue, seems to have heated up even more in recent weeks. The Netanyahu government’s decision to authorize 1,200 new housing units precipitated a predictable crisis in the just-resumed talks with the Palestinians. And since the European Union put down a collective foot, no Israeli academic institute located or active in a settlement would be eligible to get European grants. Should the government of Israel fail to provide a written acknowledgement of these terms, all of our country’s universities and research institutes stand to lose hundreds of millions of euros in grants, a considerable blow to Israeli science and academia.

Meanwhile, the same issue is soon due to figure prominently on the agenda from a different angle – as a weighty matter of Israeli law. The Supreme Court secretariat informed various appellants and litigants that on February 16, 2014, a special ninejudge panel headed by Supreme Court president Asher Grunis will deliberate on the constitutionality of the socalled “Boycott Law,” and will address the key question: Is the act of boycotting the settlements located in the territories of “Judea and Samaria” tantamount to “boycotting Israel,” to be punished as such? Undoubtedly, the initiators of the Boycott Law – enacted late at night, at the end of a stormy Knesset debate on July 11, 2011 – meant this question to be answered with a very strong affirmative.

Some of these initiators explicitly stated that they were particularly targeting the Gush Shalom (Peace Bloc) movement (of which I happen to be a member).

Already in the 1990s, Gush Shalom has compiled and published – and constantly updated – a list of settlement products reaching the shelves of Israeli supermarkets, calling upon consumers to avoid purchasing such products. Quite naturally, if you consider settlements in the Occupied Territories to a be major impediment to peace with the Palestinians and/or a gross violation of international law (and many Israeli citizens do), you should take care not to help finance the same settlements with your shopping.

Under the Boycott Law, continuing the above campaign might have exposed Gush Shalom to hundreds of tort actions by settlement-based corporations, resulting in a far from affluent movement having to pay many millions in damages and being effectively wiped out.

On the very morning after it was enacted, advocate Gaby Laski went to the Supreme Court to present Gush Shalom’s appeal, arguing that this law constituted an unacceptable violation of freedom of speech and of political action in Israel. Also, that it was a gross discrimination, as any other civil boycott action remains completely legal under Israeli law, and the settlements alone are granted immunity.

Indeed, the Chief Rabbinate regularly points out restaurants and shops which are unkosher and calls upon observant Jews not to go there. Such rabbinical boycott calls are not only legal but are even financed (lavishly) by the Israeli taxpayer.

The appeal had been dragging on for the past two years. The state attorney’s bureau had tried various delaying tactics. It is well known that they were far from happy with this law to begin with, and had tried in vain to dissuade the right-wing MKs from enacting it. Meanwhile, a considerable number of other appellants joined in and lodged their own appeals against this law: The Civil Rights Association (ACRI), Yesh Din, Adalah, the Women’s Coalition for Peace, The Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism, MK Ahmed Tibi, The Arab Monitoring Committee and many others.

Soon, the time for delay will be over and Israel’s Supreme Court – which assigns three judges to rule on more routine issues, and assigns a panel of nine only to particularly significant and crucial cases – will deliberate and make a ruling. It would have many implications, both for civil liberties inside Israel and for the ever more thorny issue of the settlements.

Bloodshed and basketball

Mohamed El-Baradei found out that he had gotten himself into trouble. Baradei, the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate who had been at the head of  the Cairo crowds protesting against the rule of President Mubarak, and again two years later against President Morsi. A month and a half ago Baradei and his fellows openly called upon  the Egyptian Army to overthrow the hated Morsi Administration and seize power. Baradei also agreed to serve as Vice President in the government appointed by the army. But this week, at the sight of the blood spilled in the squares, Baradei understood that he had let himself become a fig leaf for a brutal regime of military dictatorship.

This is not only true for Baradei, but for all the liberal secular Egyptians, who had made Tahrir Square into a global symbol of the struggle for freedom and democracy. By supporting  the military coup they had turned themselves into extras in the play in which they had been the main actors, condemning themselves to be crushed  between two millstones - the army and  the Muslim Brotherhood.

Itzhak Levanon, who had been Israel's ambassador to Egypt and who is now considered an expert, strongly condemned  Baradei for his "weakness". Levanon  said that he had been wrong to resign and should have "fully supported" the killing of the  Muslim Brother demonstrators by the Egyptian army. In general, the Israeli government seems nowadays to be General el-Sissy’s most steadfast supporter. As commentator Alex Fishman disclosed in "Yediot Aharonot", the government did its best in Washington, invoking the full authority of the AIPAC lobby so as make sure that the mass killings in the streets of Cairo would not impair the regular flow of generous U.S. aid to Egypt and its government and its armed forces.

The killings in Egypt pushed off the headlines the first meeting of the resumed peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, which took place on the same  evening in Jerusalem. In any case it was not hard to push to the background an event which was so deliberately kept low-profile. Probably just by coincidence, it was nearly on the twentieth anniversary of the first Oslo Agreement, that famous handshake on the White House lawn. On this anniversary, not marked in any official way, there started a new round of negotiations, arousing little hope and a lot of doubts. The low profile meant that there were few photos taken  (in future sessions, we are told, there will be no photos at all). No information was provided on what Livni and Erekat spoke about, other  than that the talks had been "serious."

All that seems quite intentional. To hold meetings and discussions (and serious negotiations?) below the media radar, without attracting attention, without media briefings (also no unofficial leaks?). To hold sessions – once in Jerusalem, then in Jericho - to which nobody would pay attention any more. And in nine months? A surprise announcement of an agreement which nobody  expected? Or the anticipated death notice, to which the response would likely be "What? Were these negotiations still going on"?

In the absence of concrete information from the negotiations room, the Israeli media centered on the side effects, especially the release of Palestinian prisoners. One hundred and  four prisoners are to be released from the prisons and detention camps of the State of Israel, of which twenty-six were freed this week , the rest to be released (or not) in later months, subject to the course of the negotiations and to other developments in our unpredictable region. One hundred and four prisoners, who were incarcerated since before the Oslo agreement of twenty years ago, some of whom had been behind bars for nearly   thirty years. It had not been all that hard for Binyamin Netanyahu to obtain a majority in the cabinet for the decision to free these prisoners. Still, the mass-circulation daily papers gave huge front page coverage to very small demonstrations of the kind which usually gets no mention at all. News editors competed for the most belligerent of headlines: "The Black List: terrorists with blood on their hands to be set free", "Bereaved families cry out: The wound has been reopened, the heart bleeds, this is a black day"; "Now it has been proven that over here there is no penalty for murderers"; "The murderer of my brother should have been killed, even Kerry could not get a dead terrorist released”; "Under cover of darkness, the killers are set free! ";  "Going back to negotiations - with a heavy heart".

"I tried to find a spoonful of justification for the murderers, not only for their own sake but also for myself" wrote commentator Dan Margalit on the pages of "Israel Today”.  "After all, if they had killed because of an ideal, if in their own eyes they are freedom fighters, it is slightly easier to accept the injustice done to the victims and the bereaved families. I tried to find a spoonful of justification, but I could not; they are too vile, like lepers of whom nothing good can come. Such they are, and they are different from us. That is the truth, even if it sounds condescending. There were none like them in our history. "

Away from the big headlines, in the sports sections in those same newspapers, there was a news item of another kind, sober and far from impassioned. There is an ongoing  debate in Israeli sporting over whether Dan Halutz should be appointed as Chair of the Israel Basketball Association. Some say that Halutz is a highly capable man who could make an important contribution to promoting basketball in Israel. Others argue that with all due respect, it doesn’t make sense to appoint to a crucial leading position in Israeli Sports a person  with no experience in this field, a person whose qualifications and experience are limited to the military, to having been  Commander of the Air Force and   then Commander in Chief of the IDF.

It is noteworthy that the phrase "blood on the hands" was completely absent from this particular debate. Nobody bothered to quote one of the most well-known of Dan Halutz’s utterings: "When the bomb left the plane, I felt only a slight bump on the wing. I sleep very well at night."

The bomb which had caused just a slight bump on the wing and which failed to disturb Dan Halutz’s later sleep was a one-ton bomb thrown off an Israeli Air Force jet flying over Gaza City on the night of July 22, 2002. A one-ton bomb intended to kill Hamas leader Salah Shehadeh and which incidentally also happened to kill fourteen of his neighbors and family members, including eight children.

All of these facts about Dan Halutz are well known and uncontested, easily located by two minutes’ Googling. These facts are at least just as widely  known as the acts for which 104 Palestinian prisoners got life sentences in the 1980’s and early 1990’s. But this week, there was none of the reporters or news editors bothering to search out or mention the dark patches in the past of the new basketball manager Dan Halutz.

The media did talk quite a bit of the counter-balancing measures taken by Netanyahu and his ministers, so as to sweeten the bitter pill of the release of the despicable Palestinian prisoners. A virtual flood of settlement construction permits, 1200 housing units and another 900 for good measure and the status of "national priority areas" and various other subsidies and benefits. "This is just the appetizer, a lot more will follow” promised Housing Minister Uri Ariel, and he is known as a person who means what he says.
Yedioth Ahronoth reporters Oded Shalom and Akiva Novick went out on the ground, visiting four settlements and finding construction going on at full swing in all of them.

At the entrance to the settlement or Revava, in the northwest part of the West Bank, the two journalists found huge signs bearing the words "Revava Groves, spacious apartments with five rooms and a courtyard, at a special price", under which were Biblical verses emphasizing the Divine Promise and Historic Rights of the Jewish People over the Land of Israel, as well as  computer simulated images of a large detached house surrounded by a green lawn. "It is a huge success. We sell these apartments at a million and three hundred thousand apiece, in Petach Tikva the same would cost a minimum of two millions. Everything we put on the market was snapped up immediately, if we  get more building permits we can easily sell twice as much" said entrepreneur Reuven Gur Aryeh – a former Deputy Chair of the settlers’ Samaria Regional Council, who had moved to the private sector and found the golden path to combining ideology and profit. "Do you not mind that the project you are now marketing is causing the world to feel upset?" asked the reporter. "Do you mind if I speak candidly?” asked Gur Aryeh. "The world is upset? My ass!"

"The World" in this context refers particularly to the EU Commission in Brussels, whose functionaries have become fed up with ineffective verbal  protests at ever-new Israeli settlement projects. For the first time, they have taken concrete steps. Three weeks ago, the EU proclaimed that Israeli participation in European scientific projects could take place solely within the internationally recognized boundaries of Israel, and that institutions located or active in settlements would not be eligible to European grants. Without the Government of Israeli officially acknowledging  and strictly applying this  limitation, Israeli researchers and academic institutions could end up barred from the EU’s highly desirable "Horizon 2020" scientific program, altogether.

Over the past week scientists, researchers and university heads have been crying out ever more desperately. As they point out, government intransigence  over settlements and “National Honor” could lead to 300 million Euros in  grants will just go down the drain - about forty percent of the total research budget available to Israeli academia.

It seems these researchers now do take seriously the things which upset the world. .