Living the occupation, 45 years

This week – to be precise, the fifth of June,  2012 – marks the 45th birthday of the occupation. An occupation which already lasts for more than two-thirds of Israel's entire existence. Forty-five years of military rule which the State of Israel maintains over millions of Palestinians who did not choose this government and do not want to live under it, but which the State of Israel decided to impose on them against their will, throwing in jail those who oppose the Israeli rule imposed on them.

And this decision is democratically confirmed by the citizens of Israel.  Again and again they go to the polls, again and again voting into office - in all elections held since 1967 - governments which continue  to maintain occupation rule over the Palestinians (who themselves are given no chance to participate in these elections and this democratic decision-making process). The one time that the citizens of Israel chose a Prime Minister who showed signs of an intention to end the occupation - the elections of 1992 - an assassin's bullet removed that Prime Minister from power (and from the world of the living).

Forty-five years have passed, no end to turmoil and upheavals and conflicts  and diplomatic moves and military moves and bloodshed and suffering to Palestinians as well as to Israelis. In the West Bank the Palestinian Authority was established and the Palestinians given a chance to elect a parliament and a government, but no shred of a real power on the ground. Still, up to the present moment, a 19-year old Israeli corporal standing at the checkpoint on the highway between Ramallah and Nablus holds more power in his young hands than do Palestinian President and Prime Minister and all their ministers put together. In the Gaza Strip a disengagement had been effected and settlements dismantled, but still no Palestinian can leave or return, import or export, without permission of the State of Israel.

Basically, the contours of the political debate and political dilemmas of Israel have not changed since the moment when the tanks of the Israeli Defense Forces stopped on the banks of the Jordan River and the Suez Canal, forty-five years ago. Over forty-five years the State of Israel did not annex the Occupied Territories, did not apply to them its laws and certainly did not give their inhabitants Israeli citizenship. On the other hand the State of Israel also did not withdraw from these territories and did not allow its residents to establish their own independent state, but rather intensified and deepened its control, most particularly continually establishing and extending settlements in those territories.

In June 1967, the Commanding General of the IDF Central Command was appointed to act as the temporary ruler, legislator and judge over millions of Palestinians. Such are his "temporary" position and his "temporary" power to this very day, precisely forty-five years later. As stated in a well-known Israeli proverb, nothing is more permanent than temporary things.

June 5, 1967

On this day, 45 years ago, at 8:00 in the morning, I arrived at the A.D. Gordon Elementary School in Tel Aviv. Just as I entered the school gate the air raid alarm sounded and pupils and teachers hurried to take shelter in the basement but no enemy planes appeared over Tel Aviv. And when I returned home in the afternoon I still worked with some of the neighborhood kids to prepare sandbags and place them in front of the house, though clearly this was no longer necessary.

On the news, the IDF Spokesperson stated that the Air Force and  ground forces of our country had repelled an Arab attack and went on to counterattack, which was not entirely accurate. And the following days I basked, like the vast majority of adults and children in Israel, in the euphoria of victory. I devoured the Victory Albums which filled the shelves in the stores, and was excited to no end at the country's enlarged borders and its having gained "The New Territories" (the term which everybody used at the time).

I was not among the few who protested and sounded a warning already then, in the very aftermath of the great victory - the few isolated "Matzpen" activists who went out at night to write on the walls "Down with the Occupation!" when the occupation was not yet one month old.

It took me another three years. Until 1970, the time when General Ariel Sharon set out to break with an iron fist the first uprising of the Gaza Strip Palestinians. It was on that year that I sat with fifteen other young people in the damp basement of a house in central Tel Aviv, and we heard a soldier who had just returned from there who told of the horrific things he had seen and in some of which he had himself taken part. That was the moment I and my friends gave up using the phrase "Enlightened Occupation".

At night we left with bundles of leaflets, printed on a creaking stencil machine, and we went out and  distributed them in the mailboxes in order to expose to the citizens of Israel what the military censorship was concealing from them.

June 5, 1982

Thirty years ago I walked along with thousands of other demonstrators through the streets of Tel Aviv, in a march organized by the Committee for Solidarity with Bir Zeit University. We carried placards reading "Fifteen years of Occupation - Enough!", to which were added signs hastily prepared at the last minute: "No  War in Lebanon!" and "An offensive in Lebanon – the route to disaster! ".

From the continuous media reports we learned that Defense Minister Sharon was about to launch the war which he had been openly preparing over many months, to break the Palestinian presence in Lebanon so as to better consolidate control over the West Bank. I remember talking on the phone with a soldier who served in the Air Force Headquarters, and she told me about the preparations she witnessed for a massive bombing in Beirut  – risking serious personal consequences, had the army's Field Security been listening  in.

Later that evening I was among a group of reservists who gathered in a private home. We discussed whether or not it was feasible, in the State of Israel, for soldiers to organize on the eve of an unnecessary and harmful war and announce their refusal to participate in that war. The meeting ended inconclusively, because some of the participants felt that such an act would be too radical and extreme. On the next day the war started, which in the best of Orwellian tradition was dubbed "Operation Peace for Galilee".

I heard the announcement of this offensive on a creaking little radio at the  gates of Tel Aviv University, where I stood with other students to distribute leaflets against the war which was about to begin. And the next night, when the tanks were racing deeper into Lebanon and the planes dropped a rain of bombs on the cities in Lebanon (the exact number of civilians casualties will probably never be known), activists came to distribute hastily printed leaflets at the Hebrew Book Fair, held annually in this time of the year at the center of Tel Aviv. The City Inspectors were quick to expel us from this important cultural event. Distributing leaflets causes litter in the streets...

After a few weeks the group of reservists gathered again and founded an organization called "Yesh Gvul ("There is a Limit/There is a Border") and refused en masse the order to go to Lebanon (and later also the command to go to the Palestinian Territories and take part in suppressing the first Intifada). Many of them did time in the military prison, me among them (in April 1984). It turned out that in the State of Israel it is quite possible to go out and demonstrate and protest, also and especially in time of war - at least when it is a war whose wickedness and folly are so clearly manifest.

Still, it took almost twenty years until Israel's Lebanese adventure ended, and a high price was paid in the blood of Israeli soldiers (and an even higher price in the blood of Palestinians and Lebanese, though that is not so often mentioned in our Israeli media). As could have been expected, it was found that there are no shortcuts. The problems in Nablus and Hebron and Gaza, which Sharon tried to solve with a single stroke of the sword, remain as complicated as ever. Perhaps even more so.

June 5, 1997

Fifteen years ago it the was thirtieth birthday of the occupation, which was also  the end of the first year of Binyamin Netanyahu's first term as Prime Minister of Israel. In the demonstration marking the anniversary of the occupation there were many placards reminding of Netanyahu's deeds since he took power, the provocative opening of a tunnel in East Jerusalem which Netanyahu called "The Rock of Our Existence" and which had cost the lives of sixteen Israelis and more than a hundred Palestinians, and the construction of the settler neighborhood in Har Homa which was condemned by the entire world with only loyal Micronesia standing with Israel at the United Nations.

During that event in Tel Aviv, there was much talking and debating as to how much confidence we could place in Ehud Barak, who had just taken up Leadership of the Opposition, and who embarked on a vigorous campaign to topple the Netanyahu Government and who promised to continue and complete the lifework of the assassinated Yitzchak Rabin. Some of the marchers mentioned dark episodes in Barak's military career, and others retorted that also Rabin had been a general and gave the order to break the bones of protesters, and they said "Give him a chance, first of all we must throw Bibi out".

That evening Professor Tanya Reinhart spoke to a packed hall at the Tzavta Club and put up an argument that at the time sounded peculiar. I.e. that it was wrong of left-wingers to support the Oslo Accords, and equally wrong for settlers to furiously denounce the same. Since, she argued, the establishment of the Palestinian Authority was not a step towards ending the occupation, but rather a new, sophisticated way of perpetuating it.

Two years later, Ehud Barak came to power, and was given considerable credit as an incipient new peacemaker, which by now it is clear he in no way deserved. He went to the Camp David Summit and returned without an agreement and making accusations against the Palestinians who rejected his  “generous offers”. It was very difficult – in fact, virtually impossible – for the present writer and his fellows to propagate the idea that these proposals had not been so very generous. Immediately afterwards, Barak authorized Ariel Sharon's ascent of the Temple Mount, and the spiral of bloodshed and hatred called the Second Intifada was launched. The peace camp in Israel was struck a severe blow from which it never really recovered, and Ehud Barak eventually got to the position of the most loyal assistant and political associate of Binyamin Netanyahu.

June 5, 2012

And here we are. After so very many ups and downs and, after forty-five years, the occupation is alive and kicking and trampling of millions of people under its feet. There were in fact very few references to this anniversary in the media. If at all dealing with history, the media preferred to dwell on the round number of thirty years to the (First) Lebanon War. Though a group of Meretz people did go out to physically mark the Green Line and remind of this anniversary.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150952434454275.451795.528664274&type=3
On the 45th birthday of the occupation there was very little talk of the occupation as such, nor of the settlement enterprise as such, nor even of the robbery in broad daylight of Palestinian lands as such. What however got all the attention was a tiny fragment of all that -  about the specific and limited case of one plot of land where a band of settlers built houses, with the active assistance of the Government of Israel  and the Israeli Defense Forces, on land which does not belong to them. The Palestinian owners of the land, with the help of Yesh Din and Peace Now and the devoted Attorney Michael Sfard, appealed to the Supreme Court of the State of Israel and got an explicit order for the removal of the settlers from the land they had stolen.

Thus came about the explosive issue which shook the political system and captured the headlines during the days of this week: Would the Government of Israel implement an explicit order issued by the Supreme Court of the State of Israel? Or would the Knesset pass a bill permitting and legitimizing the takeover and theft of private Palestinian lands?

Ultimately, the bill did not pass, after the PM had been warned that its passage might cause serious problems of International Law and bring the State of Israel to the dock in the International Court at the Hague and further undermine its already precarious international position. And at the end of a big storm in a glass of tea, the PM was praised as a moderate upholder of the Rule of Law, who bravely faced down the Extreme Right. After all, he did pledge to dismantle five (5) manifestly illegal settler houses, though he did also pledge to compensate for it by building several hundred new settler houses in slightly different locations. And the occupation continues.

And on that morning, the morning of the anniversary of the occupation, some Palestinian fields were burned in the South Hebron Hills. An act of arson too small and too far away for the media to notice. 15 dunums of a not yet harvested wheat field belonging to Palestinians villagers, near the settlement of Shimah. But it was not specifically related to this symbolic date. In recent weeks, there were two other cases of Palestinian fields set alight in the same area. The military and police forces of the State of Israel were unable to track down the perpetrators in any of these cases.

And the anniversary of the occupation was this year also the day after Israel's Prime Minister dramatically announced a major operation to arrest and deport  tens of thousands of Africans found within the boundaries of the State of Israel, as well as the expansion of detention camps for those of them who for any reason could not be deported forthwith. And on the night after this announcement there were some impatient people who did not wait for the PM to carry out his announced policy but proceeded to burn down the home of an Eritrean family living in downtown Jerusalem and write on the house: "Get out of this neighborhood!". Professor Arnon Sofer of Haifa is an expert demographer and has often warned of the demographic threat posed to Israel  by the proliferation of the Arabs and did some impeccable academic research on this subject and he is now the right man in the right place, being appointed head of the new governmental commission to recommend ways of fighting the  demographic threat which African refugees pose to Israel. Perhaps it was also to such things that Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz referred in his warning and premonition, already at the time of victory euphoria in June 1967, when he said that the occupation would corrupt Israeli society, deprive it of conscience and moral bearings.

Also this year the anniversary of the occupation intersects with the beginning of the Hebrew Book Fair, when publishers display on the city streets stalls offering to culture lovers books at a very discounted price, four books for a hundred shekels - just like in the vegetable market. And this year, also pianos  were placed in the streets of Tel Aviv and young pianists come to play and make music accessible to the general public. And the Gay Pride Parade was held in Tel Aviv under the auspices of the municipality and assorted commercial companies, to show that Tel Aviv is an open and liberal city and the capital of the gay community.

Barack Hussein Obama, President of the United States who might get re-elected in November, this week mused aloud that the window of opportunity for Israeli-Palestinian peace might have closed already.

June 5, 2027

What would see and behold those of us who are still here – still in this world and still here in this miserable and crazy country - fifteen years from now? Will  June 5, 2027 be the 60th anniversary of a still ongoing occupation? If so, who would still be found in the Israel of 2027 to cry out and protest, and what would be the point in protesting against an occupation whose beginning would only be remembered by people in their seventies?

It could well be. Certainly, an abomination which lasted for forty-five years can also last for sixty years and more. And if so, it is likely that long before the 60th anniversary of the occupation, the processes which are already underway would have come to their ultimate conclusion. Brutal racism would rule supreme and there would be no one able to stand up to it. The Israeli army would  have become the  Settler Defence Forces, and settlers would be the core of its officer corps (who but settlers would dream of devoting a life to a  career in an  army whose sole raison d'etre is the oppression of a civilian population?). 

Such terms as "a Left Zionist" or "a leftist Israeli patriot" or "a leftist serving in the IDF" will come to be considered an oxymoron. Israel's international isolation would be complete, and only the most sinister of racists would think of associating with such a country. Also many of the Jews worldwide, especially the young ones , would feel embarrassed by Israel and cut off any contact. Anyone who could would seek to save themselves and escape from this country and seek a more reasonable place to live. And Israel would retrench itself in military might, and will continue with stubborn self-righteousness to regard itself as moral paragon and dismiss all who criticize it as anti-Semites or self-hating Jews. And it will  angrily and with contempt reject any proposal for change or compromise. No withdrawal from "Judea and Samaria" where settlements will grow and expand, certainly no granting of civil rights to Palestinians which will cause the end of "The Jewish State".

And so will this country lurch along somehow, so long as its military superiority lasts and as long as the United States is politically willing and economically able to give support? But how long will the American empire itself last?

And then, the deluge. A bitter fate to all who still remain here.

All of this could come to pass. We do not live in a Hollywood movie, and no one has guaranteed us a happy ending with living happily ever after. It could well be that we are actually living in a Greek tragedy or a Shakespearean one, the kind which ends with everybody ultimately lying  dead side by side on the stage. There are quite a few of us who have already given up, who think that we have already long since passed the point of no return, and there is nothing left to expect but the inevitable slide into the abyss. And evidence to support such ideas is not lacking – one needs just to read the papers, any newspaper on any day.

And on what basis could one argue the opposite? That we have not yet passed the point of no return, that everything is still reversible, that is is still possible to halt at the edge of the abyss? That It is also possible that the occupation will not have a 60th birthday, possibly not even a 50th one? That on June 5, 2027, occupation would be no more than a distant fading memory, and already there would be a new generation of Israelis and Palestinians who had never known it personally who would grow up in a reality of peace between their two countries?

Why, despite everything and in the face of everything, should we continue to hope and keep faith and struggle and struggle and struggle? Why do devoted activists work hard this very day, June 9, 2012, on organizing the procession which is due to march this evening in the streets of Tel Aviv – knowing full well that in itself it would not put an end to the occupation, that at best it would add one small grain of sand to the balance?
 
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/events/1339104172/

 
https://www.facebook.com/events/227167827402037/
 
- Because ending the occupation would not be only a moral deed which the  State of Israel should undertake for moral reasons, but also an existential need which alone can ensure our long-term survival in this country. It is quite logical to hope that people, millions of citizens in the State of Israel, would eventually stop the slide towards national suicide and turn to the only course which can ensure their future and that of their children and grandchildren.

- Because for the Palestinians continued occupation is intolerable, and they would not tolerate it for long. And the Palestinians have already demonstrated on several occasions their ability to remind of their presence and their pain and their unresolved problem. To remind Israelis and the entire world.

- Because this unresolved problem has already several times proven to have an effect at a distance, far beyond any proportion to the number of people and the size of the territory involved. A problem which arouses emotions all over the world, a major producer of news for the global media. An explosive problem which can set off all kind of other explosive situations in various other places. And therefore, a problem which global powers have an interest in defusing before it blows up and blows away with it various vital interests of these powers.

Beyond all this, because even after forty-five years, the adherents of occupation and settlement have failed to convince the general public that these  territories which Israel occupied forty-five years ago are really part of Israel. Very few Israelis (except for religious-nationalists) have ever visited Hebron  (unless the army sent them there as part of their military service). Very few Israelis (except for religious-nationalists) think seriously that the centrality of  Hebron in the ancient tales recounted in the Hebrew Bible is reason enough for the State of Israel to hold on to Palestinian Hebron in the present day. It is  reasonable to assume that if and when an Israeli government decides to end its rule in the city of Hebron and give it over to the State of Palestine, very few Israelis would do a serious effort to oppose this move – except, again, for  the religious-nationalist settlers and their friends.

A lot could be said to the detriment of the Disengagement from Gaza, carried out by Ariel Sharon 2005 – the replacing of direct military rule in Gaza with a tight siege strangling its economy, and the dismantling of a small number of settlements in the Gaza Strip so as to keep and expand many more settlements on the West Bank. Still, the events of 2005 can be seen as a kind of dress rehearsal for what is likely to occur, if and when an Israeli government decides to evacuate the West Bank. In 2005 the settlers and their national religious friends cried out in protest, organized several large and impressive demonstrations and protests - but in all of them, participants were drawn exclusively from this one segment of Israeli society. The settlers called out for for help to other parts of Israeli society – to the Mizrahi Likud voters in slum neighborhoods and development towns, to the Russian immigrants, to the ultra-Orthodox. None of them came, none joined the settler protests. And so, the Gaza settlements were dismantled on schedule, at the time stipulated by the government.

To the best of my appreciation, so it will be if and when an Israeli government decides to end the occupation, and evacuate the West Bank, and facilitate the creation of a Palestinian state whose border with Israel would be based on the Green Line. Most citizens of Israel would accept that decision, even if not with a big burst of enthusiasm. The settlers and their national religious friends will wage an all-out struggle against it, tooth and nail. It would be a fierce struggle, possibly getting far more violent than in 2005. But the settlers would remain  isolated and the evacuation would be carried out.

All this, if a Government of Israel ever reaches such a decision, due to a  combination of pressures from within the country and from outside. But would there ever be such a government? Would Israel put an end to the occupation, before the occupation puts an end to Israel?

Perhaps.

Thus spoke the Minister

 Thus spoke The Minister of the Interior of the State of Israel: "They called me a racist, hater of children, sinister  and cruel, but I knew that finally everybody will realize I was right. The Sudanese are chasing women and raping them. I know that many women in Tel Aviv were raped and are afraid to complain, because they don't want to be stigmatized as HIV carriers. The Africans carry diseases such as tuberculosis, measles and malaria as well as AIDS and because they live so crowded they all the time infect each other. Giving them medical treatment costs millions and it will inflate to billions. The reports which I get are a true horror. They have set up a state within the state. It's unbelievable, shops, restaurants, halls. They also build underground, they dig deep under the earth. I do not want to talk about all the horror stories I heard, their culture of murder and assassination. The African infiltrators along with the Palestinians will bring us down, put an end to the Zionist Dream. We had not faced such a threat since the Destruction of the Temple. I may sound like a racist or a sinister xenophobe, but I am just acting out of love for my country. We need more prisons and detention camps. We need to convert military camps so that we can lock them up, all without exception. Put them in prison for three years and then throw them out. I know that the detention centers which we have will soon be filled up, so I propose to grant an amnesty to thousands of prisoners who are less dangerous so we will have place for the African infiltrators who are a far greater threat to state security. They will be driven away, they will be deported, they will be expelled".

And Minister Eli Yishai spoke more and more and even more in the same vein, filling all three pages which Ma'ariv newspaper placed at his disposal in its weekend edition. An anonymous protester in the streets of South Tel Aviv this week managed to sum up the minister's teachings into just seven short words: "A good Kushi is a dead Kushi". The demonstration in which this succinct slogan was held aloft had been perfectly legal, held with a permit from the Tel Aviv Police. It was the counter-demonstrators, standing across and carrying such signs as "Stop incitement, stop racism!" who were warned by the police that they were violating public order and sternly ordered to disperse immediately.

And who exactly is a "Kushi"? Sudanese and Eritreans have a quite obvious skin color. But what about Ethiopians? Geographically, Ethiopia is in the middle between Sudan and Eritrea, and its residents have the same skin color as their neighbors. Also those Ethiopians who had been recognized by Israel as Jews and brought over here made ​into Israeli citizens, fully equal rights to everybody else (at least officially). One can understand the average Israeli racist finding it difficult to make subtle distinctions and sometimes falling into embarrassing mistakes and raising his fist at the wrong “Kushi”.

By the way, exactly this week the police ordered young Ethiopians to dismantle the protest tent which they had set up outside the Prime Minister's residence in Jerusalem, to protest the racist manifestations which they encountered in the Israeli society. (Yes, this too is a disturbance of public order…)

Eli Yishai is not alone. Almost all European countries now have politicians who give prominence to the same kind of message, crying out hoarsely about the danger and threat posed to their countries by migrants and refugees and asylum seekers. Often, such parties receive substantial percentages in elections. And yet, they have a good reason to be jealous of the Israeli Eli Yishai. There is still in today's Europe a strong and fierce opposition to such parties and politicians, a great reluctance to let them enter governments and take up ministerial positions. In most cases they can only keep shouting hoarsely from opposition benches.

Not quite by chance, most of the European xenophobes and immigrant-hating politicians declare themselves to be staunch friends of Israel, and call upon their own countries to learn from Israel and emulate Israeli practices. And not by chance, their love is returned by their Israeli counterparts, Israeli xenophobes, Arab-haters and adherents of settlement in the Occupied Territories. Year by year do the Israelis and European xenophobes expand their ties and cooperation mutual visits to Israel and Europe.

True, for some time there were in the Israeli extreme right some qualms about the "Freedom" party of Austria, founded by the late unlamented Joerg Haider. A resounding xenophobic speech sounds particularly bad when made in the German language. But also this barrier is cracking. Two weeks ago, Knesset Member Nissim Zeev, of Interior Minister Yishai's party, accepted the invitation of the Austrian Freedom Party to appear at a conference they organized, providing the full charge for airfare and lodging. He addressed the party members for half an hour, as a guest of honor, and gained a standing ovation for the message he brought them from Israel. Also Gershon Mesika, head of the "Samaria Regional Council," which incorporates the settlers in the Nablus Area, was there, and too was applauded. As did also the well-known Professor Hillel Weiss who opposes democracy and calls for its replacement by a monarchy under the Laws of the Torah and the Halacha, and who once said that police evacuating settlers are "worse than the Germans" (this comparison he probably did not repeat when addressing the German-speaking audience). Indeed, the Chief Rabbi of Austria, Chaim Eisenberg, had appealed to Weiss,  Mesika and Ze'ev and asked them not to participate in this conference organized by this Austrian party, but they did not find his opinion worth considering.

Recently a prominent new member was added to the club of Xenophobic parties in Europe, when due to the severe crisis in Greece the Golden Dawn Party entered its parliament. Party leader Nikos Michloliakos calls for the immediate establishment of vast detention camps in which all migrants on  Greek soil should be placed, until their expulsion. Just like Eli Yishai. The problem is this is also a party at whose headquarters "Mein Kampf" is being sold, and has a flag with an emblem that resembles the swastika and its members make Nazi salutes and question whether a Holocaust ever occurred at all and if six million Jews perished in it. This would probably prevent xenophobes here in Israel from linking up with this party. At least for the time being.



Linguistic note: The term "Kushi", like much else in Hebrew, comes from the Bible. It was originally a geographical name, referring to a native of the Land of Kush - roughly present-day Sudan - and as such did not carry a pejorative meaning, Then it came to refer to anyone with a black skin, and gained some pejorative connotations already in Biblical times - especially where Moses' family is mentioned as displeased with his having married a Kushite woman.

 In present-day Israel, "Kushi" is fast developing into having all the connotations which "Nigger" has in English - an innovation which the Hebrew language and  Israeli society could well have done without.

Who is a Palestinian Refugee? And who is a Jewish refugee? And what should the US Senate do about it?

To

Senator Mark Kirk

US Senate

Capitol Hill

Washington, D.C.

USA

Dear Sir

From the media I hear that you have introduced a bill (amendment to the FY 2013 funding bill) which aims to change the definition of "Palestinian refugee" and make it apply solely to people who were personally uprooted in 1948 from the territory which became the State of Israel. Your bill would therefore have the effect of depriving the descendants of these original refugees from having a refugee status.

As an Israeli, I am quite astonished by this idea. After all, the assumption enshrined in our Law of Return, ceremoniously enacted by Israel's Parliament soon after the creation of the state, is that refugee status is inheritable in perpetuity, regardless of how many generations have passed since the moment of exile. Indeed, this refugee status remains fully in force even after the passage of nearly two thousand years. It is on this basis that all Jews anywhere – deemed to be descended from those exiled when the Roman Empire destroyed Jerusalem - are entitled to automatic citizenship in the state of Israel. As of this moment, more than thirteen million people worldwide are deemed by Israeli law to be Jewish exiles, of whom more than five millions had already implemented their rights under the law, while the others are entitled to do so at any moment they choose.

As it presently stands, your bill would require the Secretary of State to submit a report to Congress on how many people are receiving assistance from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency "whose place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948 and who were displaced as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict; and how many are only descendants of those people".

While you are about it, you might consider also mandating a report on the people who are receiving the benefits of the Israeli Law of Return, so as to find out how many of them are those "whose place of residence was Judea between the years 68 AD and 70 AD and who were displaced as a result of the Roman-Judean conflict; and how many are only descendants of those people".

Sincerely Yours

Adam Keller

POB 2542

Holon 58125

Israel

1453ak@gmail.com

===========================================

I have written the above letter after United States Senator Mark Kirk introduced a piece of legislation aimed at re-defining who is a Palestinian refugee and in effect drastically reducing their number.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4234381,00.html

http://www.jta.org/news/article/2012/05/24/3096476/senate-distinguishes-between-palestinian-refugees-and-descendants

If you agree with my approach, pointing out some logical implications touching upon basic tenets of Zionism and of the State of Israel, you can also contact Senator Kirk - either sending him a copy of my letter with your endorsement or composing a text of your own. If you do, I would appreciate a copy, and also one of any response you get.

Yours, Adam Keller

Sending online comments to Senator Kirk

http://www.kirk.senate.gov/?p=comment_on_legislation

Senator Kirk's  facebook page

http://www.facebook.com/SenatorKirk

More options of contacting Senator Kirk

http://www.kirk.senate.gov/index.cfm

http://www.contactingthecongress.org/cgi-bin/newmemberbio.cgi?lang=&member=ILJR&site=ctc2011

The Nakba and the Minister of Education and the Minister of Culture and us

In a map published by the British Mandatory Government in 1945 I located the area where I now live. Within walking distance from my home, currently in the center of the city of Holon,  there appear on this map ​​the fields and orchards of Palestinians from the town of Yazur - fields bearing the name  "Wadi en-Nada" (Morning Dew Valley).

Today in this area there is a small quiet street named for Arthur Ruppin, a founder of the Zionist Movement. Ruppin devoted most of his life to the obtaining of Arab lands and the settlement of Jews on them, so as to create the basis for a Jewish state. At first he thought it was possible to achieve this goal without conflict with the inhabitants of the country. Later, he came to the conclusion that realization of the Zionist enterprise would inevitably entail a conflict - and that this enterprise must go ahead anyway, at all costs. There must still be, in refugee camps somewhere, people who remember Wadi en-Nada from their childhoods. Had they wanted – and been able - to visit Ruppin Street in the city of Holon, it is doubtful whether they could have recognized anything. (Perhaps, here and there among the houses, an ancient tree which had already been there in 1948...)

Two weeks ago, on the night of Independence Day when the citizens of Israel celebrated the sixty-fourth anniversary of the establishment of the state, a small group of activists planned to go out into the celebration in the streets of central Tel Aviv and spread on the sidewalk pieces of paper bearing the names of cities and towns and villages which were destroyed during the creation of this state and which thereupon became "abandoned property", empty houses and fields and orchards where a large part of Israel's citizens came to live. The Tel Aviv police considered that the spreading of these pieces of paper might  cause "a serious disturbance of public order". Therefore, police imposed a several hours' blockade on the office of the Zochrot ("Remembering") group and detained several of its activists. The police's conduct naturally imparted to this action a great public resonance, far more than the organizers had expected or hoped for.

This week, Jewish and Arab students conducted a commemoration of the Nakba at the Tel Aviv University. The university which was established at the village of Sheikh Munis Village, a village whose inhabitants did not take part in the war waged by their people against the newly formed State of Israel, and whose non-participation in that war did not save them from becoming refugees nor did their village escape being razed and erased from the map. The Minister of Education of the State of Israel strongly denounced this intended ceremony and made undisguised threats against the university which gave permission for it to be held – and nevertheless, it did take place on schedule. And next day the Zochrot activists went out on the streets of Central Tel Aviv and at last placed on the sidewalk their pieces of papers with the names of destroyed villages, and what a surprise! There was no public disorder to be witnessed. Nothing worse than a few loud but on the whole civilized street debates.

"But they brought it on themselves: they had rejected the Partition Plan!" Opponents said this on that day, as they say it wherever the issue comes up.  In 1947, the Palestinians rejected the Partition Plan proposed at the time by the United Nations - namely, that the Palestinians would have to give up in favor of the Zionist Jews some 55% of the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, and themselves rest content with the remaining 45%. For rejecting this, the Palestinians were punished with the loss of homes and fields and property and becoming refugees. And if so, what does it imply for the Israelis who at the present day reject  the Partition Plan nowadays proposed by the UN and the entire international community? Under this plan, the State of Israel would give up 22% of the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River (i.e., the West Bank and Gaza Strip) and have to stay content with "only" 78%...

"What are these Arab villages which Zochrot is speaking about and trying to present to the public? They present a map on their website, and the map is full of dots. Dots, dots, dots" stated the angry Limor Livnat, Minister of Culture, at the stormy debate in the Knesset. "Dots, from the north of the country to the south, even south of Beersheba. These dots, which are the villages they talk about, are all over the State of Israel. I found some in the Tel Aviv area, dozens of dots. In Bat Yam, Rishon Lezion, Rehovot - where not? Also in Beit Shemesh, Netanya, Or Akiva, around each and every one of all these regions. At Tiberias, Madam Speaker. In Beit Shean. Where not? Indeed, where not?"

Indeed, the Minister is right in her description. Everywhere, throughout the State of Israel, towns and villages were destroyed. Many of them were wiped off the map, as our country's bulldozers did their work well. But the villages remained in the old maps in various libraries and archives, and it is difficult to collect and destroy all of them. And  memories are left, among people who are no longer young, but who are still alive and who still remember.

In theory (very much in theory) it should have been Zionists, more than anyone one, who would have understood and sympathized with the demand to realize the Right of Return, which is so central to the national consciousness of the Palestinians. For after all, what is the basis of Zionism if not the assertion that  all Jews, wherever they may be, are refugees whose ancestors were expelled  from this country, refugees who - all of them without exception – are entitled to exercise the Right of Return. Even after two thousand years have passed, even though there is not a single Jew now living who can point to a specific village or a specific field and say "Here is where my personal ancestors lived two thousand years ago". And if it can be so after two thousand years, all the more it can be after sixty-four years, when there are still many people who remember their own destroyed village, and a lot of younger people who had never been  there but who know exactly where each house had been, each well, each olive tree, even if on the ground everything had been totally destroyed.

Precisely sixty-four years ago, on May 15, 1948, David Ben Gurion stood up at  the hall of the Old Museum in Tel Aviv, and read out the text of the Israeli Declaration of Independence, including the words: "After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout their dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom". Thereupon, the representatives of all parties and factions in the Zionist Movement came up and signed the text. Had these words been translated into Arabic and read verbatim in Ramallah or Gaza or any of the refugee camps, certainly the representatives of all parties and factions in the Palestinians National Movement would have come up and signed them, just as their Israeli counterparts did.

So far – theories and "might have beens". In the reality in which we live, it is very difficult to conceive, as a concrete idea to be actually implemented, a situation in which the State of Israel would consent to a full correction of the injustice which is at this state's very foundation and bedrock.

Though growing dim in recent years, the hope is not yet lost that a government would eventually be established in the State of Israel which would agree to terminate occupation which had been going on since 1967, and facilitate the creation of the independent and sovereign State of Palestine, with no  settlement enclaves in its territory, and its border with Israel based on the borders of June 4, 1967.

In particularly optimistic scenarios, the peace movement inside Israel would  recover and grow stronger, and external pressures increase, all pressures together bringing about an end to the occupation. Especially if Barack Obama gets re-elected as President of the United States of America, and takes up the issues of the Middle East from the point where his elections campaign interrupted his all-out confrontation with Binyamin Netanyahu, and as a second term President would be no longer bothered by the force which an Israeli government can muster within American politics. In an optimistic scenario one can think of an Israeli government signing an agreement with the Palestinians, ending the occupation and gaining for that step the support of a large majority among the citizens of Israel, with opposition limited to a minority of settlers and their religious-nationalist supporters.

Even so, it is very difficult to expect that the Palestinian refugees will get more than what was on the table in the Taba talks of January 2001 – i.e. the return of a limited number of them into Israel's territory, and not necessarily to their original villages.

At a minimum, the State of Israel must recognize the injustice which it had done to the Palestinians, and understand that accepting a state within the 1967 borders would be for the Palestinians a very hard and very painful concession.

If at all, it could only succeed if the State of Israel makes to the Palestinians a really generous offer - a two-state solution fully implemented without tricks and shenanigans. And not too late.

A brief history of land robbers, judges and slippery lawyers

Shortly after the IDF entry into the West Bank and the establishment of the military government which continues to this day, it was Meir Shamgar – head of the army's judicial branch, later Attorney General and still later President of the Supreme Court – who resolved to give occupied Palestinians the option of appealing to the Supreme Court in Jerusalem against the acts of the army set to rule over them. This was considered a significant expression of what was then termed "enlightened occupation" and speakers for Israel took great pride in it during their appearances worldwide.

But there were limits to enlightenment. The Supreme Court flatly refused to hear appeals based on the Fourth Geneva Convention, though the State of Israel had been among the first to sign it, already in 1949. Quite simply, this Convention speaks of the duties and obligations set on an occupying power in its relationship with inhabitants of the Occupied Territory – and the State of Israel refused to recognize that the West Bank is Occupied Territory, and found all sorts of other terms such as "Administered Territory" or "Disputed Territory". Government jurists were well able to phrase it in learned legal terms. It is always possible to find lawyers ready to formulate a legal case fitting one's needs. Gangsters know it, as do  prime ministers.

Under the Geneva Convention, an occupying power is obliged to maintain the status quo which existed in the territory upon its entry. It is certainly not supposed to settle its own citizens in the Occupied Territory, provide them a generous package of subsidies and incentives, and create a new and completely different demographic situation. But the government lawyers  concluded that it was not an Occupied Territory and the Geneva Convention does not apply.  As a special favor, the State of Israel would uphold the humanitarian requirements arising from the Convention. But,  what the humanitarian requirements are was left to the discretion of the state of Israel, its government, its army, and most importantly its settlers.

For example, the aspiration of landowners to retain ownership of their land was not a humanitarian issue. Rather, it was deemed to be a security issue. Thus, it was not very difficult for settlers to obtain land. Quite simply, the General in Command signed a decree stating that in his expert opinion as a high ranking military officer, the land located at area X of village Y was required for security purposes. Forthwith, the area was taken from its Palestinian owner, and they were forbidden to ever enter into it again as it was declared a closed military zone, and was surrounded by a fence and settlers joyfully entered. Formally the General stated in his decree that the land was seized for  temporary security purposes only, for a limited period of ten years, but this did not cause the settlers any problem, either – when the stipulated period ended the General just signed an new decree extending the seizure of the land for  temporary security needs for another ten years. In some cases he added an adjacent piece of land, which was also seized for strictly temporary security needs and handed over to the settlers who thereupon declared they would never leave these lands of Eretz Yisrael, the sacred Land of our Forefathers.

There were, indeed, those who asked naïve questions. How precisely did the transfer of civilian populations from Israel to Occupied Territory serve security needs? Indeed, what contribution to the security of Israel could be provided by a growing presence of pregnant women and young children? Did this not constitute, in fact, a new burden on the army's resources? But when such  questions arose in the Supreme Court, the judges proved very reluctant to set  their own civilian opinion in opposition to the military expert opinion of the Commanding General and the Army Chief of Staff, and the seizing of land for the purpose of establishing settlements regularly got the court's approval. When the Supreme Court unanimously gave a go-ahead to the confiscation of privately-owned Palestinian land north of Ramallah for the purpose of establishing a new settlement called Beit El, then Prime Minister Menachem Begin declared happily, "There are judges in Jerusalem."

And so did things go on for years and years, until that night when land was seized near Nablus, and the establishment of the Elon Moreh settlement was announced, and a road hastily paved through the land which a Palestinian farmer had no chance to harvest. Mobile homes were brought in, and on the same day the newly arrived settlers declared on TV: "This is our land and home, we will never go away". The story made unfavorable headlines in the country and around the world. The Peace Now Movement organized hundreds of protesters who blocked the new access road and laid siege to the settlers and spent the night opposite them. The present writer was also there on that night, in cold mountain night in the bare field and the hotly bursting protest.

And when this event arrived at the halls of the Supreme Court in Jerusalem, there were handed to the judges the expert opinions of Major General (Ret.) Matti Peled and Lieutenant-General (Ret.) Haim Bar-Lev, whose professional  expert opinion of the security situation flatly contradicted the opinion of the incumbent Chief of Staff and concluded that there was no security value to the establishment of a civilian settlement in Occupied Territory. And the judges took up this opinion and ruled that there expropriating Palestinian private land for the establishment of a civilian settlement was unacceptable, and the new settlement of Elon Moreh had to be dismantled forthwith. The settlers and their friends thereupon burst out in a bitter outcry, as they do in such cases.

But as was already stated, at need, it is always possible to find lawyers ready to formulate a legal case fitting one's needs, whether one is a gangster or a Prime Minister. Some jurists have a slippery and very imaginative and creative mind. In this case, a talented lawyer named Pli'a Albeck gave the matter some thought, and she eventually came up with the saving formula: no need to  expropriate private land, you can just settle on state land.

It turned out that there were lots and lots of state lands around, more than half of the entire West Bank, more than enough for hundreds of thousands of settlers. Lots of state land, most of it lands which Palestinians had held for generations until Mrs. Albeck discovered them to be actually state lands. Yes, state lands they were, by all sorts of very creative interpretations of Ottoman law which still applies, very creative interpretations which the Ottoman Sultans themselves never thought of. Bottom line: Before, landowners used to get from representatives of the Israel Defense Forces a piece of paper reading "We hereby inform you that your land had been seized for security purposes, so kindly step aside forthwith".  Now, they started getting a different kind of paper stating in essence "We hereby inform you that we discovered this land is not yours but ours. It is state land, I.e. Israeli governmental land, i.e. settler land, so kindly step aside most immediately".

The Supreme Court accepted this reasoning, and the Elon Moreh settlement was moved simply some kilometers to a new location that turned out to be state land, and dozens of other settlements sprung up, all on state land. The Supreme Court gave its wholesale approval to settlement on state land, and the settlements increased and grew and developed, and also survived successfully  the Oslo period and continued to grow and grow. The settlers were, however, not quite satisfied with the abundance of state lands available to them. They continued to covet private land, and establish facts and even more facts on the ground. And while the General in Command no longer issued for them official confiscation orders, also when they seized plots of private land with a manifest violation of the law they immediately got soldiers to guard them day and night and protect them against the landowners, and were immediately connected to electricity and water, and got paved access roads, as well as generous government mortgages and subsidies.

State officials contemptuously pushed aside the landowners' claims. But some Israeli peace activists such as Dror Etkes and Hagit Ofran conducted a thorough research to locate and map out the law-breaking and land theft perpetrated in broad daylight. Lawyers dedicated to Human Rights, such as Michael Sfard, went to the courts to confront the government and the settlers and their slippery representatives. And the evidence of theft and law breaking were clear and conclusive, and impossible to ignore. Even the gross intervention by the parliamentary right wing in the composition of the Supreme Court and the identity of its President was to no avail.  The court set clear deadlines for evacuation and demolition of houses built with manifest illegality on private Palestinian land. And now has come the time set by the court to dismantle the Ulpana Hill settlement, which is an extension and enlargement on private Palestinian land of the settlement of Beit El, which happens to be the same settlement which was as a whole founded on private Palestinian land thirty years, at which time the expropriation of land for security needs had been authorized by the court.

And now again the settlers and their friends are  bursting out in bitter outcry, as they do in such cases. To the point that they made use of their power within the Likud Party to undermine the rule of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and thwarted his plans to call early elections and get  himself another period at the helm, and forced him into a rather dubious deal with the leader of what until now passed for "The Opposition ". And yesterday morning the Prime Minister called together his advisers and his ministers and his partners, old and new, searching for a way to give a valid legal basis to the robbery of land in broad daylight. As was already remarked, at need it is always possible to find lawyers ready to formulate a legal case fitting one's needs, whether one be  a gangster or a Prime Minister.

A matter of education

It happened in between Holocaust Memorial Day and the Memorial Day for the soldiers killed in the state's wars. 

High school pupils were taken by their schools to see Yehoshua Sobol's "Ghetto", an award-winning Israeli play which had a global success. And what a  shame! As it turned out, the kids were not at all impressed by the horrors of Nazi persecution of Jews, which were presented on the stage by some of the best actors in Israel.  How could it happen that they constantly laughed and jeered and rudely interrupted the actors, throughout the play? And worse, how come that when presented with a realistic scene of a Nazi beating up a Jew, they  identified with the perpetrator rather than with the victim, broke into cheers for the Nazi on the stage and called out: "Yeah, Yeah!," Hit him harder, on the head!" and "Good job, Good job! ". How could Israeli pupils behave like that, when they had been constantly educated about the crucial importance of the Holocaust in Jewish history, how the Holocaust which fell upon the jewish people constitutes the ultimate, unquestionable justification for the creation of Israel and the establishment of the Israeli Defense Forces and the employment of the Israel Defense Forces as an iron fist mercilessly smiting any enemy who dares to stand up against us?

Indeed, there was one person who dared to draw far-reaching political conclusions. Dr. Ze'ev Degani, principal of the Herzliya Gymnasium, said: "This happened  because of the violence which one people uses against another. We should not be surprised that the violence turns back on us, that it cannot be kept somewhere else, in another field". Of course many people found his words annoying - in a sense, even more annoying than the pupils' behavior in itself. In fact, Degani's words were furiously rejected out of hand by a succession of commentators and officials, foremost among them Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar in person. The Minister took care to get things straight: Of course, there can be no connection between the behavior of rowdy pupils  and the presence of Israel in Judea and Samaria, the Land of Our Forefathers. It's time that leftists drop the bad habit of always talking about the occupation, and that the engage in education rather than in irrelevant political issues. Next time, the teachers should just take care to have a profound pedagogical preparation for attending this play, and they must maintain a stronger discipline over the pupils during the play itself. Then, such things will not happen again.

Well, this storm of controversy died down and was forgotten after two days, like all public turmoils in our country. And then came the Sixty Fourth  Independence Day of the State of Israel. And on the main news magazine in the state TV channel, the lady announcer told with playful good humor the events of this festive day, noting that in this year's Independence Day a special emphasis had been placed on increasing and strengthening the ties between Israel's citizens and their army, the Israeli Defense Forces. So as to help strengthen the motivation for military service which has weakened a bit in recent years - which might in future pose the Army some manpower problems. In token of which, army bases had been opened wide to the citizens - adults as well as children.

"For one day the children left their war toys at home and came to play with the real thing," said the newscaster with a smile on her face, replaced by the images captured that morning by the TV reporter covering the festive events. A girl, six or seven years old, filled the screen. She was sitting on top of a tank and turning round and round a machine gun, her finger on the trigger and with a bright smile aiming the barrel - which was as long as she was tall – at the indulgently smiling adults and at the other children who sat on the cannon of a neighboring tank.

The news bulletin ended with the voicing of some criticism: The announcer remarked indignantly that Israelis who had spent the day in various national parks left behind them a lot of garbage, a careless and negligent  behavior by any standards.

Shortly after this news broadcast was shown on state TV, there was somebody who found a slightly different way of celebrating Israel's sixty-fourth birthday. Namely, by going out into the night streets of the Shapira slum neighborhood, in South Tel Aviv, and hurling Molotov cocktails at the homes of refugees and asylum seekers and migrant workers, some of whom had fled to Israel under the threat of genocide in their African homelands. There were no casualties, but the apartments were burned with their meager contents, as was the small makeshift kindergarten set up by Africans for their children.

Residents of the neighborhood who were later interviewed in the media said they don't hold with throwing Molotov cocktails, but that it's time for the government to take action and deport all these Africans, as it is unacceptable to concentrate all the human garbage in one neighborhood. And the kindergarten will most probably not be restored any more, since even before the incendiary attacks there were neighbors who strongly objected to seeing so many black children inside their building. And on this, there was nothing to be heard from  the Minister of Education, as this had been an informal kindergarten, not part of the official education system of Israel, and many of the children in it anyway have an unclear legal status and might be deported from the country even before the end of the school year.

Certainly, there is no call to fault Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar for not giving attention to such trifles, when he is hard working on a thorough overhaul of the entire Israeli educational system, from kindergarten up to and including university. On all levels, the study of Jewish heritage must be strengthened and emphasized. For example, just last week the minister and his staff took care to remove from the curriculum a textbook in which heinous signs of post-Zionism had been detected. This book quotes extensively from the notorious  Goldstone Report... Moreover, it argued that a large part of immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union did not come to Israel for reasons of Zionism, but out of a simple wish to improve their standard of living.

All this was of course intolerable for the zealous minister. The book was phased out of use forthwith. Israeli pupils will no longer undergo leftist brainwashing, and the replacement textbook will make it clear that the Goldstone Report was a tissue of malicious lies and anti-Semitic propaganda against the world's most moral army.And of course, also that all Jews who come here from Russia (as well as all Russian Christians who also come here if they could show one Jewish grandparent) came only and solely because of the flame of Zionism pulsing in their hearts.

Indeed, Minister Sa'ar has his hands more than full. He is taking a lot of trouble and effort to upgrade the Ariel College, in the West Bank settlement of the same name, to full university status - despite the obstructions of the bastards on the Council for Higher Education. And he also spoke as the guest of honor in the conference of Im Tirzu, ("If you wish it"), a watchdog movement which set itself the task of rooting out and denouncing leftist and post-Zionist professors who managed to cunningly infiltrate university departments and faculties, especially at the notorious Ben Gurion University in Be'er Sheba.
 
For the high school pupils, the minister took care to arrange special tours of Hebron, City of the Patriarchs. Pupils are boarded buses with bullet-proof windows, going to Hebron and systematically move from one settler enclave at its heart to the next one. "The Settlement Project is based on the belief in our right over this land. From a young age I believed that settlers perform a vital mission and protect the people of Israel," said the honorable minister. Accordingly, pupils are told that the Tombs of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs in Hebron are the Cradle of the Jewish Nation, that the Jewish people had looked up to Hebron for thousands of years, that in 1967 the city was at last restored to the Jews and that a happy new reality was created there with the arrival of the settlers.

One high school in Jerusalem had the audacity to initiate a slightly different plan of visiting Hebron. They met with Palestinian Hebronites and also heard the testimonies of soldiers from "Breaking the Silence" who had served in this city and had gone through not quite edifying experiences. Of course, the visit ended soon after it began, getting a quite hostile reception from settlers who were determined to expel the leftist pupils and their teachers. (True, it is not sure that even that sufficed to convey the message wanted by the Minister of Education...).

Even so, the leftists still did not despair, and published a letter signed by hundreds of teachers announcing their refusal to go with their pupils on the Hebron tours organized by the Education Minister. Michal Shkolnikov, who on this past Independence Day lighted one of the twelve torches at the alternative ceremony organized by the Yesh Gvul Movement, told of the buses full of teachers going to Hebron and watching the empty streets in the city's heart where it is forbidden for Palestinians to walk, and the empty stores which  Israeli soldiers prevent customers from reaching, and the walls covered profusely with graffiti calling to the expulsion and murder of Arabs. "We hear teachers express their shock, and say they did not know it was like that, and that they would not go with their pupils to visit the settlers there. And also school principals and Education Ministry supervisors tacitly support us, even if they can not say so publicly."

Meanwhile, Minister Sa'ar took another initiative: in order to strengthen the Jewish heritage and national values, the Ministry's Heritage Program was also extended to the kindergartens: children there were required to hoist the National Flag and sing the National Anthem at a weekly ceremony, and to learn by heart all the words of the anthem.

What happened in practice? Nothing happened. The kindergarten teachers did not formally organize and made no outspoken protest. They just ignored the Minister's directive, holding no ceremonies and hoisting no flags. "I did not do it because it seemed to me an annoying directive. There's a lot of other important values ​​to be instilled in the children," said R., a kindergarten teacher from Jerusalem.

And the minister? He just decided to make a tactical retreat. A new ministry directive canceled the obligation to teach the words of the anthem and stated that flag raising ceremonies will take place "only on special occasions".

It might do this country some good if the kindergarten teachers were to form their own party and run in the forthcoming elections. I would definitely consider voting for such a party.

Elections soon - but about what?

"Tens of millions of dollars had been spent by the Foreign and Information Ministries, as well as by dozens of other bodies, in the attempt to convince the world that Israel wants peace while the Palestinians refuse it. Now, all this money had gone down the drain, a total loss" lamented the well-known Ben Dror Yemini in his column on the pages of as "Ma'ariv". The one responsible for the loss of these great investments was none other than Yuval Diskin,  former chief of the Shabak Security Service, in his much-quoted speech during the weekend: " The Government of Israel has no intention of making peace with the Palestinians. We have had enough of these  stories in the media about our wanting to negotiate, 'only that Abu Mazen doesn't want it'. This government has no interest in talking to the Palestinians and no interest to getting to a solution with the Palestinians. People in the government know very well that if they were to take the smallest step in this direction, the PM's soundly-based cabinet will be shaken to the core, and his strong government coalition would fall apart. The government has no interest in making any change in the situation vis-a-vis the Palestinians."

Diskin immediately came under a heavy barrage from the government's ministers and speakers, who charged that his comments were due only to personal frustrations and hinted at dark political machinations. But on that same day, the government also approached the Supreme Court, asking to be  released from its legal obligation to remove settlers from five structures built with manifest illegality on private Palestinian land clearly – a removal which should have taken place today. Not only a real peace initiative toward the Palestinians is beyond the ability or desire of the current government of Israel. So is also enforcement of the law on settlers who robbed Palestinian land in broad daylight. Any attempt to carry out such enforcement may already result in the downfall of the government.

And no wonder. The Foreign Minister of Israel is a settler, and another settler  party is a partner in the government coalition, and yet another settler party supports the government from outside. And also in the Likud, the main governing party, settlers and their friends are numerous, and they have established a powerful position in the party structure. Likud Knesset Members who care about their political career should beware of offending the settlers. In short - there would be no point in the Palestinians talking with an Israeli government which would risk collapse if it dares to so much as evacuate five (5) manifestly illegal structures (illegal even according to Israeli law)  in a West Bank settlement.

But still, this does not seem to be the main issue over which we are going to have early general elections this year. What are the elections about? What will the candidates discuss and debate? There is a very hot issue now capturing  the headlines, of which everybody is hurrying to catch hold and dwell upon. Namely: are young Ultra-Orthodox Israelis going to get to the army recruiting offices, or will they go on taking up holy studies in the yeshivas as they did since Israel was founded?

Much noise and commotion, a lot of bills aimed at dragging the Ultra-Orthodox into the army. But even if they do go there, what then? What does the army - with or without  Ultra-Orthodox soldiers in its ranks – do to the Palestinian living under its military occupation for forty-four years? What is its role in establishing settlements and providing the settlers with around the clock guard services? This is no longer a cool issue in Israeli politics today – in fact, politicians tend to actively avoid it.

For example, "Uru!" ("Wake Up!"), one of the many new movements which are emerging and flourishing recently, has the proclaimed intention of waking up and stimulating the Israeli public on a wide range of topics: education, narrowing the gaps between rich and poor, personal safety, changing the system of government and equalizing the burden of military service among different sectors. And the Territories? The Palestinians? The new movement's director general remarked forthrightly that "On diplomatic issues the Israeli society is sharply split". Therefore, the Wake Upers decided to make no attempt to wake up society about this issue.

In short, in the forthcoming election campaign we are likely to see candidates   perform complicated acrobatic contortions in order to avoid any need to utter such dirty words as "occupation", "Palestinians", "settlements" and of course the dirtiest word of all - "peace".  Which is, of course, not the first time. Many times before did the State of Israel attempt to sweep this issue under the rug and just forget about it. Somehow it always manages to reappear and disturb our rest yet again.