A rehearsal towards the bombing of Iran?

Last week, several hours after the assassination in Gaza and the escalation which followed, I took part in drafting a press release on behalf of Gush Shalom, in which was raised the possibility that the escalation was initiated by the government of Israel as a dress rehearsal towards the war in Iran, which Prime Minister Netanyahu is eager to launch, and/or as a "consolation prize" for not having gotten an  American authorization to launch that war.

Journalist  Ze'ev Kam published a furious reaction on the NRG Ma'ariv website.

The site gave me the right of response.

The translation of my response follows.

Immediately after returning from his meeting in the U.S., Netanyahu sent planes to bomb Gaza. Pure coincidental? That is far from certain.  A response to Ze'ev Kam.

Ze'ev Kam seems flabbergasted. How dare Gush Shalom even consider  the possibility that there might be a causal link between the Prime Minister's speech offensive in Washington and the bombing offensive in Gaza which followed a few days later? What the hell – how can these two events have anything at all to do with each other?

Well, every newspaper reader in the world knows that Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu wants, dreams, seeks and aspires with his whole being to send the Air Force of the State of Israel to a massive bombing of Iran. We all know that he regards such an attack on Iran as virtually his lifework. We all know that he went to Washington to get U.S. approval to launch this war – and that he did not get it.

For all his fine words at the AIPAC conference, President Obama in effect asked Netanyahu to avoid launching an attack which among other things might result in bringing the shaky world economy crashing down, doubling or tripling the price of oil .

So, the Prime Minister returns from Washington, feeling a lot of frustration – and just after he landed at Ben Gurion Airport, the Air Force was sent off on a mission for which there does exist a US authorization,  against those considered to be the local partners of the Iranian villains.  A pure coincidence? The attack and "liquidation" cause an immediate flaring up of the Gaza Strip border region, driving a million Israelis to the air-raid shelters - as was well known in advance that it would. So clear was it, that already prior to the liquidation, the "Iron Dome" anti-missile missiles were moved south – pre-positioned so as to be ready to intercept the expected retaliatory Palestinian missiles, to stand the test of action under optimal operational conditions.

A test which is definitely required and essential for the great war in Iran, if and when the Americans ever give approval for it. According to one report I read, it was even made sure that the "liquidation" in Gaza be carried out under the appropriate weather conditions – i.e., with no clouds in the sky, which is when the "Iron Dome" works best.

Despite the liquidation, warnings about a Sinai attack remain in force

It is a fact that the experiment succeeded and the Iron Dome performed quite well in conditions of actual action. Inhabitants of the South underwent several difficult days of anxiety, but thankfully none of them  was killed.  Indeed, the Iron Dome stood the test above expectations and intercepted ninety percent of the missiles launched, which is an encouraging sign for the far bigger test awaiting this weapons system  during the coming Iran War (hopefully, none of us will happen to be where the other ten percent falls).

True, some migrant workers from Thailand, who came here for their families' livelihood, were seriously injured and will carry scars for life. And on the other side of the border, despite the surgical precision of the bombing, in one place a boy was killed, and in another place a sixty year old father and his thirty year daughter were killed when their car was hit. Well, such things happen. But overall, the experimental test  certainly went well.

But wait, what about the ticking bomb? Ze'ev Kam wrote that the liquidation had been necessary, in order to "eliminate a ticking bomb that was on its way towards the next terrorist attack, firing a missile or exploding a bomb." But with all due respect, Mr. Kam, I must confuse you with facts: No one asserted that the people riding in an Opel, which was blown up by our air force, were on their way to make any such attack. They were not themselves "a ticking bomb".

The IDF Spokesperson claimed that one of them, the commander of the Popular Resistance Committees, was involved in planning an attack on Israel through the Sinai border. And now, when this "targeted assassination" did take place and the residents of southern Israel were huddling in shelters for nearly a week (as did the people of Gaza) - was  the attack on the Sinai border prevented? Not exactly – in his concluding review of the successful confrontation on the Gaza border,   IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz confirmed alerts about a potential attack on the Sinai border remain in force.

To what can I compare it? Excuse me for making such an outrageous comparison, but suppose the heroic commandos the IDF's elite Sayeret Matkal  were planning to take action against despicable terrorists.  Suppose the villainous terrorists somehow got wind of it and, God forbid, were able to carry out a targeted assassination and liquidate  commander of Sayeret Matkal as he was driving a car through the streets of Tel Aviv along with an officer of the unit.

Would the liquidation of their  beloved commanding officer deter the commandos of this renowned unit from carrying out the action planned - or vice versa, would it have the effect of giving them an even greater motivation and determination to carry it out anyway? And is it not possible that our cousins ​​in Gaza would think and act in the same way?

Happy Purim to all of us

1) Purim in Washington

It was the week of the nuclear duck. If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, what is it? Really, what could it be? Maybe it's Dimona?

While trying to convince the President of the United States that it was time to bomb the nuclear duck (the Iranian duck, only the Iranian) the Prime Minister of Israel handed him a copy of the Book of Esther, which tells the story of the downfall and hanging of a Persian villain 2400 years ago, events for whose commemoration the Jewish religion instituted the Purim Holiday. Maybe exactly this would convince Obama to settle accounts with the Persian villain of the present day?

When and where, exactly, was The Book of Esther written? Did the events recounted there actually happen? Was there ever, once upon a time, a man at the court of the King of Persia named Haman, son of Hammedatha the Agagite, who conspired to perpetrate a  massacre of the Jews in the many provinces under the King's rule? Whether or not such a person ever lived, there is no doubt that when the book was written the phenomenon which we know as "antisemitism" already existed. The Jews were already a religious and ethnic minority scattered among many countries and nations, and already there were those who hated them and sought to harm them.

And how to interprete this Book  and what lessons can be drawn from it for our own time? It can certainly be read as the story of cynical intrigues and power struggles going on at a corrupt and profligate royal court thousands of years ago, which are in many ways reminiscent of  various intrigues and power struggles still going on in our own day. And there are quite a few Feminist interpretations of King Ahasverus' relationship with the women in his life and his palace. And certainly, it can be read as the wonderful story of a struggle against racist persecution, the story of a threatened minority over whose heads hung a terrible threat, and who were saved due to a tenacious struggle for survival and due to a courageous and resourceful young queen who took considerable risks for the sake of her people.

But it can also be read as a story of bloody and cruel revenge, of how the hunted in a twinkling became the hunter, how those who were very nearly killed and slaughtered turned on the very next day into bloody killers themselves. Of how it was not enough to hang on a tall tree "Haman, Persecutor of the Jews", but also his ten sons were hanged with him - including his youngest, Weizata, whom Jewish tradition remembers as a rather confused child who was not really involved in his father's machinations. "It was turned around, and the Jews had rule over them that hated them. The Jews gathered themselves together in their cities throughout all the provinces, to lay hand on such as sought their hurt, and no man could withstand them, for the fear of them fell upon all people." And the Book of Esther sums up with the grim statistics - no less than seventy-five thousand killed in two days. And who were these  people? Did they all deserve death? The names and details are not told.

Did it really happen, about 2400 years ago? Is it history or legend? What is indisputable is that in the year 1994, it was these precise verses which inspired a doctor named Baruch Goldstein at the settlement of Kiryat Arba near Hebron to go out on Purim and come to a holy site where tradition places the burial place of the ancient ancestors of the Jews and the Arabs alike. There, in this place and at this time of the year and inspired by these verses in the Book of Esther, he perpetrated a slaughter of Muslims during their prayer and set in motion the cycle of hatred, and of revenge, and of revenge for revenge for revenge, which led to suicide bombings of buses and the assassination of a Prime Minister on a square in the heart of Tel Aviv and the derailing of a process which should have led to peace and an end to the occupation no later than May 1999. And still now, there are those in the settlements who are attracted precisely to these verses, and who wave the words " It was turned around" like a sword aimed at their Palestinian neighbors - especially, but not only, on the day of Purim.

And what is the Book of Esther for the current Prime Minister of Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu? What did he think, exactly what did he want to express when presenting this book to the President of the United States?


2) Purim in Holon

In truth, most of the Israelis do not delve too deeply into the Book of Esther or ponder its subtle implications. Purim is conceived as mainly and primarily a children's holiday, indeed the most important event for children in the entire year, a carnival holiday of colorful costumes and masks, of funny games and pranks and acts of mischief. The text of the Book of Esther is not taken very seriously – a funny and entertaining story about a drunkard king and his unkempt court. The mass killings at the end are played down, like the Grimm Brothers' fairy tales were changed from the very brutal stories published in the 19th century to the charming fairy tales nowadays known to the world's children.

For the past twenty years the city of Holon established the tradition of the Adloyada, the  colorful carnival parade thought its main streets, this year also helped by the weather (not the slightest hint of rain). On the way to the cheerful parade route, Border Police could be seen hefting their guns, but security was less heavy than in the Purims of five or ten years ago. Only briefly did the children and their parents stop when a chain of explosions rent the air, but these turned out to be only a string of firecrackers which someone had shot into the air.

At Sokolov Street, the main street of Holon, a large crowd had gathered along the sidewalks to watch the parade, also on  the balconies  and rooftops were masses of people. And cheerful giant floats passed along to the sound of joyous music and the cheering crowd, and some of them included hints to the social protests of the past summer. Also manifested was the spirit of Vegetarianism which in recent years had become more trendy in Israeli society. A giant chicken, with friendly and a bit sad face, sat under the sign "I do not want to become a schnitzel". Behind it, a huge pile of mouth-watering papier-mâché vegetables was surmounted by the sign "Vegetables are good for you".

And especially, there were the schools and youth clubs of the city of Holon, group after group of children and adolescents, from first grade to those who about to complete high school, dressed and made up and dancing and jumping and walking on their hands and performing all  kinds of antics and stunts. It was clear that they had devoted much effort of preparation and rehearsals ahead of this big day. Group after group passed along the wide street and danced and jumped and received the cheers of the crowd. And not just from the city of Holon. Also from schools in neighboring towns, children and youths came to this great Purim parade , and even from Oranit a group of girls came to take part in the Purim parade of Holon. Oranit, for those who do not know, is a settlement located beyond the Green Line, in the territory which was occupied by the armed  forces of Israel in 1967 and which is still under military rule and where the State of Israel is prohibited under International Law to move to its citizens (but ignores this prohibition). But Oranit is not a particularly fanatic settlement – more of a middle class suburb – and very few people present at the colorful procession noticed or gave thought to the location of Oranit.  Anyway, the girls from there looked exactly like those in the other contingents, wearing tight black clothes and clown makeups on their faces and dancing and jumping and getting their share of the crowd's applause.

Overall, it was a nice and friendly event, not very deep or meaningful. Children and youngsters have the right to rejoice together in the city streets and enjoy life, which in this country would probably provide them later on with less pleasant experiences. The children and teenagers and parents dispersed happily home, ordinary Israelis in their masses. According to the opinion polls of March 2012, most of these parents - like most citizens of Israel - would on the next elections vote to return to power Binyamin Netanyahu and his partners, even if they do not really want him to rush into war against Iran.

3) Purim in Yatta

The town of Yatta in the South Hebron Hills had also known celebrations, but it was several months ago. In October 2011, residents of Yatta went into their streets to celebrate and welcome home the town's resident Khaled Musa Almahamra, who was released from Israeli prison as part of the great prisoner exchange deal.

This week, on the Jewish holiday of Purim, there was no cause for celebration in Yatta. Precisely on our holiday there arrived IDF soldiers to arrest the ex-detainee and haul him back to prison. "He had been involved in transferring money to a terrorist organization" said the security services of the State of Israel. For the general Israeli public, the word of the security services is sacrosanct, and the military judges issues Administrative Detention orders on the basis of secret evidence and do not ask many questions. What is the evidence, to whom was the money sent, what exactly is it meant to fund? (There were quite a few cases in which the funding of charities was considered as terrorism. Also the establishment of kindergartens.) We will probably never know.

At the same time when Holon youths marched happily through the streets of their city, their  peers in Yatta went out into their own streets to protest the arrest of the neighbor who had just been released. And an Israeli soldier was hurt by a Japanese knife and shot and killed one of the Yatta youths and seriously injured two others who were taken to intensive care.

On the Israeli television evening news, coverage of the event was mostly focused on the  lightly wounded soldier, the dead Palestinians being mentioned only in passing. And then the news magazine passed on the more joyous item of the big Purim parade in Holon and the smaller parades in several other cities. Everybody who missed seeing it in the flesh could see the young happy dancers in a beautiful colorful broadcast lasting several minutes.

4) Purim in Gaza

Here I intended to finish this article, but the Purim of this year was far from over, and there were still dramatic events in store. It was still Purim when the Air Force planes of the State of Israel entered the skies of the Gaza Strip, to carry out a liquidation from the air and hit directly and accurately at Zuhair Qaisi, General Secretary of the Popular Resistance Committees.

We were told through the media that this action, at precisely this time, was absolutely needed and necessary. Because the man was a dangerous terrorist, who was involved in preparations for an attack on Israel through the Egyptian border. The evidence that this is indeed so we will most probably never see or know. Of course, this is highly classified intelligence material. And if Qaisi had indeed been busy planning an infiltration through the Egyptian border, did his death prevent this attack, or did it actually add motivation to those who are about to carry it out? This we might, or might not, know in the near future.

In any case, those who ordered the assassination in Gaza could have been sure that it would be followed by a barrage of missiles on the communities of southern Israel (about one hundred, as of this moment) and that in response to the missiles the planes would come again and kill more Palestinians (15, as of this moment). And exactly who were these fifteen people? The official Channel-1 spoke about 15 terrorists - the last two killed while on a motorcycle on their way to shoot rockets.  But in the slightly more independent Channel-10, the reporter noted that from the footage taken in Rafah, it appears that the two motorcycle riders were transporting vegetables. But of course, there are also terrorists who eat vegetables…

On the Israeli side of the border, no one was killed (as of this moment). There were only four wounded, and quite a lot of people who spent the last day of Purim nervously listening for the air raid warnings and sprinting to the nearest shelters. Iris, from the town of Ofakim, told of the events of the last day of Purim in her neighborhood. "We are forced to leave home and run to the shelter, where the whole neighborhood gathers. In  truth, sleeping is very difficult. We sleep on a blanket under difficult conditions, a dirty floor, filthy toilet, a big nightmare. At six in the morning we had to get up again, because there was a barrage again, and no more sleep."

But anyway, Happy Purim to all of us!

History repeats itself

A city under siege, bombing and shelling goon without a break, trapped civilians undergo terrible suffering and killings, a handful of international journalists report from among the ruins at great life risk.

"All this is propaganda and lies of the hostile media. We are just fighting against terrorists" responds the government which is  sending its forces to wreak havoc and death in the besieged city.

Homs, March 2012

Gaza, January 2009

Clouds of ambiguity

Once upon a time there was a country in the Middle East which took the decision to obtain nuclear weapons at all costs, establish secret uranium enrichment facilities, and also develop sophisticated missiles which could deliver nuclear devices over long distances. But all this was categorically denied.

The President of the United States definitely did not like it. He thought the United States should firmly intervene and put an end to this nuclear project. The President, whose name was John Fitzgerald Kennedy, addressed sharply  the leader who had initiated the nuclear program, whose name was David Ben Gurion, and also to the man in charge of  that program, who was called Shimon Peres. The matter did not come up in the media, but behind the scenes the conflict escalated. The Americans demanded to inspect what was going at the Dimona nuclear facility. The government of Israel, for its part, found all kinds of creative tricks in order to prevent such an American inspection.

After President Kennedy was assassinated, his successor, Lyndon Johnson, reached a tacit agreement with Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. The government of Israel announced that "Israel would not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East", and this was repeated by all later Israeli Prime Ministers, and just this evening President Peres, the founder of the Dimona Pile, repeated it yet again.  For its part, the U.S.  had long since stopped plaguing Israel about the nuclear issue.

Exactly what is behind this cryptic declaration, so often repeated and reiterated? According to quite a few of the international media reports, the State of Israel indeed does not possess nuclear weapons. The State of Israel merely holds a stock of nuclear weapon parts and components, none of which can in itself explode or cause any harm to anyone. True, if ever the government of Israel gives the order, it would take about an hour or two to assemble the pieces and make of them real bombs, and another half hour would be required to place the bombs on missiles and send them off to any designated target. But so far, this did not happen. So far, indeed, Israel had not been the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East. This is called "nuclear ambiguity".

And perhaps this is the solution, the way to defuse the escalation,  avert the coming war of which so much has already been talked about. Just let the Iranians learn from Israel. Let them also undertake to maintain a nuclear ambiguity, and solemnly declare that Iran will also not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East. Just that, an ambiguity in return for an ambiguity, and we can all live happily ever after.

His kind of people

Nikolai Blinov, photo: collection  S. Levitsky

In the early Twentieth Century, the throne of the Czar – all-powerful,  repressive ruler of Russia – started to shake, especially after he embarked on a war against Japan which ended in a humiliating defeat. The revolutionary movement grew stronger.  In an attempt to distract the masses, the Czar and his government adopted a policy of active anti-Semitism. Racist thugs moved from city to city and initiated pogroms against Jewish communities, with police and army standing aside to give them a free hand.

Nikolai Ivanovich Blinov was at that time a student in Ukraine, and like many of his fellows an avowed opponent of the Czar's regime. He went into exile in Switzerland and in Geneva appeared in a theatrical performance denouncing anti-Semitism. He married and had two children. In 1905 he returned to the Czar's kingdom and went from Kiev to visit his parents at his native city of Zhitomir.

On 23 April 1905, the organizers of riots and pogroms arrived at Zhitomir. The local Jews were brutally attacked, and though they defended themselves as best they could, dozens of them were killed, hundreds injured and many houses destroyed. Nikolai Blinov was not a Jew, but felt he could not stand aside. He and his friend, Doctor Binstock, walked alone and unarmed towards the furious mob. "Brothers! My people! The Jews are not your enemies!" he called out. "You are being incited against them to make you forget your real  enemies, your oppressors!" 

Those were his last words. The crowd started shouting "Leftist traitors! Socialists! You're worse than the Jews!". Nikolai Blinov was beaten to death, his friend the doctor lost consciousness and barely survived. Nikolai Blinov's mother found his body at the Jewish hospital where the bodies of the pogrom victims were gathered. In his pocket was a last letter addressed to her in which he wrote "I could not do otherwise." He was 24 year old.

At the memorial ceremony held two weeks later, at the main synagogue of St. Petersburg, the cantor called Nikolai Blinov's name together with the names of the Jews killed in the pogrom. The Zhitomir Jewish community erected for him a memorial plaque. But over the years his name and act were forgotten. Only in recent years was this heroic story rediscovered, ceremonies held at his grave and a professor at an important Russian University wrote a book about him.

In our region, too, a memorial ceremony was held. To be precise, the ceremony to Nikolai Blinov was held at the University Center of the settlement of Ariel. At a settlement enclave in the heart of occupied territory,  surrounded by walls and fences and well-guarded by a large military force, not far from where settler "hilltop youths" set out at night for "price tag" actions, setting mosques and olive trees on fire. There the ceremony was held, and Blinov's photo, found in an archive, was given a central place on the podium, and the speakers rose one by one to praise his valor and supreme sacrifice. 

And there was a guest of honor in this ceremony - none other than Knesset Member Ze'ev Elkin, government coalition whip, the man who in recent years pushed very hard indeed to get many and diverse pieces of legislation enacted. The law which stipulates three years' imprisonment without trial to refugees and migrant workers, and the law empowering communities to set up admission committees and refuse admission to Arabs and others who do not fit the social fabric. These and many others are inscribed to the credit of Ze'ev Elkin, the Guest of Honor. And Nikolai Blinov's memorial was widely reported on right-wing websites, side by side with the initiatives of the Im Tirzu movement to demonstrate and cry out against Arabs and against the Leftist traitors who are even worse than the Arabs.

Had Nikolai Blinov come back to life in today's Israel, would he have stayed at that hall in Ariel, amidst the clapping for Ze'ev Elkin? In my humble opinion, the man who was not Jewish and yet came out to defend persecuted Jews would have rather joined the Israelis who are not Arabs and yet come out to protect the rights of Arabs, and who were born here and yet help refugees and migrant workers, and who stand shoulder to shoulder with Bedouins and Ethiopians and Sudanese. His kind of people.

National Suicide in three acts

Stay out of my bedroom  

National Suicide (1)

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

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

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


Foreign country, or what?

National Suicide (2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In short: eat the cake and have it.

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

National Suicide (3)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapters in a Tragicomedy

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

Chapter One

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter Two

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

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

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

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



Chapter Three

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

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

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

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

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

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

But not to Arabs, and other undesirables...



Chapter Four

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

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

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

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

Chapter Five

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter Six

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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