Redemption from the mouth of a leper

Photos: Motti Kimchi/AFP - Ynet

The final stretch. Four days to elections, and everything is still hanging in the balance, and nothing has yet been decided. Will Binyamin Netanyahu fall or remain in power? Will a new government  be established in Israel, or will it not? And if a new government does come about, will it bring about a significant change or will it prove nothing but bitter disappointment? Until the morning of March 18, we will not know, and maybe not then, either. In these last days I think a lot about something which happened on one night many years ago, and of its significance for the political upheaval which will or will not occur in the Israel of March 2015.


In the summer of 1971, the word "Intifada" had not yet entered the Hebrew language. In the papers of the time we could read of the army and security service launching “a large-scale anti-terrorism operation in the Gaza Strip", but the reports did not really go into the fine details. At the invitation of a high school classmate, I arrived one evening at a meeting in the damp basement of an old house in downtown Tel Aviv. Twenty youngsters were sitting there, and in front of us was a soldier in uniform, just returned from Gaza. He told us things that were not published in any newspaper. He told of the arbitrary beatings of by passers in the streets  of Gaza, sometimes using whips, of bulldozers razing houses and whole streets in the refugee camps, and also of extrajudicial executions.  "People are located according to blacklists, captured, shot in the head at point blank range, and the bodies are thrown into dry water holes". We, the high school students assembled in that basement, protested strongly. We did not believe it, we did not want to believe it. "That's not true! Our army does not do such things!". The soldier said, "It’s all true. I've seen it myself. I have done it myself, and now I can’t sleep at night”.

Then we produced on an old stencil machine which stood at the corner of the basement several thousand leaflets entitled "The Truth about what is happening in Gaza! Residents of Tel Aviv, read what the military censorship is hiding from you!". We went out, two by two, to spread the leaflets in the mailboxes of the sleeping city, one putting them in and the other keeping an eye for police patrol cars.

Sometimes I happen to meet  one of the others who had been there on that night, most of whom are no longer politically involved.  When I ask "Do you remember that evening with the soldier from Gaza?" the answer is invariably "Of course I remember, how can  you forget something like that?”

I will never know the name of that soldier who influenced my life. But by now I do know the name of the commanding officer who sent him on such tasks. The name of that commander, cleared for publication many years later, was Meir Dagan. Dagan was a confidant and personal friend of Ariel Sharon, then the General in charge of the IDF Southern Command, and he headed a secret unit called “Sayeret Rimon” which was in charge of dirty tricks in the Gaza Strip. At that time the operation was considered  a great success – though that success proved quite temporary, the Palestinians rising up again, with greater intensity, some years later. Meir Dagan continued to be among Sharon’s associates through various vicissitudes of military and political fortunes. After being elected Prime Minister, Sharon appointed Dagan to head the Mossad, Israel’s external intelligence agency. Most of what he did in the later part of his career is still classified information, but the clues which the media let drop made it clear that also after 1971 he managed to accumulate a lot of "blood on the hands”.

After completing his term as Mossad Director, Meir Dagan began to voice public criticism, ever more acute, of government policies. In particular, in the years when the possibility of an Israeli attack against Iran stood conspicuously on the public agenda, Dagan placed himself in the vanguard of public opposition to any such offensive. At first it was a little surprising to see him in that role - then we grew accustomed to it.

Thus, on Saturday night a week ago, it was not a total surprise to find the same Meir Dagan as the keynote speaker at the rally held in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square under the slogan "Israel Wants a Change," a rally designed to mobilize and focus the struggle for the overturn and replacement of Binyamin Netanyahu. Tens of thousands of people filled the square, overflowing into side streets, the largest most hopeful gathering of the Israeli Peace Camp for many years. Meir Dagan’s speech was greeted with prolonged clapping.

”I do not belong to any political party. I'm speaking as a soldier who wishes to do whatever is necessary and possible for the country to whose security I have devoted forty-five years of my life. I have no other ambitions. Israel is a country surrounded by enemies, but these enemies do not frighten me, I am frightened by our leaders. I am afraid of a leadership which has no determination and gives no personal example, which exhibits indecision and stagnation. For six years in a row Binyamin Netanyahu has been Prime Minister, six years in which he has not taken any real initiative to change the face of the region, or create a better future. Why do you want to be in charge of our destinies if you are so afraid to take responsibility?

”On Netanyahu's shift, Israel waged the longest war since the War of Independence. For an entire summer Israel’s civilians huddled in air raid shelters under thousands of rockets, while the soldiers suffered heavy losses. And it ended with nil results - zero deterrence, zero political achievement.

 “The health care system is collapsing. The housing crisis is peaking. The gaps in income continue to grow, the periphery had never been so far behind the center. One in three children lives in poverty. 40% of Israelis can’t make ends meet. Israelis look and  see a national leadership which cares nothing about them. So, where are you going, Mr. Prime Minister? Why should a person seek a position of leadership when he does not want to lead? How is it that this country, which is far stronger than all other countries of the region put together, is unable to make a strategic move that will improve our situation? The answer is simple: we have a leader who is involved in one struggle only  - the struggle for his own political survival.

”I do not want to get to a binational state. I do not want an Apartheid state. I do not want to rule over three million Arabs. I do not want us to remain hostages to fear, despair and stagnation. I think it is time to wake up, I hope that the people of Israel will no longer be held frozen by fear, by the ever new  threats of which we are warned  day after day.

“I have a dream - to leave my three children and seven grandchildren a different  country. I dream that they will be able to devote their life to growth, development, realization of dreams – not to fighting for their homes. I would like to leave them a better life than the life I have lived. I would like to leave them a society which will root out discrimination and violence, which will take back its heritage and take up responsibility for its fate. A society which will ensure a real opportunity for all its citizens and will strive for true equality.

”To get out of our difficult situation, all it takes is a courageous leadership which is able to take decisions. Does anyone think that the country’s current leadership is such?". The crowd responded with a resounding “No!". "I would like to appeal to all those who still say that there is no alternative to Netanyahau. I speak as one who has worked personally with three different Prime Ministers, having  different styles of leadership, as one who knows many of the contestants in this elections. There definitely is a better alternative!”.  The crowd responded with chants of "Herzog, Herzog, Herzog!”.

In his long interview on Channel One TV, Meir Dagan reiterated much the same positions, but added something personal hitherto unknown. “This is a photo of my grandfather, who was the Rabbi of a small town in Poland. The German soldiers who murdered the town’s Jews have taken this photo of him a few minutes before killing him. It was found in a Nazi archive after the war." - "And what is your conclusion from this chilling story?" "Of course, I have an obvious conclusion, 'Never Again', that nowadays we can defend ourselves. But I think also of the other side of the story. How the Nazis took a unit of regular soldiers, who to begin with were not so  different from the soldiers of any other army, and made of them cold-blooded killers. With all the differences in the situations, this is a danger that any army must be aware of." There can be no doubt that Meir Dagan knows what he is talking about.

As the crowd around me on the square cheered Meir Dagan,  I recalled the soldier from 1971 and the improvised leaflets furtively spread in the mailboxes of Tel Aviv. If next week Yitzhak Herzog of the Israeli Labor Party is elected Prime Minister of Israel, he will have a great debt to Meir Dagan and to the speech delivered in the square a week and a half before elections day.

“But I will not take the news of redemption / If it comes from the mouth of a leper. /Let a pure one bring the news, let the pure redeem/ and if the pure prove unable/ then let me die among the ravages of the siege”. So wrote the poet Rachel Bluwstein in one of the most famous pieces of modern Hebrew poetry - her imagery based on the Biblical story of the besieged city whose inhabitants were reduced to starvation and cannibalism and to whom four despised lepers brought the message of the miraculous lifting of the siege.

I feel I can’t afford to be that squeamish. If a person who had shed a lot of blood and perpetrated many atrocities can at an advanced age become the standard bearer of the Peace Camp, I will not reject him.

Of Binyamin Netanyahu, his government and his friends and colleagues, there is nothing to expect - not even the slightest pinch of hope. The Herzog Government, if it gets established , may well disappoint us – only those of whom you expect something can let you down.  Let’s take the risk.

After the elections, the deluge

The Edies family home after the visit of the soldiers - photo ISM

He came. He saw. He made a speech – he made a speech indeed. Did he also win? That remains to be seen.

On Rotschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv, there was no clapping to the speech of Netanyahu. Activists of the renewing social protest movement erected a tent camp to protest the rising costs of housing, making the finding of an apartment a nearly impossible mission for hundreds of thousands of young Israelis. They erected a huge sign reading “All my friends have left the country, that is a greater threat than Iran” and invited the public to watch on a large screen the speech from Washington and make their comments: “While he will speak in America, we will remember the real situation of our lives. When the man for the Prime Minister’s Residence will stand in front of the US Congress we will look at both speech and a presentation on the standard and conditions of living here in Israel in the past few years. We will talk of our real problems:  frightening rents, a completely unbalanced housing market, destruction of the public housing and food prices beyond control. He will talk to the Americans,  and we will talk to each other in our own language, about the true problems of our daily life and the way to solve them. Come to the Netanyahu speech  and bring Purim rattles.” It is the immemorial Jewish custom on Purim to make noise with the rattles whenever the name of the evil Haman is mentioned.     

***

 “Netanyahu has no rivals in his acting ability. It would be very easy to imagine the PM on the stage in Broadway – with his ringing tones, well-timed pauses, changing expressions, eye blinks and hand movements” wrote Sima Kadmon in Yedioth Aharonot. To which can be added that Netanyahu not only plays the main role but also writes and directs the play.

As in any good theater play, there were several preliminary scenes designed to build up tension towards the climatic peak. First, the Wailing Wall and the highly publicized prayer for the success of his mission, which Netanyahu defined with characteristic modesty as “fateful and historic”. Then the photo opportunity of Prime Minister and loving wife boarding the plane.  True, in between there were some disharmonious background noises: Former Mossad Director Meir Dagan declared that Netanyahu’s visit to America and speech in Congress are causing the state of Israel a strategic damage and a long-term undermining of relations with its main ally. Similar things were written in an open letter signed by some two hundred retired senior military officers and security officials.

Netanyahu was not really perturbed: “In this historic mission I represent all citizens of Israel, also the ones who oppose me” he declared at the airport, and after a few seconds’ pause “And I represent the whole Jewish people”. Indeed, an elected Prime Minister can claim to represent all citizens of his country – though two weeks before new elections he might have been expected to wait and see if his mandate would be renewed. As to Jews who are not Israeli citizens, quite a few of them shared the position of the Jewish US Senator Dianne Feinstein, who defined Netanyahu’s claim to represent her as “arrogant and unworthy behavior”. Arrogant or not, whether or not world Jews want to be represented by Netanyahu, he had made up his mind to represent them and speak for them.

 While the Prime Minister’s plane was making its way over the Atlantic, the diplomatic commentator on the Voice of Israel news magazine remarked: “The United States has been in existence for 230 years. In all these years, this is the very first time that a foreign Head of State came to Capitol Hill in order to express open opposition to the policies of the President of the United States and make a sustained effort to foil those policies”. A historic opportunity indeed.  Knesset Member Ze’ev Elkin, PM Netnayhau’s close confidant, made a sharp attack on the Israeli opposition leaders: “The Prime Minister is going on a vital national mission, and instead of supporting him the opposition is  shooting him in the back”. Also Naftali Bennet of the Jewish Home Party, Netanyahu’s partner and rival, elaborated on the “shooting in the back” theme.

And then Netnayhau landed in Washington, and hurried to the warm-up performance at the AIPAC conference, telling sixteen thousand cheering supporters that they were all members of the Family, the “Mishpuche”. And from there to the climax which had been talked about for such a long time in advance, the rising of the curtain at the premiere at Capitol Hill. Until the last moment speculations continued on how many Democrat Senators and Representatives  would boycott the speech, and how many would enter the hall and perhaps even join some of the clapping. In the event there were about sixty boycotters, out of 232 Democrats in Congress. Is that a lot or a little? To be sure, it was more than the zero boycotters at any previous Congress speech by an Israeli Prime Minister.

Of course columnist Amnon Lord, the most loyal of Netnayhau’s retainers in the Israeli press, was sitting there in the Congress Gallery. Immediately afterwards he hastened to write an awe-struck report: “Also the Democrat leaders in Congress cheered Netanyahu! The first thing which I tried to see at the beginning of the session was what was going on at the Democrat side of the hall. When Nancy Pelosi  showed up in her brown dress and even Dianne Feinstein in purple, it was clear that those who hoped to see empty places would be disappointed. The hall was packed. Dozens of cheers raised the roof, there were some twenty standing ovations.” 

Indeed, Nancy Pelosi  - majority leader until the mid-term elections and still the leader of a considerable minority – was not among the boycotters. She entered the hall and remained seated throughout the Netanyahu’s speech. But a few hours after Amnon Lord sent his enthusiastic report from Washington, she a bit spoiled the picture for him. As other news channels reported, “Nancy Pelosi  left the hall demonstratively before Netanyahu’s departure, turning her back on him. ‘As a friend of Israel, I was near tears during this speech. I was saddened by his condescension. It was an insult to the intelligence of the American people."

 So what will happen now in Congress? The Republicans have a majority. They will pass a law to tie Obama’s hands in achieving a deal with Iran. Obama will promptly veto it. To overcome the Presidential veto, a two-thirds majority in Congress will be needed. The Republicans don’t have two thirds, to achieve that would require a mass defection of Democrats siding with the Republicans (and with Netanyahu). Would a speech constituting an insult to the intelligence be enough to get the Democrats into a head-on confrontation with an incumbent President of their own party?

So what is left of Netanyahu’s great speech? The net result is a king-size elections propaganda stunt, with the US Congress as a fabulous backdrop, broadcast into every Israeli household two weeks before elections day. The result: mediocre. It seems that the seepage of Likud voters, who had started wandering to other electoral attractions, was halted. By the latest polls, Likud is once again more or less neck to neck with Herzog ’s Labor Party (“The Zionist Camp” as it is now known, in alliance with Tzipi Livni). “If that is the extent of what Netanyahu achieved by a massive salvo of his heaviest artillery, he has some reasons to worry – and there are still a week and half of campaigning left to get through” wrote Yossi Werther, the veteran Ha’aretz commentator.   

And one more thing was left in the wake of the speech – yet another massive and highly emotional calling up of Holocaust, in service of the present-day political interests of the Government of Israel. “This is an existential issue for Israel and for the Jewish people, they want to exterminate us, Never Again!” was the refrain of Netanyahu’s speech, underscored by pointing to his character witness in the gallery, his good friend Elie Wiesel – the man who survived the Holocaust and made of that a quite good career over fifty years.  And since the speech was about Iran and it was the time of the Purim holiday, Netanyahu did not pass up the opportunity to make also an ample reference to the Persian villain Haman, who already 2300 years ago plotted to destroy the Jewish people (that is, assuming that the Book of Esther in the Bible depicts actual historical events …)

Netanyahu elaborated further on the theme of Nazis and Holocaust and the grave existential threat hanging over Israel. “If Iran is allowed to enrich Uranium, even without making bombs of it, that is as if the world in 1939 allowed Germany to construct the facilities at Auschwitz without as yet placing the Jews inside the gas chambers” wrote Orly Goldklang. And the aforementioned Amnon Lord added: “Netanyahu had no other choice but go to Washington and deliver his speech, in order to do all he could to avert this dangerous deal with Iran. His only other option was to do what Czechoslovak President  Benes did in 1938, sit at the edge of his bed and cry bitterly at hearing that the British and French had delivered his country to the Nazis in the Munich Agreement”.  But should Iran ever get nuclear weapons, would there really be nothing left to the Prime Minster of Israel other than bitter crying?

 “There is nothing secret about Iran’s acts and plans. You just need to google, it is all there on the Net” said Netanyahu in his speech. Which is quite true. But there is another subject which can also be found on the Net in great detail – the history of the Israeli nuclear program in the past sixty years. As will be found by anyone bothering to search, the State of Israel became a “nuclear threshold state” already in its first decade. Israel’s Founding Father David Ben Gurion aspired to nuclear arms, the Ultimate Deterrent, immediately upon the foundation of the state, and mobilized talented nuclear scientists to start on the job. As part of the 1956 military alliance with France, Ben Gurion’s disciple Shimon Peres got French aid in constructing the Dimona Nuclear Pile. The State of Israel crossed the threshold and was on a verge of constructing a nuclear bomb in the early 1960’s. U.S. President John Kennedy was strongly opposed to the Israeli nuclear project and made a great effort to stop it, though at the time the confrontation mostly did not get into the media. After Kennedy was assassinated and replaced by Lyndon Johnson, American opposition greatly decreased, and by 1967 Israel was already in possession of one or two nuclear bombs.  

 As had come out some years ago, during the time of great tension between Israel and its neighbors in May 1967, Shimon Peres and others Israeli decision-makers considered the option of making public Israeli passion of the Bomb and threaten to use it. As is well known, that option was not taken, the Bomb was kept under wraps and instead Israel embarked on the conventional offensive in which the West Bank. Gaza Strip and Golan Heights were captured.  In 1969 Israeli PM Golda Meir and US President Richard Nixon agreed on the “Nuclear Ambiguity” formula, still in force up to the present, under which the US would tolerate Israeli nuclear armament as long as Israel did not officially admit it. A lasting heritage of the most crooked of American Presidents, who amply earned the nickname “Tricky Dick”. 

Ever since, the Dimona Pile continued tireless operation and production of  ever-increasing stockpiles of weapons-grade uranium. Dozens, or possibly hundreds, of bombs were constructed, as well as missiles capable to delivering these bombs to any point in the Middle East and far beyond. Even the location of the bases where these missiles are placed is well known,  and satellite photos of them can be seen on the net. A few years ago, a handful of anti-nuclear activists conducted a protest vigil near the fence of one of these bases, near Moshav Zacharia west of Jerusalem (it did not get any media coverage). To complete the picture, Israel aspired also to a “Second Strike Capacity”, i.e. nuclear-armed submarines which can deliver a deadly revenge also to a surprise attack which would  devastate Israel. Such submarines the US was not willing to provide to Israel, but the government of Germany stepped into the breach.  In 1991, faced with the accusations of German companies having supplied raw materials for Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons, Germany bought an Israeli good conduct certificate by agreeing to supply Israel with submarines capable of launching missiles from mid-sea (it incidentally also helped create jobs at German shipyards facing harsh competition from the Far East…). Apparently, one of these submarines, carrying these missiles with these bombs, is also at this moment cruising deep under the Indian Ocean waters, off the shores of Iran. And such a submarine would also be there in the event of the harsh bad scenario in which by 2025 or 2030  Iran would cross the threshold and obtain one or two nuclear bombs of its own. 

As stated, in all of this there is no new or original revelation of mine. Everything was already said and written and is available on the net to anyone seeking it. Still, any Israeli talking of it must add cover up towards the military censorship with the face-saving formula “according to foreign sources” (as you can see, I am also doing that, Mr. Censor!).  But it would be vain to look anywhere in Netanyahu’s speech for this elephant in the middle of the room (considering the creature’s size, it might be more appropriate to call it a  tyranozaur).  Not can its presence be detected in the enormous volume of debate around the speech, neither in the words of Netanyahu’s supporters nor even in those of his opponents in the Israeli and American mainstream.

In all the history of Israel’s Knesset, there were very few Members who ever dared to try raising at the Knesset House the nuclear issue. It is an issue under a taboo even far deeper than the Palestinian issue. Year after year, the government of Israel renews the prohibition on nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu leaving the country. Evidently, not because he still knows some 1986 vintage secrets which had not yet been revealed, but because if he were to get to Washington and say loudly what everybody knows, he would cause a serious headache to the governments of Israel and the US alike. It is far easier to simply stop him from leaving the country. Thus, hardly anyone hears Vanunu. The whole world heard Netanyahu deliver a speech in which Iran is the one and only Middle Eastern country seeking to obtain nuclear arms and threaten its neighbors with them.

Yes, it should be noted that Netanyahu did mention the dangerous precedent of a country which succeeded in getting nuclear arms though the US President at the time tried to prevent it. North Korea, of course.

 ***

So, the elections are in less than two weeks. What is higher on the agenda of the voters – Netanyahu’s struggle against Iran, or the crazy soaring of housing prices and the other problems and difficulties in the daily life of most Israeli citizens? What is certain is that the Palestinian issue will not get to the top of the agenda in these elections. Except for Meretz, which is not doing well in the polls, and the United Arab list, no one seems very eager to place the Palestinians on the campaign agenda.

Information on events in the territories under Israel’s military rule is available to anyone interested. Sometimes it even gets into the Israeli mass media – though as long as there are no Israeli casualties, it usually makes only the back pages. After the big snow in Jerusalem, the sluices were opened to let out the water from melting snow, causing a flood in the Aida Palestinian Refugee Camp  in north Bethlehem. The Palestinian model city of Rawabi was built west of Ramallah, to provide better housing to middle class Palestinians seeking to improve their life – but for a year the new tenants could not move in because Israel refused to link them to running water. The Israeli Electricity Company twice cut off the current to Palestinian cities of Jenin and Nablus, each time for half an hour without warning.  While arresting Palestinian youths who confronted settlers, Israeli soldiers set dogs on a 16-year old Palestinian. At Deheishe Refugee Camp Israeli soldiers conducted a routine raid, camp youths tried to block them, and the soldiers shot to death a 19-year old Palestinian. Economic hardship in the Palestinian territories grows since Israel confiscated the tax money which it collects on behalf of the Palestinians. In April, the Palestinians intend to start a first judicial proceeding against Israel at the International Criminal Court in the Hague. And so on and so on. Bits and pieces of all this get occasionally to the TV news broadcasts. In the elections broadcasts of the rival parties, seeking to attract the voters, the word “Palestinians” is hardly ever heard.

http://palsolidarity.org/2015/02/if-you-dont-open-the-door-in-5-minutes-we-will-blow-it-up/?utm_source=wysija&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Weekly+Digest

One of reports which the International Solidarity Movement sends to those interested in what happens in the Occupied Territories included a detailed report of the raid conducted by the army at 2.30 am on the night between February 22 and 23 this year, on the home of the brothers Yichya and Salah Edies in the Hebron neighbourhood of Tel Rumeida. The soldiers called on a loudspeaker: “If you don’t open within five minutes, we will break open the door!”. When the door was opened, the soldiers demanded that all family members including small children concentrate in one room. After a long debate one family member, who is heavily handicapped and finds it very difficult to move, was allowed to stay in his bed while the search was going on. For about an hour the soldiers searched the house, overturned and destroyed furniture, threw everything in complete chaos on the floor, and finally departed. International activists alerted by a family member counted some thirty soldiers leaving the house, and made some photos of the conditions which they left. What were they looking for? Did they find it? Israeli soldiers on the wild West Bank need not produce search warrants in order to enter wherever they choose, nor are they obliged to give an account of their actions. There was nothing special or remarkable in this search, except that usually there are no witnesses to report to the outside world. It was one of twenty houses searched in the city of Hebron on that night, one of hundreds a week and thousands per month. Every Palestinian family under Israeli rule has already undergone this experience, usually more than once.

The Tel Rumeida Neighbourhood of Hebron is the abode of a group of particularly extremist and violent settlers, who often harass their Palestinian neighbors (though in this case, the serach was by soldiers alone). Also Baruch Marzel, a faithful disciple of the notorious late Rabbi Meir Kahane, lives there. Marzel is a candidate in the current Knesset elections, with a good chance of getting in. The Hebron Palestinians of course have no vote in these elections where the government ruling over them will be elected. Yesterday Baruch Marzel and his fellows conducted a festive procession to mark the Purim holiday, under a tight military escort. Soldiers prevented Palestinians from leaving their homes so as not to disturb the settler’s procession. Baruch Marzel was in a good mood when interviewed by Israeli TV news. He said: “My program is very simple – to put a smile on Jewish faces and wipe the smile form the faces of our Arab enemies”. He himself was smiling broadly when saying this.

This week the IDF conducted a giant surprise exercise, ordered by incoming Commander in Chief Gadi Eisenkot who also took personal charge of it. Nearly the entire regular combat strength of the army took part, as did 3000 reservists who were called up in their homes and commanded to show up immediately in their units. Another 10,000 reservists were told to hold themselves in readiness to join immediately upon order. As stated in the military communiqué “The IDF conducts constant activitity aimed at improving and increasing the capacity and preparedness of the forces on all echelons and operational levels. Taking part in this two-day exercise are regular and reservist battalions of the various Infantry strength, including Special Forces. This is an exceptional exercise, with one of the largest deployments of forces seen in recent years, including all the operational forces of the Judea and Samaria Sector, with laison established with the Air Force, Intelligence Corps and the General Security Service (Shabak). The forces arrived at the same areas where they are scheduled to be in charge of ongoing security activity. As part of the extensive exercise the regular and reserve forces simulate various scenarios such as kidnappings, the hurling of Molotov cocktails, significant disturbances of public order and the apprehension of suspects wanted for interrogation”.

 

The generals, unlike the politicians, give a lot of thought to the Palestinians. They estimate that the hot time will be at the end of March or the beginning of April. But that will be after the elections. Après nous, le Déluge.

Election scandals and a very European week

This was the week in which the IDF got a new Chief of Staff. Immediately,  chromo paper color photos of the new Commander in Chief, Major General Gadi Eizenkot were provided to the readers of Israel’s mass-circulation newspapers. Two days later, walking through the main street of Holon, I noticed at the greengrocer’s the new photo already having pride of place on the wall, in the place where Major General Benny Ganz had been watching over shopkeeper and clients during the past four years.




This was the week in which the Supreme Court decided to allow the Arab Knesset Member Haneen Zoabi to continue running for another term. By a majority of eight to one, the judges ruled to overturn the decision to disqualify her, a decision taken last week by the Central Elections Committee in a predictable outburst of nationalist and racist demagoguery.  The court’s verdict elicited an almost audible sigh of relief from Yitzhak Herzog, leader of the oppositional Labor Party which now calls itself “The Zionist Camp”.  Herzog had instructed his representatives to support the banning of Zoabi  only out of fear that otherwise (perish the thought!) he might have gotten branded “a leftist”.

 This was one more week in which debate in the ongoing elections campaign focused on the issues of Mrs. Sarah Netanyahu’s  household (mis)management.  Meanwhile, again were left deep in the shade the issues related to her husband Binyamin Netanyahu’s handling of the economy of the State of Israel as a whole, and the expansion of settlements, or the vast swath of destruction caused by the State of Israel in the Gaza Strip last summer, where little if any reconstruction had taken place up to now.   

 Actually, there did occur this week a single moment when the situation in the  Gaza Strip blazed into the public debate.  That was when the Prime Minister focused his fire upon Tzipi Livni, who had been for two years the Justice Minister in Netanyahu's cabinet and is now Herzog’s partner in the effort to remove Netanyahu from power.  Retroactively, Netanyahu has now discovered that Livni constitutes a grave threat to the security of the State of Israel, that all charges of mismanagement at the PM’s residence are a smokescreen intended to allow Livni to sneak into the Prime Minister's Bureau, and that the former Justice Minister intends (Heaven forefend!) to reach an agreement with Hamas. 

Livni was quick to retort on the radio:  "It is Netanyahu himself who is all the time negotiating with Hamas!  Last summer he even intended to embark on negotiations on the possibility of open a port in Gaza.  Yes, a port in Gaza!  It was me who mobilized the most energetic of diplomatic campaigns, with the international contacts I established I have managed to completely remove such idea from the agenda" – which makes one wonder what do we need a change of government for.   

However sharp and acrimonious the exchange of verbal blows, commentators (and ordinary people) are increasingly considering the possibility that within some two months we might be treated to the sight of Netanyahu, Herzog and  Livni sitting together around a single cabinet table.

Apart from all the above, this was a very European week:  a murderous event in the Danish capital Copenhagen; a petition of British artists; a vote in the Italian Parliament; a propaganda film produced by West Bank settlers; and also a TV song contest.

Even before the guard who was shot at the gates of the main synagogue of Copenhagen had been buried, Netanyahu rushed into his Zionist conditioned reflex, issuing a call to the Jews of Denmark in particular and of Europe in general to pack up  and come to Israel: "Israel is your home, the home of every Jew, we are preparing to absorb a mass wave of European Jews." The call was not particularly well received at the small Jewish community which carries fond memories of the intensive and most successful effort which Denmark, more than any other European country, made to save its Jewish citizens under the Nazi occupation. "The Danish Jews: We are not leaving" read the headline on the front page of "Ma'ariv". Yair Melchior, Chief Rabbi of Denmark, said: "I am disappointed by Netanyahu's call.  Terrorism is no reason for emigrating."

At just that time, the settlers of "Samaria" in the northern West Bank - who have access to very generous government budgets and some of whose  leaders are currently undergoing an intensive police investigation regarding  management of these funds – published an animated video film, with impeccable high technical quality. The video depicts a monstrous European named “ Herr Stürmer” who contemptuously summons a Jewish leftist with a long hooked nose, demands and gets from him a flow of information on the human rights violations by the armed forces of Israel and pays him with coins bearing the logo of the Euro, and finally ordering his despicable Jewish leftist lackey to hang himself – which he hastens to obey. "You might see the Europeans otherwise – but make no mistake, they still regard you now as they did then" appears on the screen at the end of the video.

"This is a classic anti-Semitism theme, ultimately derived from Christian myth of Judas, who sells the Son of God for 30 pieces of silver, and then hangs himself. One may wonder if the Samaria settlers utilized this legend consciously and deliberately, or did it just permeate into their consciousness out of the cultural milieu into which they dipped?" wondered blogger Yossi Gurvitz.

http://elections.walla.co.il/item/2829758

http://e.walla.co.il/item/2830061

Paradoxically, the vicious video had to compete for the attention of the Israeli public against Israel’s preparations to take part in the  Eurovision Song Contest, bringing together all the European countries (and some countries outside the continent).  The popular Israeli TV competition “Rising Star", was won by a 16-year old singer Nadav Guedj, from Netanya. After  convincingly performing Beyoncé’s "Crazy in Love" Guedj will represent Israel at the Eurovision competition, to be held at Vienna in May this year.

TV commentators, and next day those of the printed press,  expressed the fervent hope that at the decisive moment of this year’s Song Contest, when the European capitals are polled one by one and read out the score given in their respective countries to each of the competing songs, it will be possible to hear many time a “douze points” given to Israel and to the young Guedj as Israel’s representive. The last time that the State of Israel won this competition was in 1998 (perhaps not coincidentally, at a time when the Peace Process which began with the Oslo Accords was still taken seriously?).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurovision_Song_Contest

Meanwhile,  the Italian parliament was preparing to vote in favor of a recognition of the State of Palestine, as already did the European Parliament and the national parliaments of the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Portugal and several other European countries. (Sweden has already reached the further point of President Mahmoud Abbas being invited to ceremoniously inaugurate the Embassy of Palestine in Stockholm). Israel's Ambassador in Rome is known to have tried delaying and obstruction tactics and mobilized right-wing deputies in the Italian Parliament, but at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem it was unofficially admitted that the struggle for Rome is effectively lost.

 In London a letter signed by some seven hundred British artists - many of them Jewish – read “we will no longer engage in business-as-usual cultural relations with Israel”. As stated in the text, published in The Guardian, "The summer war in Gaza killed 2,100 Palestinians. Since then, the Palestinians have enjoyed no respite from Israel’s unrelenting attack on their land, their livelihood, their right to political existence. (...) Israel’s wars are fought on the cultural front too. Its army targets Palestinian cultural institutions for attack, and prevents the free movement of cultural workers. Its own theatre companies perform to settler audiences on the West Bank – and those same companies tour the globe as cultural diplomats, in order to help ‘Brand Israel’ and give it a positive image”. For themselves, the boycotting British artists make no distinction between performing at settlements and inside Israel proper, pledging to perform neither in the settlement of Ariel nor in Tel Aviv, Netanya and Ashkelon, and also not “play music, accept awards, attend exhibitions, festivals or conferences, run master classes or workshops” . All this, until Israel respects international law and ends its oppression of the Palestinians.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/13/cultural-boycott-israel-starts-tomorrow

 

Europe in settler eyes. Photo source: Ha'aretz
 

Europe in TV viewer eyes. Photo source: Austrian TV

 

 

AIPAC gnashing their teeth

 



"I'm going to address Congress in Washington, not only as the Prime Minister of Israel but also on behalf of the entire Jewish People," declared Netanyahu, at one of the highlights of the intensifying public debate in Israel and the United States. J-Street, the left-wing American Jewish lobby, was quick to respond with a petition stating: "No, Mr. Netanyahu. You do not speak for me. Benjamin Netanyahu has a mandate to represent the State of Israel. He has no mandate to speak on behalf of Jews in the United States." Within a few days the petition was signed by more than twenty thousand American Jews. Even Abe Foxman of the ADL - a pillar of the American Jewish establishment - desperately called upon Netanyahu to cancel his speech and put out the spreading conflagration.

The invitation to Congress which Netanyahu arranged for himself, behind the back of the White House, brought to the surface the growing gap between Israel and the American Jewish community. The overwhelming majority of American Jews tend to the liberal side of the political spectrum. Several generations of American Jews at the same time tended to render a deep emotional support to Israel, which also expressed their feeling of guilt for not having done enough to prevent to save European Jews.

In the fifties and early sixties, it was fairly easy for progressive American Jews to support the State of Israel, which at the time had an international reputation as an egalitarian country with the Kibbutz Movement as its main showcase. But already for a long time, Jews who support any Progressive issue and campaign, in the United States itself and worldwide, find it difficult to link this with supporting the State of Israel – ever more difficult, with Israel being most of the time under right-wing nationalist governments, blatant racism spreading from the margins of Israeli society into the heart of the political establishment, settlements ever growing and expanding at the expense of the meager land remaining to the Palestinians, and every few years the TV screens being filled with footage of the death and destruction left by the Israeli Air Force in Lebanon or Gaza. Especially the younger generation of American Jewish community feels increasingly alienated from Israel. Some of them express it in open - sometimes very blunt – criticism. Many others just turn away quietly.

All of this intensified with the appearance of Barack Obama on the scene. Most American Jews greeted his election to the presidency with enthusiasm and joy. The Jews were among Obama’s most prominent and consistent supporters in both 2008 and 2012. Conversely, many in Israel - including the Prime Minister elected by the Israelis, his cabinet ministers and his political party – regarded Obama with suspicion from the outset, and their suspicion soon developed into hostility, if not outright hatred.

In 2011, in the midst of a heated confrontation with Obama, Netanyahu succeeded to get himself invited to speak at Congress. At that time, the gambit worked well - Netanyahu got a standing ovation from legislators of both parties, and his speech in Congress greatly helped derail the attempt which Obama made at the time, to promote an Israeli-Palestinian agreement based on the 1967 borders. Since then, however, much water had flowed through both the Jordan River and the Potomac. Netanyahu increased his outright involvement in American politics, and did not bother to hide his strong support for and identification with the Republican Party. American politics itself became more polarized, and most American Jews found themselves at the opposite pole to that in which the Prime Minister of Israeli took his stand.

The confrontation could have broken out two months ago, had Obama chosen not to exercise the American veto in the UN Security Council, when the Palestinian draft resolution came to the vote. But the President of the United States chose another ground for his battle with Netanyahu: Iran.

The outline of the emerging agreement with Iran is already quite clear, even if the details have not yet been finalized: Iran will remain a "Threshold State", possessing the potential to acquire nuclear weapons, but it will avoid taking this last step and allow international monitoring of its compliance with this condition. Of course, no one will require the State of Israel, which had successfully taken that last step some fifty years ago (in an intensive confrontation with then-President John F. Kennedy), to give up its nuclear arsenal (at least two hundred bombs, as of the account given by Mordechai Vanunu in1986), or the missiles capable of carrying those bombs to any point in the Middle East and further afield, or the German-made submarines sailing deep under the waters of the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean and ready at any moment to launch these missiles bearing those bombs.

According to Netanyahu, this agreement which Obama intends to sign with Iran would be "A bad agreement, a calamitous agreement, an agreement which would endanger the very existence of Israel" and therefore "It is my duty to go to Washington and address Congress and do everything in my power to prevent the signing of the evil agreement with Iran. I will not flinch, I am determined to go."

It seems that he did manage to convince the right-wing constituency in Israel. The planned Congress speech became the focus of the ongoing Israeli elections campaign. The opposition parties are calling for Netanyahu to cancel the speech, and now this call is joined by five former Ambassadors who at different times represented the State of Israel in Washington. But the hardcore right-wing voters are far from disliking an all-out confrontation with the President of the United States and with large parts of the American public, including many American Jews. According to the polls, this does not diminish willingness to vote for Netanyahu – it might even increase it.

In the United States, the situation is very different. Netanyahu in effect set the Democrat Senators and Representatives - and Jewish Americans, traditional supporters of the Democratic party – an unequivocal choice, forcing them to choose between an Israeli Prime Minister openly supporting the Republicans and a President of the United States from the Democratic Party. Did Netanyahu realize that faced with such a clear-cut dilemma, the choice of American Legislators and Jews may not be for him?

In all this big fuss, a very low profile is kept by one group which has a vital interest in what transpires on Capitol Hill: AIPAC, the veteran, mighty Israeli Lobby. For decades, AIPAC officials spent tireless effort in order to build a bipartisan power base in Congress, so that no matter which party holds the White House or has a majority in the House and Senate, support for the Israeli government policies would always remain solid. What do the AIPAC people feel today - when Netanyahu, like a bull in a china shop, is rampaging and destroying all that they spent decades to construct? I would guess they are gnashing their teeth, like a shrewd lawyer whose client insists upon sabotaging and ruining the defense case.

When should comparisons be made, and when not?

In Ha’aretz of January 26, Avner Shalev – director of Yad Vashem, the famous Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem – was quoted in an all-out attack against “attempts to dwarf the Holocaust, by comparing it to other genocides, and undermine the position that the Holocaust is a completely unique event, not to be compared to any other”. On another page of the same issue of Ha’aretz was reported the great success of Israel’s President Re’uven Rivlin, who was “welcomed like a star” at a Black Church in New York. The reporter attributed Rivlin’s success among the Blacks to the speech in which the President “linked the Holocaust, the Zionist Movement and the creation of Israel with the period of Black Slavery”.

Link the Jewish Holocaust with Black Slavery? Can such a comparison be made? Indeed, the Trans-Atlantic slave trade was one of the darkest and most harsh events in human history. For some three hundred years, from the 16th Century to the end of the 18th, countless Africans were kidnapped from their homes and villages and loaded on extremely crowded slave ships, where the conditions certainly bear comparison with those on the trains to Auschwitz. Many of the slaves did not survive this voyage, and the Captain had the authority to throw sick slaves overboard “like any other spoiled goods” (as the King’s Bench Court in London ruled in a notorious 1783 verdict). 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zong_massacre


Still, no one involved had any intention to commit genocide. The only intention was to maximize profits and sell living slaves to the highest bidder. Those who did not survive were simply registered as “amortization” in the slave traders’ annual balance sheets.

So, is the Yad Vashem Director Avner Shalev going to send an angry letter  to President Rivlin and reprimand him for having made “a comparison which dwarfs the Holocaust”? I dare say that such a reprimanding letter will not be sent. After all, in President Rivlin’s case, comparing the Holocaust with another historical event has garnered a rare  success for the Israeli Hasbara PR campaign, which did not mark many such in recent years. Why spoil such a success?

The above was published in the Readers’ Letters section of Ha’aretz on January 26, 2015.  

Emblem of the British Anti-Slavery Society (1795)

Source: Wikipedia

Yet another casino

Two newspapers compete for the title of the most well-read paper in Israel - the veteran "Yediot Ahronot", which began to appear even before the establishment of the state, and "Israel Hayom" (nicknamed "The Bibinews”) which was established in competition a few years ago.

Their competition is not on precisely equal terms - "Yediot Ahronot" is a commercially successful business. Its readers pay five shekels in cash at the stall or take out a subscription; advertisers pay the fees appropriate to its widespread circulation. On the other hand, "Israel Hayom" is distributed free on the streets and its advertising fees are extremely low. This newspaper would have gone bankrupt long ago if not for the constant flow of millions of dollars every month from its owner, the gambling magnate and Netanyhau’s big friend Sheldon Adelson, who owns a large empire of casinos, especially in Macau, China. (A recent news item disclosed that Prime Minister Netanyahu tried to obtain for Adelson the franchise for yet another casino, in Japan - but the Japanese were stunned by the request and rejected it out of hand.)

Of course, there is a political difference between the two newspapers. "Yediot Ahronot" is considered to be very hostile  to Netanyahu. In the past week it devoted much space to the scandals related to Sara Netanyahu,  the Prime Minister's wife, who was among other things accused of recycling empty bottles which are property of the state and taking the proceeds to her own pocket. "Israel Hayom"  strongly condemned "Yediot Ahronot" and declared its rival to be "The Pillar of the Leftist Media". Of course Israel Hayom supports enthusiastically and without reservation all of the Prime Minister’s positions, and the headlines of the freely distributed paper often look like pure elections propaganda. (After all, that's exactly what Sheldon Adelson expects for the substantial sums he pours into the free daily.)

Still, on one issue "Yediot Ahronot of the leftist media” and “Israel Hayom” of the staunch Bibi fans plaid the same tune, as two instruments in a harmonious orchestra. On Tuesday, the Israeli Defense Force awarded decorations and commendations to soldiers who have excelled during the last summer’s fighting in the Gaza Strip. In both "Yediot Ahronot" and “Israel Hayom”, the editors considered this ceremony as the main news of the day, and the two papers carried identical banner headlines: "We Salute!" under which appeared photos of the soldiers whose bravery got properly recognized. On the inside pages there were extensive items giving at length the personal stories of individual soldiers, under such headings as "The face of the beautiful Israel" and “Thank you, our Heroes".

"Yediot Ahronot" chose especially to focus on the personal story of a combat medic who during the fierce battle at Gaza’s Shuja'iyya Neighborhood saved at the last moment the life of his seriously wounded commanding officer. Of course, as is habitual in such accounts, there appeared at the end of the article the medic’s self-effacing words: "I do not consider myself a hero, not at all. I just  did my duty, nothing more."

"Yediot Ahronot"? The Battle of Shuja'iyya? This reminds me of something. One day after that battle, Gush Shalom tried to publish in  Yedioth Ahronoth  a paid ad with the following text: "Enough! The bodies of civilians are piling up in the streets of Gaza. Dozens of children were killed. Israel is sinking into a new swamp in Gaza. Enough! We must end the bloodshed and lift the siege of Gaza.  There are no military solutions. Only negotiations can achieve a quiet border ". The advertising department of "Yediot Ahronot" refused to take it  ("We don’t publish political ads"). Of course, also this week, in publishing the detailed stories of soldiers from that war, the newspaper did not find it necessary to make any mention of the bodies of civilians and children which were strewn on the streets of Shuja'iyya (and of several other locations in the Gaza Strip).

https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2970655834218658208#editor/target=post;postID=2817178436133675836;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=17;src=postname

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Shuja'iyya

 

Investigation in depth of the darker sides of the war in Gaza is left to others,  such as the commission of inquiry appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council. The Israeli media did carry this week some exciting news about this investigation. Not about the findings of the investigation, which have not yet been completed, but for the resignation of the commission’s chair – the Canadian jurist, professor William Schabas. This was hailed in the headlines as "a resounding success for Israeli diplomacy!" The diligent researchers employed by the government  of Israel discovered that in the past Professor Schabas wrote for the PLO a legal opinion on the Palestinian attempts to gain recognition at UN institutions – and hence, that he was not an unbiased investigator. In order to let the debate stay focused on what happened in Gaza rather than on his own personality, Professor Schabas chose to  announce his resignation. But sober Israeli commentators suggested "not to rejoice too soon", since "Schabas resigned, the report will be written also without him, and the State of Israel will not look good there."

 "The Human Rights Council of the United Nations is a biased and prejudiced body, it deals with Israel more than with any other country. We should reject out of hand any report published by it" declared the angry Prime Minister Netanyahu. Indeed, the Human Rights Council is not made up of Human Rights activists; like other UN institutions, it is composed of Ambassadors appointed by the governments of UN Member States, and each of these governments has its own specific agendas, interests and various considerations as to what should be investigated and what should not . Those who sit there clearly find it easier to unite around the demand to investigate the IDF's misdeeds than to look into those of various other armies (though since the start of the civil war in Syria, the Human Rights Council issued several sharp condemnations of the Assad regime).

If the investigations of the Human Rights Council of the United Nations are biased and prejudiced, what of the investigations which the State of Israel conducts of itself, of its own army and soldiers? Also there, it is difficult to discern an objective and unbiased investigation. True, the IDF military police did uncover several cases of soldiers looting money and valuables from Gaza Palestinians, and these seem about to stand trial ("A soldier who during a battle devotes his time and energy to searching for valuables and putting them in his pockets, is not only acting immorally but also deserts his comrades-in-arms and betraying his duty to devote his full attention to the fighting").

But when some brazen military police investigators sought also to look into the orders and circumstances which to the massive artillery bombardment of civilian neighborhoods and dozens of civilian bodies lying in the streets, there was a very loud outcry. Hundreds of retired officers came out in protest at the idea of an investigation - or, God forbid, a prosecution – of their fellows still in service ("It is inconceivable that an officer giving operational orders in battle would need to seek advice from a lawyer!"). Minister Naftali Bennett came out in outspoken defense of "the soldiers and officers, Our Heroes" and took up the slogan “We have stopped apologizing!" as the centerpiece of the elections  campaign conducted by his Jewish Home Party. Also Defense Minister Moshe " Boogie" Ya'alon expressed "his firm hope" that no investigation be opened  against IDF officers regarding their operational activities in Gaza. And which   military police investigator or military prosecutor would be bold enough to spoil the firm hopes of the Defense Minister?

And so, the clock continues to tick towards the moment when the State of Palestine’s adhesion to the Rome Statute comes into force, enabling the Palestinians to file charges at the International Criminal Court against Israeli officers, for acts committed in territory which is internationally recognized as part of the State of Palestine. It would be rather difficult for the State of Israel to rebut  such charges on the grounds that Israel itself has already carried out a comprehensive and independent  investigation of the cases in question. But, anyway, it seems likely that the Palestinians would focus more on an issue where Israel has an even more difficult case where international law is converned:  itsf involvement in the establishment of settlements in Occupied Territory.  

Meanwhile, the neighborhood of Shuja'iyya remains devastated and ruined, as are several other locations in the Gaza Strip. Building materials enter Gaza only by a thin trickle, and last week UNRWA announced the termination of its assistance to those trying to reconstruct their homes; very little was actually provided, of all billions promised by many countries for rebuilding the Gaza Strip promised. In last month’s intensive storm and bitter cold wave, several homeless Gazans froze to death – which did not get much media attention. This week, after a new series of attacks on Egyptian troops in Sinai, General Sisi tightened once again the Egyptian part of the siege of Gaza, which just happens to complement and reinforce the Israeli part of the blockade. (Was Hamas or any other body in Gaza involved in the Sinai attacks? Probably, Sisi did not really conduct any intensive inquiry...). Out of the Strip come cries despair and dire warnings - "Gaza is on the verge of explosion."

The girl Malak al-Khatib also suffered greatly from that cold wave, being held at a cell in Hasharon Prison, dressed only in the light clothes which she wore at the time of her arrest. A 14 years old eighth-grader at Beitin village near Ramallah, she was arrested on the last day of 2014 near her school, and was charged with having thrown stones at Israeli soldiers. Hurling stones at soldiers is a common act among young Palestinians under Israeli occupation (although, in most cases, by boys). Malak al-Khatib was questioned without the presence of either parents or lawyer - a regular occurrence in the Occupied Territories, even though it contravenes the international rules concerning the interrogation of minors.

The interrogators also accused her of carrying a knife in her school bag with the intention of stabbing soldiers, and warned that if the knife were added to the charge sheet it would result in a years-long imprisonment.  In fact, no one ever saw the alleged knife. Malak al-Khatib, a 14 year old girl alone in the interrogation room and the cold cell and having no access to legal advice, agreed to sign a "plea bargain" and admit to throwing stones. The deal was brought before the judges of the military court at Ofer Camp, and in less than five minutes the trial was over and she was sent to two months’ imprisonment. It is not sure that the case of Malak al-Khatib is the most horrific thing that happened in the Palestinian territories in recent times - but as sometimes happens, she became a symbol and gained a lot of attention, even in the  newspapers of faraway Pakistan and Algeria (but not in the Israeli media, too  busy with other issues...)

A few days ago a protest vigil was held in Tel Aviv, on the sidewalk between the towers and helipad of the Ministry of Defense on one side and on the other the Sarona Compound, newly-inaugurated center of the city’s nightlife. About a hundred activists turned up, among them Knesset Members Dov Khenin and Haneen Zoabi of the joint electoral slate which brings together the political  forces representing the Arab population in Israel (and Jews who feel solidarity with that population). Signs were spread out : "Free Malak al-Khatib!" / "150 minors in prison - stop!" / "Close down the Ofer Prison, dismiss the Judges of the Occupation!" / "Down with the Occupation!".

Three boys and one girl walked past the protesters, leading their bikes. "What is this about?" asked one of them. "We are demonstrating here to protest the imprisonment of a girl, a girl the same age as you. Come, join us!". The boys looked at the signs, smiled sheepishly and moved on.

 "Boogie, Boogie, hey hey hey – how many kids did you kill today!". This chant, originating at American protests against Vietnam War, had already been taken up at Israeli protests many years ago, inserting either the name or the nickname of the current Defense Minister, as best fits the rhyme. "It's not exactly the most appropriate slogan for today" say some of the participants. After consultations the chant is changed to “how many kids did you arrest today!" and after a moment to “how many kids did you kidnap today!" – which was kept up until the moment of dispersal. "He calls it arrest or detention, as far as we are concerned it is a plain kidnapping" emphasized Dr. Anat Matar of the Philosophy Department at Tel Aviv University, a veteran protester.

 
And there was another well-known chant: "Boogie, Boogie, it is no joke – go to Hague, to the dock!”. Somehow, today this seems just a bit little less of Science Fiction than on the previous occasions when this chant was heard.