Sonja Karkar, Women for Palestine, 28 February 2008
Well, so much for our new government taking an even-handed position on Israel/Palestine. Before our politicians even warmed their seats in the new parliamentary sittings, the Australian Prime Minister announced that he will lead a parliamentary motion to honour Israel on 12 March acknowledging Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day. The Opposition Leader will second the motion. Then, celebrations will take place at a reception in the Mural Hall of Parliament House.
If Palestinians and their supporters had any hopes of a sympathetic hearing from the new Rudd government on the multiple human rights abuses being perpetrated by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, those hopes are now well and truly dashed.
This year marks 60 years of Palestinian dispossession and displacement and a savage, relentless occupation that is smothering the lifeblood of the Palestinians while Israel celebrates its ill-gotten gains. Palestinians are starving in Gaza. Palestinians are being sold out in the West Bank. Palestinians are dying. Their very existence is under threat. It is as simple and as awful as that.
Every Australian ought to be asking why our Prime Minister and the parliament feel so humiliatingly obligated to Israel that they must go to these lengths to show their friendship with a foreign country that consistently violates international law, United Nations resolutions and human rights conventions? If supporting the Palestinian cause is too much to ask, then refusing to single Israel out for any kind of recognition would at least be sensitive to the Palestinians living here. The Palestinians were never asked if they would agree to the foreign imperial division of their country. Most had their family homes and lands taken from them by Zionist forces ruthlessly pushing for a Greater Israel not intended by the 1947 United Nations Partition of Palestine. All suffer indescribable pain knowing that many of their people live a hellish existence under Israel’s occupation. It is on this human wreckage of Palestinian lives that Israel celebrates its independence, honoured so gratuitously by our government.
Such demonstrations of affection are not new. Our former Prime Minister John Howard had already fostered this extraordinary bond when he declared Australia as Israel’s closest friend. Many of his ministers followed suit and none was more accommodating than former Foreign Minister Alexander Downer when he said that he wore Israel as “a badge of honour” even as Israel’s war planes decimated the Lebanese landscape in 2006
True to form, Israel has rewarded its friends with facile honours. John Howard received two in one year. He was awarded the Jerusalem Prize from the World Zionist Organisation and he had a forest named after him in the Negev by the Jewish National Fund, which specialises in acquiring property for “the purpose of settling Jews on such lands.” These lands are the subject of legal proceedings brought by the now displaced indigenous Bedouins of the Negev who are being “moved out” for the exclusive benefit of Jews worldwide who want to live in Israel. Although these Bedouins live in what is now called Israel, 45 of their villages are not recognised by the Israeli government and have never received even the most basic amenities.
All this falls hard on the heels of the new Prime Minister’s moving apology to our own indigenous people and raises many questions about the sincerity of that momentous gesture. The similarity between the grievous losses suffered by both peoples – the Aborigines and the Palestinians – is not fanciful. Both peoples have been the hapless victims of the great white colonial enterprise and in both cases, it would have succeeded brilliantly, if these people would have just disappeared. But it is not so easy to kill off people and their dreams.
There are some 11 million Palestinians worldwide whose collective memory is seared with the narrative of their people who fled in terror during Israel’s 1948 purge of Palestine. About two-thirds of the Palestinian population never saw their homes again. Many still have the keys to their front doors, the deeds to their properties and lands, the photos of happier moments, and the endless familiar memories of smells and sounds unfaded by time. Around 7.2 million refugees are languishing today in refugee camps waiting to return home and to receive compensation for the calculated decimation of their society – one that had successfully developed culturally and economically over centuries, despite four hundred years under Ottoman rule.
Palestine was not a land without people as Israel’s mythmakers have tried to promote, particularly through the emotive Hollywood film “Exodus”. Palestine was, in fact, populated by successful citizen merchants and officials who added an economically vibrant dimension to the essentially peasant population who were actively engaged in working the land. Not only did Palestinians own land, but even where there was no legal title, the land was considered as belonging to the Palestinians through their history of land use and uninterrupted possession.
All the recent posturings by Israel’s supporters, to show Israel as a first world country in the forefront of science and technology and the cutting edge of the arts in order to gain legitimacy with Western countries, might resonate with our politicians, but it does not with people who know Israel’s atrocious human rights record. More and more people are beginning to wake up as intrepid journalists report a far from rosy picture in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Yet, these are still lone voices in our Australian media and not enough to reach the wider population. For decades, Israel has won the battle for the hearts and minds of people, despite the official reports of every human rights organisation – from Amnesty International to Israel’s B’Tselem – documenting in graphic detail Israel’s litany of human rights abuses. Most are gathering dust, but they provide more than enough evidence to challenge the appropriateness of aligning ourselves with Israel. And there are stirrings in our churches, universities, the legal fraternity, social justice groups and in the consciences of people generally, to reach out to the Palestinians.
In response, Israel has established the Peres Centre for Peace in Australia which is endeavouring to project an image of Israel as peacemaker. Rather than the usual rounds of dialogue and conflict resolution, it is being done on a populist level through sporting activities and culture. The Centre has already persuaded the Australian Football League (AFL) to include a friendly team of Israelis and Palestinians in their 18-team line up for this year’s AFL International Cup. In this way, Israel hopes to normalise its image with the Australian public, and through a handful of players, show its willingness to work towards peace - something it has been unwilling to do at the negotiating table.
However, Israeli tanks and soldiers are still shelling Gaza, and Israel is further tightening its siege on this tiny sliver of land with a population almost at bursting point The recent smashing of the wall with hundreds of thousands of desperate Palestinians swarming into Egypt to look for food and other basic necessities gave the world a glimpse into the misery of their lives. And, in the West Bank, Israel is increasing – not decreasing as it promised to do in the most recent peace negotiations - the number of checkpoints that totally suffocate the ordinary daily movement of another burgeoning population.
The surest sign though of Israel’s real intentions, is its blatant disregard of international law and all requests to stop its illegal settlement project that is literally turning thousands of Palestinians on to the streets – homeless and stateless and forced to rely on the world’s pitiful humanitarian aid that can never bring them economic or political independence.
As conditions deteriorate for the Palestinians, and the words “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing” begin to enter mainstream consciousness after being given voice by former US President Jimmy Carter and Archbishop Tutu, Israel is employing new public relations strategies to secure its legitimacy in the global community. In Australia, where sport dominates so much of our cultural life and social interaction, using sport as a vehicle for peace is a powerful image. This latest venture by The Peres Centre - named after one of the more notorious Zionist architects of Palestinian ethnic cleansing – is already bedazzling the AFL administrators with the idea of people crossing all boundaries “for the simple love of the game” - a notion that would never be entertained by a government at war with an enemy state and one that has been rejected when political pressure through sports’ boycotts is deemed necessary to stop countries behaving oppressively. Nowhere else was this so effective than in South Africa’s anti-Apartheid struggle.
There is no excuse for our leaders in politics and business to buy into this scam when they know that some 4 million Palestinians are being denied justice and basic human rights under Israel’s illegal military occupation, with no sign of reprieve. If it were not for the West’s craven politicians indecently rushing to join Israel’s circus, Israel would long ago have had to find a solution to give justice and dignity back to the Palestinians.
Regrettably, our leaders will continue to pursue their self-serving policies until ordinary, decent people force them to accept that our common humanity is worth more than the lucrative deals that bring such enormous profits to the multinational corporations, and from which many governments benefit. It is by no means impossible. Just as people brought down the Apartheid regime in South Africa, the people can bring down the ethnically divisive Zionist regime in Israel as well. This is why the word “apartheid” so rattles Israel’s supporters.
But, we have a long way to go, especially when governments insist on continuing their love affairs with Israel. In the meantime, al-Nakba – the Palestinian catastrophe of dispossession and displacement – is being accelerated. This crime against humanity is what needs to be acknowledged in our Parliament and not a motion honouring Israel. The Australian “fair go” that our Prime Minister so fondly embraces, has never sounded so hollow or sunk so low.
Showing posts with label apartheid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label apartheid. Show all posts
Friday, 29 February 2008
Monday, 10 December 2007
Banksy on festive mission in Bethlehem
Reuters, ABC News - Tuesday December 4, 2007
British graffiti artist Banksy is trying to bring cheer and boost tourism in Bethlehem this Christmas with a series of subversive murals in the town revered as Jesus's birthplace.
The elusive street artist has painted six provocative new images - including a dove of peace strapped with a bulletproof vest and a young girl with pigtails frisking an Israeli soldier - on buildings around the West Bank town.
Banksy, who has achieved cult status for his edgy satirical images, has also converted a fast food shop opposite Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity into an art gallery showing work by artists from the Palestinian territories and abroad.
The artist's images have fetched hundreds of thousands of dollars in auctions and his customers include Hollywood star Angelina Jolie.
But Banksy keeps his real identity secret and almost never gives interviews.
Other artists exhibiting in Bethlehem say they hope the show will draw attention to life in the occupied West Bank and help forge links between local and international artists.
"It's important for people to come to Bethlehem and actually see what's happening rather than just doing the usual art collector thing and making a deal over the phone," British artist Peter Kennard told Reuters.
Bethlehem residents say military checkpoints and Israel's West Bank barrier, which cuts into Palestinian land, is stifling tourism and damaging Bethlehem's economy.
Eye-catching
Banksy made headlines in 2005 by painting a series of playful images on the Palestinian side of the barrier, which Israel says it built to keep out suicide bombers.
The new images are more eye-catching.
Pilgrims arriving in Bethlehem for Christmas will see a huge mural of a dove on the side of a house riddled with bullet holes. The dove faces an Israeli military watchtower and is wearing a bullet-proof vest.
Around the corner, one of Banksy's trademark stencilled rats is pictured poised with a catapult aimed at another watchtower.
At the exhibition, he is showing a sculpture of a Christmas cherub with a rock piercing its stomach and blood frothing from the wound.
All pieces at the exhibition will be sold to the highest bidder and the proceeds donated to local charities.
Ironic or offensive?
The irony behind one mural of an Israeli soldier asking a donkey for his identity papers has been lost on some locals, who find it offensive.
But Salem Salman, who runs a souvenir shop opposite, thinks it is funny, and makes a neat political point.
"I like it," said Mr Salman, who sells Virgin Mary miniatures to pilgrims on daytrips from Jerusalem.
"It describes the situation here, the occupation. It shows how the Israeli soldiers treat us like animals."
======================================
Yesterday in parliament
Press Association
Wednesday December 5, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
BANKSY
Notorious graffiti artist Banksy received the stamp of approval from the establishment after his latest work was praised by MPs. Banksy recently targeted the Holy Land with a series of stencilled works on the security wall in Bethlehem.
Veteran Labour MP Gerald Kaufman (Manchester Gorton) tabled a motion saying that his depictions were a far more accurate portrayal of life in the Holy Land than the images presented by the Israeli government.
British graffiti artist Banksy is trying to bring cheer and boost tourism in Bethlehem this Christmas with a series of subversive murals in the town revered as Jesus's birthplace.
The elusive street artist has painted six provocative new images - including a dove of peace strapped with a bulletproof vest and a young girl with pigtails frisking an Israeli soldier - on buildings around the West Bank town.
Banksy, who has achieved cult status for his edgy satirical images, has also converted a fast food shop opposite Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity into an art gallery showing work by artists from the Palestinian territories and abroad.
The artist's images have fetched hundreds of thousands of dollars in auctions and his customers include Hollywood star Angelina Jolie.
But Banksy keeps his real identity secret and almost never gives interviews.
Other artists exhibiting in Bethlehem say they hope the show will draw attention to life in the occupied West Bank and help forge links between local and international artists.
"It's important for people to come to Bethlehem and actually see what's happening rather than just doing the usual art collector thing and making a deal over the phone," British artist Peter Kennard told Reuters.
Bethlehem residents say military checkpoints and Israel's West Bank barrier, which cuts into Palestinian land, is stifling tourism and damaging Bethlehem's economy.
Eye-catching
Banksy made headlines in 2005 by painting a series of playful images on the Palestinian side of the barrier, which Israel says it built to keep out suicide bombers.
The new images are more eye-catching.
Pilgrims arriving in Bethlehem for Christmas will see a huge mural of a dove on the side of a house riddled with bullet holes. The dove faces an Israeli military watchtower and is wearing a bullet-proof vest.
Around the corner, one of Banksy's trademark stencilled rats is pictured poised with a catapult aimed at another watchtower.
At the exhibition, he is showing a sculpture of a Christmas cherub with a rock piercing its stomach and blood frothing from the wound.
All pieces at the exhibition will be sold to the highest bidder and the proceeds donated to local charities.
Ironic or offensive?
The irony behind one mural of an Israeli soldier asking a donkey for his identity papers has been lost on some locals, who find it offensive.
But Salem Salman, who runs a souvenir shop opposite, thinks it is funny, and makes a neat political point.
"I like it," said Mr Salman, who sells Virgin Mary miniatures to pilgrims on daytrips from Jerusalem.
"It describes the situation here, the occupation. It shows how the Israeli soldiers treat us like animals."
======================================
Yesterday in parliament
Press Association
Wednesday December 5, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
BANKSY
Notorious graffiti artist Banksy received the stamp of approval from the establishment after his latest work was praised by MPs. Banksy recently targeted the Holy Land with a series of stencilled works on the security wall in Bethlehem.
Veteran Labour MP Gerald Kaufman (Manchester Gorton) tabled a motion saying that his depictions were a far more accurate portrayal of life in the Holy Land than the images presented by the Israeli government.
Thursday, 22 November 2007
VIDEO: Walls of Shame: West Bank
November 20, 2007
A look at the most controversial wall in the world today. We look at the plight of Palestinian farmers whose land became inaccessible because of the wall, and the real intention of those who first drew its outlines.
Part 1
Part 2
============
Arnon Soffer
A look at the most controversial wall in the world today. We look at the plight of Palestinian farmers whose land became inaccessible because of the wall, and the real intention of those who first drew its outlines.
Part 1
Part 2
============
Arnon Soffer
Wednesday, 31 October 2007
Formalizing Apartheid Masked as a Peace Initiative
Neta Golan and Mohammed Khatib - October 13, 2007
Next month the US plans to host a regional meeting to discuss peace in the Middle East, or at least peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The maneuvering, deal making and negotiating about what will be on the table has been going on for some time. But the details of the agreement being discussed have been a well guarded secret but for the steady flow of leaks and trial balloons. Deciphering this information combined with facts on the ground, one can put together a clear outline of Israel’s “next generous offer.”
Next month the US plans to host a regional meeting to discuss peace in the Middle East, or at least peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The maneuvering, deal making and negotiating about what will be on the table has been going on for some time. But the details of the agreement being discussed have been a well guarded secret but for the steady flow of leaks and trial balloons. Deciphering this information combined with facts on the ground, one can put together a clear outline of Israel’s “next generous offer.”
Court hearing against Swiss anti-apartheid activists turns into further show of solidarity
Media Release:
Tuesday 30 October 2007
Today the four activists that ran onto the football playground with banners ("Free Palestine -- Boycott Apartheid") during the football qualifying match of Switzerland against Israel stood accused in the court of law of Basel, Switzerland.
In front of the building around 30 supporters gathered to demonstrate their solidarity by showing banners. Half of the group of supporters was not let inside the courtroom although the court hearing was declared public.
As the judge started to read the facts of the case at the beginning of the court hearing, the spectators spontaneously started to applaud. The accused did not express themselves about their personal affairs nor about the case, they instead read a declaration towards the public about the illegitimacy of the court hearing and about the action in the stadium with their backs facing the judge.
During the proclamation of the sentence people started to demonstrate in the courtroom with banners stating "Free Palestine -- Boycott Apartheid" and "Our Solidarity cannot be outlawed -- Free Palestine".
The charge of necessitation had to be dropped, the charge of breach of domestic peace led to a monetary fine on parole.
Worldwide Activism, Palestinian grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign
November 1st, 2007
A group of activists who interrupted an Israel-Switzerland World Cup qualifier with a protest against Israeli apartheid today used their court appearance in Basle to publicly denounce the occupation again.
On September 3, 2005 the four activists ran onto the field with banners demanding "Free Palestine – Boycott Apartheid". The protest was witnessed by thousands of football fans in the stadium and many more watching the game on television. (For more click here.)
At today's court hearing, around 30 supporters gathered in front of the court carrying banners to demonstrate their solidarity with the activists. Half of the supporters were not allowed into the courtroom although the hearing had been declared public.
Inside the court, as the judge began reading the facts of the case,spectators in the gallery spontaneously started to applaud. The defendants declined to present a case for their defense, insteadturning their backs to the judge and reading a declaration to the public gallery about the illegitimacy of the court hearing and about the action in the stadium.
One of the defendants told the court: "We will not accept the policies of apartheid on the part of the state of Israel, nor do we want to look on the Swiss Government directly or indirectly giving these policies its support. We will continue to fight together with the Palestinians until Palestine is free and the world has become a place without exploitation and oppression!"
The activists were charges with breach of domestic peace and fined, while a second charge of necessitation was dropped.
As the sentence was read out, activists in the courtroom unfurled courtroom banners declaring "Free Palestine -- Boycott Apartheid" and "Our Solidarity cannot be outlawed -- Free Palestine".
The activists' full statement is given below.
Declaration for the court-hearing in Basel of the 30th of October, 2007
Today we stand accused in a court of law because we took sides in a political conflict.
On Saturday September 3rd 2005 we used the occasion of the football qualifying match of Switzerland against Israel in the St. Jakob stadium of Basel for a protest action. In the 53rd minute we ran onto the playground with two banners demanding “Free Palestine – Boycott Apartheid”. We did this to call attention on the situation in Palestine. We wished to show solidarity with the Palestinian people who have been oppressed, banished, tortured and killed by the police and the Israeli army for a very long time – all as part of Israeli Government policies. The year 2007 is the mournful anniversary of four decades of occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Highs.
With our action, we wanted to demonstrate clearly our solidarity with the civilian people of Palestine and the progressive forces struggling against oppression in the Middle East. Furthermore we called for a boycott of Israeli products. We are still absolutely committed to this stance.
We are now faced with a situation, in which a Swiss court of justice can decide on sanctions against us, because we expressed our opinion in an action with banners on a football field. This situation emerges out of a relation of power which is not in our favor at this present time. This is why we do not acknowledge this court of law. As a result this court of law does not have the legitimation to judge our declaration. We do not need nor acknowledge anyone who wants to interfere in our lives and in our political activities in such a way. The numerous statements of solidarity following our action encourage us in our attitude and we want to thank everyone for their solidarity and support in our political struggles; especially those who are on our side in a situation like today.
To this very day the people in the Palestinian territories are forced to live under horrible conditions. The Israeli State has fragmented and mostly enclosed the Palestinian territories by building fences and walls. The lives of the Palestinians are becoming more and more like life in prison. Limited freedom of movement, controls on roadblocks, fear and the constant threat of death are part of everyday life for the people of Palestine. In this era of imperialist warfare in the Middle East there seems to be no self-determined solution on the horizon for the Palestinians. Far from it: the people will continue to suffer under this perpetual state of war.
At this very moment the Palestinians are being attacked in new ways unlike the military war of aggression against Lebanon in July of 2006, which meant to increase the pressure on the civilian population: since Sunday the Israeli government is limiting the petrol supply into the Gaza Strip and has reserved the right to cut power supplies temporarily for the future. Through such measures the war of oppression and intimidation has also become a war of economic attrition aimed at hitting hard the one and a half million people living in the Gaza Strip. Moreover, Israel and its confederates increasingly appear to prepare to wreak havoc on even more people: witness the continual threats issued against Syria and Iran.
The world population continues watching these crimes and carefully avoids getting involved. Not only this: Switzerland is one of the countries actively supporting Israel by supplying arms as well as importing Israeli products, mostly fruits and vegetables, as we can see in Swiss supermarkets.
We continue to believe that every war must be resisted by all means and that the people in the affected territories have to be granted the right of self determination.
We will not accept the policies of apartheid on the part of the state of Israel, nor do we want to look on the Swiss Government directly or indirectly giving these policies its support. We will continue to fight together with the Palestinians until Palestine is free and the world has become a place without exploitation and oppression!
Boycott Israel!
Tear down the apartheid wall!
Free Palestine!
For a society without exploitation and oppression!
Tuesday 30 October 2007
Today the four activists that ran onto the football playground with banners ("Free Palestine -- Boycott Apartheid") during the football qualifying match of Switzerland against Israel stood accused in the court of law of Basel, Switzerland.
In front of the building around 30 supporters gathered to demonstrate their solidarity by showing banners. Half of the group of supporters was not let inside the courtroom although the court hearing was declared public.
As the judge started to read the facts of the case at the beginning of the court hearing, the spectators spontaneously started to applaud. The accused did not express themselves about their personal affairs nor about the case, they instead read a declaration towards the public about the illegitimacy of the court hearing and about the action in the stadium with their backs facing the judge.
During the proclamation of the sentence people started to demonstrate in the courtroom with banners stating "Free Palestine -- Boycott Apartheid" and "Our Solidarity cannot be outlawed -- Free Palestine".
The charge of necessitation had to be dropped, the charge of breach of domestic peace led to a monetary fine on parole.
Worldwide Activism, Palestinian grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign
November 1st, 2007
A group of activists who interrupted an Israel-Switzerland World Cup qualifier with a protest against Israeli apartheid today used their court appearance in Basle to publicly denounce the occupation again.
On September 3, 2005 the four activists ran onto the field with banners demanding "Free Palestine – Boycott Apartheid". The protest was witnessed by thousands of football fans in the stadium and many more watching the game on television. (For more click here.)
At today's court hearing, around 30 supporters gathered in front of the court carrying banners to demonstrate their solidarity with the activists. Half of the supporters were not allowed into the courtroom although the hearing had been declared public.
Inside the court, as the judge began reading the facts of the case,spectators in the gallery spontaneously started to applaud. The defendants declined to present a case for their defense, insteadturning their backs to the judge and reading a declaration to the public gallery about the illegitimacy of the court hearing and about the action in the stadium.
One of the defendants told the court: "We will not accept the policies of apartheid on the part of the state of Israel, nor do we want to look on the Swiss Government directly or indirectly giving these policies its support. We will continue to fight together with the Palestinians until Palestine is free and the world has become a place without exploitation and oppression!"
The activists were charges with breach of domestic peace and fined, while a second charge of necessitation was dropped.
As the sentence was read out, activists in the courtroom unfurled courtroom banners declaring "Free Palestine -- Boycott Apartheid" and "Our Solidarity cannot be outlawed -- Free Palestine".
The activists' full statement is given below.
Declaration for the court-hearing in Basel of the 30th of October, 2007
Today we stand accused in a court of law because we took sides in a political conflict.
On Saturday September 3rd 2005 we used the occasion of the football qualifying match of Switzerland against Israel in the St. Jakob stadium of Basel for a protest action. In the 53rd minute we ran onto the playground with two banners demanding “Free Palestine – Boycott Apartheid”. We did this to call attention on the situation in Palestine. We wished to show solidarity with the Palestinian people who have been oppressed, banished, tortured and killed by the police and the Israeli army for a very long time – all as part of Israeli Government policies. The year 2007 is the mournful anniversary of four decades of occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Highs.
With our action, we wanted to demonstrate clearly our solidarity with the civilian people of Palestine and the progressive forces struggling against oppression in the Middle East. Furthermore we called for a boycott of Israeli products. We are still absolutely committed to this stance.
We are now faced with a situation, in which a Swiss court of justice can decide on sanctions against us, because we expressed our opinion in an action with banners on a football field. This situation emerges out of a relation of power which is not in our favor at this present time. This is why we do not acknowledge this court of law. As a result this court of law does not have the legitimation to judge our declaration. We do not need nor acknowledge anyone who wants to interfere in our lives and in our political activities in such a way. The numerous statements of solidarity following our action encourage us in our attitude and we want to thank everyone for their solidarity and support in our political struggles; especially those who are on our side in a situation like today.
To this very day the people in the Palestinian territories are forced to live under horrible conditions. The Israeli State has fragmented and mostly enclosed the Palestinian territories by building fences and walls. The lives of the Palestinians are becoming more and more like life in prison. Limited freedom of movement, controls on roadblocks, fear and the constant threat of death are part of everyday life for the people of Palestine. In this era of imperialist warfare in the Middle East there seems to be no self-determined solution on the horizon for the Palestinians. Far from it: the people will continue to suffer under this perpetual state of war.
At this very moment the Palestinians are being attacked in new ways unlike the military war of aggression against Lebanon in July of 2006, which meant to increase the pressure on the civilian population: since Sunday the Israeli government is limiting the petrol supply into the Gaza Strip and has reserved the right to cut power supplies temporarily for the future. Through such measures the war of oppression and intimidation has also become a war of economic attrition aimed at hitting hard the one and a half million people living in the Gaza Strip. Moreover, Israel and its confederates increasingly appear to prepare to wreak havoc on even more people: witness the continual threats issued against Syria and Iran.
The world population continues watching these crimes and carefully avoids getting involved. Not only this: Switzerland is one of the countries actively supporting Israel by supplying arms as well as importing Israeli products, mostly fruits and vegetables, as we can see in Swiss supermarkets.
We continue to believe that every war must be resisted by all means and that the people in the affected territories have to be granted the right of self determination.
We will not accept the policies of apartheid on the part of the state of Israel, nor do we want to look on the Swiss Government directly or indirectly giving these policies its support. We will continue to fight together with the Palestinians until Palestine is free and the world has become a place without exploitation and oppression!
Boycott Israel!
Tear down the apartheid wall!
Free Palestine!
For a society without exploitation and oppression!
Jewish West Jerusalemites object to Arab-Jewish school
More difficult than Noah's Ark
Ned, Ramallah, 22 October 2007
In Jerusalem, a mixed Arab-Jewish school is causing discomfort in the conservative Jewish neighbourhood of Pat. The School, which was built by an organisation with the name Hand in Hand, is the third school built and managed by this organisation. The schools allow Arabs and Jews to grow up together paving the way for a better understanding of each other.
However, the problem is not with the children, who, if left alone, would create a generation of people who are willing to live peacefully and put aside the petty differences and racism that roam this place. It is with the older generations who have these racist tendencies entrenched in their mindsets.
One woman from the neighbourhood where the school is built tells Ha'aretz "I've got nothing against Arabs, but why do they have to go to school with Jews?"
Another resident says "It's the mixing between Jews and Arabs that's the problem. The rest pales in comparison."
Hebrew, Arabic mix upsets neighbors
Or Kashti, Ha'aretz, 22 October 2007
The new building that will soon house the Arab-Jewish bilingual school Hand in Hand sticks out against the rest of the houses in the Pat neighborhood in Jerusalem. The roomy halls and spacious lawns are not very characteristic of the nearby streets. Neither is the multicultural atmosphere which many of the religious Jewish neighbors don't care for.
Brighter future for Arabs and Jews in the school that teaches peace
Rory McCarthy, The Guardian, Monday, 22 October 2007
Projected coexistence
Ahinoam Pollack, Jerusalem Post, August 23, 2007
Rabbi Shalom Dov Lifshitz, who heads the anti-missionary group Yad L'Achim, says that Pat is a religious neighborhood, and as such opposes the pluralistic school. Lifshitz says the school will encourage intermarriage, and that its Jewish students are too young to study with Arabs - he advises waiting until college to encounter and understand Arabs.
A Higher Grade
Peggy Cidor, Jerusalem Post, April 6, 2006
'There is a particular day that we have to struggle through every year', Josy Mendelssohn, co-chair of 'Hand in Hand' explained to the assembled guests. Explaining the philosophy and workings of the Hand-in-Hand Center for Jewish-Arab Education in Jerusalem to the representatives of the Rayne Foundation and other dignitaries, Mendelssohn was referring to Israeli Independence Day.
'It is perceived in a totally different manner by the Arab population of Israel. The Arabs call it Nakba, meaning catastrophe. For the Jews, it is the major event in the modern history of Israel. We face the issue each and every year - and we do not try to run away from it, though it is not easy', she said
==============================
Peace studies: Children of Israel
Donald Macintyre, The Independent, 18 October 2007
In a city marked by division, the Max Rayne school is unique – the only one in Jerusalem where pupils, principals and teachers are from Jewish and Arab communities.
One of the school's newest pupils is Maria Amin, a six-year-old Palestinian girl from Gaza who is confined to a wheelchair which she navigates with a joystick operated by her chin. A patient at Jerusalem's remarkable rehabilitation hospital, the Alyn, she was paralysed from the neck down when the car she was travelling in was caught in an Israeli missile strike on an Islamic Jihad commander which killed her mother, uncle, grandmother and elder brother.
She wasn't at the school yesterday because of medical problems, but Mrs Peretz hopes she will be at the school for several years to come.
You can't miss, fixed to the door of her classroom, under inscriptions of greeting in Arabic, a colourful painting – a house a flower, a tortoise, a vivid rainbow – by her new classmates. In large letters on the painting are written the words "Welcome Maria". In Hebrew.
Ned, Ramallah, 22 October 2007
In Jerusalem, a mixed Arab-Jewish school is causing discomfort in the conservative Jewish neighbourhood of Pat. The School, which was built by an organisation with the name Hand in Hand, is the third school built and managed by this organisation. The schools allow Arabs and Jews to grow up together paving the way for a better understanding of each other.
However, the problem is not with the children, who, if left alone, would create a generation of people who are willing to live peacefully and put aside the petty differences and racism that roam this place. It is with the older generations who have these racist tendencies entrenched in their mindsets.
One woman from the neighbourhood where the school is built tells Ha'aretz "I've got nothing against Arabs, but why do they have to go to school with Jews?"
Another resident says "It's the mixing between Jews and Arabs that's the problem. The rest pales in comparison."
Hebrew, Arabic mix upsets neighbors
Or Kashti, Ha'aretz, 22 October 2007
The new building that will soon house the Arab-Jewish bilingual school Hand in Hand sticks out against the rest of the houses in the Pat neighborhood in Jerusalem. The roomy halls and spacious lawns are not very characteristic of the nearby streets. Neither is the multicultural atmosphere which many of the religious Jewish neighbors don't care for.
Brighter future for Arabs and Jews in the school that teaches peace
Rory McCarthy, The Guardian, Monday, 22 October 2007
Projected coexistence
Ahinoam Pollack, Jerusalem Post, August 23, 2007
Rabbi Shalom Dov Lifshitz, who heads the anti-missionary group Yad L'Achim, says that Pat is a religious neighborhood, and as such opposes the pluralistic school. Lifshitz says the school will encourage intermarriage, and that its Jewish students are too young to study with Arabs - he advises waiting until college to encounter and understand Arabs.
A Higher Grade
Peggy Cidor, Jerusalem Post, April 6, 2006
'There is a particular day that we have to struggle through every year', Josy Mendelssohn, co-chair of 'Hand in Hand' explained to the assembled guests. Explaining the philosophy and workings of the Hand-in-Hand Center for Jewish-Arab Education in Jerusalem to the representatives of the Rayne Foundation and other dignitaries, Mendelssohn was referring to Israeli Independence Day.
'It is perceived in a totally different manner by the Arab population of Israel. The Arabs call it Nakba, meaning catastrophe. For the Jews, it is the major event in the modern history of Israel. We face the issue each and every year - and we do not try to run away from it, though it is not easy', she said
==============================
Peace studies: Children of Israel
Donald Macintyre, The Independent, 18 October 2007
In a city marked by division, the Max Rayne school is unique – the only one in Jerusalem where pupils, principals and teachers are from Jewish and Arab communities.
One of the school's newest pupils is Maria Amin, a six-year-old Palestinian girl from Gaza who is confined to a wheelchair which she navigates with a joystick operated by her chin. A patient at Jerusalem's remarkable rehabilitation hospital, the Alyn, she was paralysed from the neck down when the car she was travelling in was caught in an Israeli missile strike on an Islamic Jihad commander which killed her mother, uncle, grandmother and elder brother.
She wasn't at the school yesterday because of medical problems, but Mrs Peretz hopes she will be at the school for several years to come.
You can't miss, fixed to the door of her classroom, under inscriptions of greeting in Arabic, a colourful painting – a house a flower, a tortoise, a vivid rainbow – by her new classmates. In large letters on the painting are written the words "Welcome Maria". In Hebrew.
Sunday, 30 September 2007
Joined-up solution
Martin Woollacott is impressed by Ghada Karmi's eloquent argument for a single Israeli-Palestinian state, Married to Another Man.
The Guardian Saturday September 15, 2007
This is an important book that demonstrates with relentless lucidity how terribly exhausted the diplomatic and political pursuit of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become. The title is taken from an 1897 report to the rabbis of Vienna on the prospects for a Jewish state in Palestine. The report concluded that "the bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man". Palestine's spouse was of course the Palestinian society rooted in its soil. The existence of any significant number of Palestinians within the Jewish state, or under its authority, Ghada Karmi argues, ultimately threatens a Zionist unravelling. Hence the Zionist dilemma: how to keep the territory without the people or to keep it while somehow negating the people.
The author's alternative is a return to the idea of a single state for both Arabs and Jews, bi-national or, preferably, integrated and non-sectarian. It is, she readily admits, an alternative canvassed only on the margins of both Israeli and Palestinian society, one widely dismissed as utopian, impractical, and, of course, subversive of Zionist intentions. Yet, operating on the same principle as Sherlock Holmes, that when you have eliminated every other possibility what remains must be the truth, Karmi steers the reader toward serious consideration of the idea, or at least of the vision it represents.
She does so not by any particularly convincing explanation of how a single state might come about but by showing how bankrupt are the policies that have so far shaped efforts to end the conflict. No other account of Israel's history and its impact on the Palestinians that I know of shreds with such efficiency the hypocrisies, cruelties and inanities of what amounts to a systematic international attempt over the decades to deny the obvious and delay the inevitable. The author's argument is that Israelis, Americans, Europeans and Arabs - including, although haplessly and unwillingly, many Palestinians - are sustaining a dangerous edifice of nonsense. Nonsense, because we can now see more clearly than most did in the more hopeful Oslo years that there is no logical way of reconciling Israel's purposes and its massive sense of entitlement with justice for the Palestinians.
Dangerous, because the edifice will one day crash down, and the chaos and bloodshed that will result could be on a cataclysmic scale. The American commentator Thomas Friedman, a man who generally leans well toward the Israeli side, once expressed the terrible possibilities of the future by envisaging a suicide bomber with a nuclear bomb in his backpack walking into Haifa or some other Israeli city. Would that, he asked his notional Israeli hardliner, be clear enough for you? It would be an answer of sorts, but not the sort of answer that anybody in Israel, Palestine and beyond could possibly want. Yet this is the Armageddon toward which they may be stumbling.
Karmi recalls Saad Hammami, the PLO's first representative in London, rebuking critics who attacked the organisation for its readiness to accept a "statelet" on a fraction of the original territory of Palestine. There would come a day, he said, when they would rend their clothes for failing to fight for it "because even this small thing will be denied to us, you will see". The years have shown his fears to be well grounded. The Palestinians have not even got the little state they were prepared, after agonised deliberations, to accept, because however much they have conceded it has always been less than enough for the Israelis.
On the face of it, Israel should have gratefully embraced a deal that would legitimise their hold over the bulk of historic Palestine, regularise their relations with all the Arab states, and at least limit any future claims on them by Palestinians. But, quoting the columnist Gideon Levy on the Israeli "national disease" of wanting to have their cake and eat it, Karmi shows how they wanted both to have peace and to keep almost everything of what they have in terms of power, territory and dominance. All too often they sabotaged Palestinian efforts at settlement because they positively wanted to say, in the Israeli phrase, that they "had no partner for peace".
There is no answer to the Zionist conundrum, Karmi believes, except expulsion or genocide. An unviable and truncated Palestinian state would satisfy no one, while political arrangements of the kind often canvassed in Israel and now being discussed anew, under which Gaza might be federated in some way to Egypt and a series of West Bank fragments somehow glued on to Jordan, would be short lived and fraught with trouble.
The single-state argument is not the essence of the problem. The essence is a change in the nature of Zionism. It was this change that the more hopeful proponents of a two-state solution thought would come with time as the two states cooperated, and their populations mingled on more equal terms. In other words, two states were not the end of the peace process but a stage in it, and even though Rabin's hafradah, or separation, was the Israeli starting point, it would not be their end point. One of the most appealing aspects of this book is the way it combines a hard eye on Israeli motives with empathy for their fears and for the contradictions in which the Zionist dream has entangled them. But it eloquently makes the point that those contradictions have got to be worked out, or they will bring disaster on Jews and gentiles alike.
The Guardian Saturday September 15, 2007
This is an important book that demonstrates with relentless lucidity how terribly exhausted the diplomatic and political pursuit of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become. The title is taken from an 1897 report to the rabbis of Vienna on the prospects for a Jewish state in Palestine. The report concluded that "the bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man". Palestine's spouse was of course the Palestinian society rooted in its soil. The existence of any significant number of Palestinians within the Jewish state, or under its authority, Ghada Karmi argues, ultimately threatens a Zionist unravelling. Hence the Zionist dilemma: how to keep the territory without the people or to keep it while somehow negating the people.
The author's alternative is a return to the idea of a single state for both Arabs and Jews, bi-national or, preferably, integrated and non-sectarian. It is, she readily admits, an alternative canvassed only on the margins of both Israeli and Palestinian society, one widely dismissed as utopian, impractical, and, of course, subversive of Zionist intentions. Yet, operating on the same principle as Sherlock Holmes, that when you have eliminated every other possibility what remains must be the truth, Karmi steers the reader toward serious consideration of the idea, or at least of the vision it represents.
She does so not by any particularly convincing explanation of how a single state might come about but by showing how bankrupt are the policies that have so far shaped efforts to end the conflict. No other account of Israel's history and its impact on the Palestinians that I know of shreds with such efficiency the hypocrisies, cruelties and inanities of what amounts to a systematic international attempt over the decades to deny the obvious and delay the inevitable. The author's argument is that Israelis, Americans, Europeans and Arabs - including, although haplessly and unwillingly, many Palestinians - are sustaining a dangerous edifice of nonsense. Nonsense, because we can now see more clearly than most did in the more hopeful Oslo years that there is no logical way of reconciling Israel's purposes and its massive sense of entitlement with justice for the Palestinians.
Dangerous, because the edifice will one day crash down, and the chaos and bloodshed that will result could be on a cataclysmic scale. The American commentator Thomas Friedman, a man who generally leans well toward the Israeli side, once expressed the terrible possibilities of the future by envisaging a suicide bomber with a nuclear bomb in his backpack walking into Haifa or some other Israeli city. Would that, he asked his notional Israeli hardliner, be clear enough for you? It would be an answer of sorts, but not the sort of answer that anybody in Israel, Palestine and beyond could possibly want. Yet this is the Armageddon toward which they may be stumbling.
Karmi recalls Saad Hammami, the PLO's first representative in London, rebuking critics who attacked the organisation for its readiness to accept a "statelet" on a fraction of the original territory of Palestine. There would come a day, he said, when they would rend their clothes for failing to fight for it "because even this small thing will be denied to us, you will see". The years have shown his fears to be well grounded. The Palestinians have not even got the little state they were prepared, after agonised deliberations, to accept, because however much they have conceded it has always been less than enough for the Israelis.
On the face of it, Israel should have gratefully embraced a deal that would legitimise their hold over the bulk of historic Palestine, regularise their relations with all the Arab states, and at least limit any future claims on them by Palestinians. But, quoting the columnist Gideon Levy on the Israeli "national disease" of wanting to have their cake and eat it, Karmi shows how they wanted both to have peace and to keep almost everything of what they have in terms of power, territory and dominance. All too often they sabotaged Palestinian efforts at settlement because they positively wanted to say, in the Israeli phrase, that they "had no partner for peace".
There is no answer to the Zionist conundrum, Karmi believes, except expulsion or genocide. An unviable and truncated Palestinian state would satisfy no one, while political arrangements of the kind often canvassed in Israel and now being discussed anew, under which Gaza might be federated in some way to Egypt and a series of West Bank fragments somehow glued on to Jordan, would be short lived and fraught with trouble.
The single-state argument is not the essence of the problem. The essence is a change in the nature of Zionism. It was this change that the more hopeful proponents of a two-state solution thought would come with time as the two states cooperated, and their populations mingled on more equal terms. In other words, two states were not the end of the peace process but a stage in it, and even though Rabin's hafradah, or separation, was the Israeli starting point, it would not be their end point. One of the most appealing aspects of this book is the way it combines a hard eye on Israeli motives with empathy for their fears and for the contradictions in which the Zionist dream has entangled them. But it eloquently makes the point that those contradictions have got to be worked out, or they will bring disaster on Jews and gentiles alike.
Monday, 10 September 2007
Bil’in Celebrates Victorious Court Decision
Bil'in 4/09/2007 - Celebrating Court Victory
Bil’in Celebrates Victorious Court Decision
September 6th, 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
On Friday, September 7th, the villagers of Bil’in will be celebrating the victorious court decision made on September 5th concerning the Apartheid Wall on their land. Bil’in has been holding weekly demonstrations for the last two and a half years against the theft of over 50% of their land by the Apartheid Wall.
The Israeli Supreme Court recently decided the wall must be moved off the majority of village land in a reasonable amount of time, for now villagers are allowed access through a military-manned gate between the hours of 6am and 8pm.
The Israeli High Court decided on the same day that the Matityahu-East settlement, half built but recently squatted by settlers and illegal under the fourth Geneva Convention, should remain but that the state, the settlers, and the construction company must pay villager’s court costs.
Of the more than 120 cases brought to Israeli court about the Apartheid wall only four have been successful. Three of the four victorious cases (Budrus, Biddu, and Bil’in) have used joint non-violent struggle to help accomplish this.
The celebration on Friday will be held in full knowledge of the rarity of such a victory, and will keep in mind the villages who have had their cases rejected. The fact that the wall is still there, that it is still occupying Palestinian land, and that the illegal settlement will remain on Palestinian land also will not be forgotten. But this is still a victory for the village, and for the joint non-violent resistance to celebrate.
People will meet at the international house near the village mosque at 1pm.
Tear Gas and Sound Grenades replaced with Music and Dancing: Bilin Celebrates…
On Friday, September 7th, the villagers of Bil’in were joined by international and Israeli comrades. Normally they come together every Friday to express their outrage of the unacceptable Apartheid Wall. Normally the day is filled with military violence, tear gas, sound bombs, and billy clubs are common. Once the military begins to fire gas into the crowds, the non-violent protesters tend to back off eventually leaving only the Palestinian children throwing rocks in anger. A mild response in comparison to the rubber coated steel bullets used against them.
Bil’in Celebrates Victorious Court Decision
September 6th, 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
On Friday, September 7th, the villagers of Bil’in will be celebrating the victorious court decision made on September 5th concerning the Apartheid Wall on their land. Bil’in has been holding weekly demonstrations for the last two and a half years against the theft of over 50% of their land by the Apartheid Wall.
The Israeli Supreme Court recently decided the wall must be moved off the majority of village land in a reasonable amount of time, for now villagers are allowed access through a military-manned gate between the hours of 6am and 8pm.
The Israeli High Court decided on the same day that the Matityahu-East settlement, half built but recently squatted by settlers and illegal under the fourth Geneva Convention, should remain but that the state, the settlers, and the construction company must pay villager’s court costs.
Of the more than 120 cases brought to Israeli court about the Apartheid wall only four have been successful. Three of the four victorious cases (Budrus, Biddu, and Bil’in) have used joint non-violent struggle to help accomplish this.
The celebration on Friday will be held in full knowledge of the rarity of such a victory, and will keep in mind the villages who have had their cases rejected. The fact that the wall is still there, that it is still occupying Palestinian land, and that the illegal settlement will remain on Palestinian land also will not be forgotten. But this is still a victory for the village, and for the joint non-violent resistance to celebrate.
People will meet at the international house near the village mosque at 1pm.
Tear Gas and Sound Grenades replaced with Music and Dancing: Bilin Celebrates…
On Friday, September 7th, the villagers of Bil’in were joined by international and Israeli comrades. Normally they come together every Friday to express their outrage of the unacceptable Apartheid Wall. Normally the day is filled with military violence, tear gas, sound bombs, and billy clubs are common. Once the military begins to fire gas into the crowds, the non-violent protesters tend to back off eventually leaving only the Palestinian children throwing rocks in anger. A mild response in comparison to the rubber coated steel bullets used against them.
Wednesday, 22 August 2007
Teaching Under Apartheid in Palestine
20 August 2007
Teaching Under Apartheid in Palestine
Leena: When I first decided to go to Palestine to teach kids English and yoga my main concerns were managing the kids’ behavior, assessing their needs and maintaining their interest. After all, those are the most challenging issues I face everyday in my classroom in Philadelphia. In the US I rarely get through an entire unit and to actually teach without a behavior related incident interrupting class is a very rare event. I quickly found it to be quite the opposite in Tel Rumeida which left me feeling like a fish out of water in the beginning.
.....
If anyone reading this is considering teaching kids in Palestine, especially in Tel Rumeida, I must say please do it! You won’t regret it. The experience, the place, the people and most importantly the kids will capture your heart and change your life forever, in the most positive way. I say this because this is exactly what happened to me and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Teaching Under Apartheid in Palestine
Leena: When I first decided to go to Palestine to teach kids English and yoga my main concerns were managing the kids’ behavior, assessing their needs and maintaining their interest. After all, those are the most challenging issues I face everyday in my classroom in Philadelphia. In the US I rarely get through an entire unit and to actually teach without a behavior related incident interrupting class is a very rare event. I quickly found it to be quite the opposite in Tel Rumeida which left me feeling like a fish out of water in the beginning.
.....
If anyone reading this is considering teaching kids in Palestine, especially in Tel Rumeida, I must say please do it! You won’t regret it. The experience, the place, the people and most importantly the kids will capture your heart and change your life forever, in the most positive way. I say this because this is exactly what happened to me and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Monday, 13 August 2007
Peace in Iraq is inextricably linked to a Palestinian settlement
Michael Shaik - The Age - August 13, 2007
Should Israel's colonisation of the West Bank continue, the US will find itself defending what former US president Jimmy Carter has described as a regime of apartheid in which Jews and Palestinians living in the same area are subject to different laws and differential access to resources. Should America succumb to Israeli pressure to isolate Iran, it will lose the war in Iraq.
Should Israel's colonisation of the West Bank continue, the US will find itself defending what former US president Jimmy Carter has described as a regime of apartheid in which Jews and Palestinians living in the same area are subject to different laws and differential access to resources. Should America succumb to Israeli pressure to isolate Iran, it will lose the war in Iraq.
Sunday, 29 July 2007
Ha'aretz: A racist Jewish state
Ha'aretz editorial: A racist Jewish state
Friday, 20 July 2007
Every day the Knesset has the option of passing laws that will advance Israel as a democratic Jewish state or turn it into a racist Jewish state. There is a very thin line between the two. This week, the line was crossed. If the Knesset legal counselor did not consider the bill entitled "the Jewish National Fund Law" as sufficiently racist to keep it off the agenda, it is hard to imagine what legislation she will consider racist.
Is the JNF racist?
Shahar Ilan, Ha'aretz, 25 July 2007
Here is an embarrassing fact: In 1957, when the Knesset passed the Jewish National Fund (JNF) Law, one of the great leaders of Mapam (the United Workers Party), Yaakov Hazan, said: "The JNF lands, which were purchased with the money of the Jewish people, are sacred for Jewish settlement, just as the Muslim waqf [land held in religious trust] is sacred to the Muslim community." Now, Hazan's ideological successor, Haim Oron (Meretz), argues that the bill seeking to designate JNF lands for Jews only is racist. Oron explained that "only a fossilized movement doesn't change its mind over the years." Yet one cannot help but wonder how what was sacred turned into racism.
Article 3A of the JNF's articles of incorporation states that one of its goals is to purchase and lease lands on which to settle Jews. The JNF bill, which passed its preliminary reading last week, requires the state to manage JNF lands in keeping with this principle. The bill, by the way, is not intended to circumvent a High Court of Justice ruling; its goal is to preempt a ruling on a petition now before the High Court. In other words, it is a preemptive bypass of the High Court. The immediate reason for the bill was Attorney General Menachem Mazuz's opinion that the lease of JNF lands to non-Jews should be permitted. Thus for now, this is a bill to bypass Mazuz.
The Knesset presidium has the authority to bar racist laws from the floor. But the Knesset's legal adviser, Nurit Elstein, ruled that "only bills whose essentially racist nature cries out to heaven and shakes the very foundations" should be barred. Elstein felt that the JNF bill does not cry out to heaven. But is it silently racist?
.................................................................................
Sabra
Alissa Wise, July 27 2007
We visited Al Lajoun with Abu Omar, whose grandfather was killed by the Israeli army in 1948 and who is now, along with other families from Al Lajoun, bringing a case to the Israeli High Court to try to get their land back. During the war in 1948, he and most of the villagers of Al Lajoun fled to Um il Fahm, now a Palestinian city within Israel (it is right outside the Green Line, and there have been suggestions by Israel to bring it into the West Bank in exchange for other other land to be brought into Israel).
The Jewish National Fund (JNF) is busy reforesting the village of Al Lajoun, where they make use of an old Ottoman law that says that if you work the land for 7 years, it becomes yours. This is a common practice of JNF.
When someone buys a tree for Israel from the JNF it is often wielded as a weapon in this way. The JNF plants its trees on Palestinian land, to disguise the remnants of the villages there or to take advantage of this law to confiscate it.
Friday, 20 July 2007
Every day the Knesset has the option of passing laws that will advance Israel as a democratic Jewish state or turn it into a racist Jewish state. There is a very thin line between the two. This week, the line was crossed. If the Knesset legal counselor did not consider the bill entitled "the Jewish National Fund Law" as sufficiently racist to keep it off the agenda, it is hard to imagine what legislation she will consider racist.
Is the JNF racist?
Shahar Ilan, Ha'aretz, 25 July 2007
Here is an embarrassing fact: In 1957, when the Knesset passed the Jewish National Fund (JNF) Law, one of the great leaders of Mapam (the United Workers Party), Yaakov Hazan, said: "The JNF lands, which were purchased with the money of the Jewish people, are sacred for Jewish settlement, just as the Muslim waqf [land held in religious trust] is sacred to the Muslim community." Now, Hazan's ideological successor, Haim Oron (Meretz), argues that the bill seeking to designate JNF lands for Jews only is racist. Oron explained that "only a fossilized movement doesn't change its mind over the years." Yet one cannot help but wonder how what was sacred turned into racism.
Article 3A of the JNF's articles of incorporation states that one of its goals is to purchase and lease lands on which to settle Jews. The JNF bill, which passed its preliminary reading last week, requires the state to manage JNF lands in keeping with this principle. The bill, by the way, is not intended to circumvent a High Court of Justice ruling; its goal is to preempt a ruling on a petition now before the High Court. In other words, it is a preemptive bypass of the High Court. The immediate reason for the bill was Attorney General Menachem Mazuz's opinion that the lease of JNF lands to non-Jews should be permitted. Thus for now, this is a bill to bypass Mazuz.
The Knesset presidium has the authority to bar racist laws from the floor. But the Knesset's legal adviser, Nurit Elstein, ruled that "only bills whose essentially racist nature cries out to heaven and shakes the very foundations" should be barred. Elstein felt that the JNF bill does not cry out to heaven. But is it silently racist?
.................................................................................
Sabra
Alissa Wise, July 27 2007
We visited Al Lajoun with Abu Omar, whose grandfather was killed by the Israeli army in 1948 and who is now, along with other families from Al Lajoun, bringing a case to the Israeli High Court to try to get their land back. During the war in 1948, he and most of the villagers of Al Lajoun fled to Um il Fahm, now a Palestinian city within Israel (it is right outside the Green Line, and there have been suggestions by Israel to bring it into the West Bank in exchange for other other land to be brought into Israel).
The Jewish National Fund (JNF) is busy reforesting the village of Al Lajoun, where they make use of an old Ottoman law that says that if you work the land for 7 years, it becomes yours. This is a common practice of JNF.
When someone buys a tree for Israel from the JNF it is often wielded as a weapon in this way. The JNF plants its trees on Palestinian land, to disguise the remnants of the villages there or to take advantage of this law to confiscate it.
Monday, 16 July 2007
Breaking the siege in Gaza
Kim Bullimore - GLW - 14 July 2007
“We’ve tried to enter Palestine by land. We’ve tried to arrive by air. Now we’re getting serious. We’re taking a ship”.
In August 2007, up to 70 human rights activists from 13 countries will attempt to non-violently break the Israeli and international siege of the densely populated Gaza Strip by sailing a ship into Gazan territorial waters with US$25,000 worth of humanitarian aid to donate to the Palestinian Red Crescent.
Israel has prevented the activists — who include teachers, students, musicians, politicians and holocaust survivors — from carrying out humanitarian work in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). The campaign aims to raise international awareness about the prison-like closure of the Gaza Strip and to pressure the international community to review its sanctions policy and end its support for continued Israeli occupation.
Green Left Weekly spoke to three activists involved in the campaign.
Sharyn, who lives in Britain, gained the dubious distinction in 2002 of becoming the first international peace activist with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) to be shot by the Israeli military, just four days after she arrived in the OPT. Despite this, Sharyn returned a further five times to carry out human rights work in the OPT before she was placed on the Israeli government’s official blacklist of individuals prevented from entering Israel and the OPT.
Fellow Australian activist Michael, who was the ISM’s media officer in 2003 when US activist Rachel Corrie was crushed to death while trying to prevent an Israeli armoured bulldozer from demolishing a home in Rafah in the Gaza Strip, has also been blacklisted by Israel. When Michael tried to return to Palestine in 2004, he was detained for a week as a “security risk” and deported without ever leaving Israel’s Ben Gurion airport.
According to Sharyn, “this blacklist has been [Israel’s] plan B after plan A of simply shooting us drew international condemnation”. Both Michael and Sharyn told GLW that the idea for the Break the Siege campaign was born in November 2006 because so many human rights and peace activists had been prevented from entering the OPT.
According to Michael, “The original idea was for these peace activists to arrive simultaneously at Ben Gurion airport and demand admittance to the OPT. However, it was soon decided that the real story was not Israel’s treatment of internationals, but of the Palestinians themselves, and that we needed to focus on Israel’s siege of Gaza.” This led to the plan to charter a boat.
“Israel claims that since it pulled its settlers out of Gaza, the strip is a ‘foreign country’ that is no longer under Israeli occupation. If this is the case then its total control over Gaza’s air space, territorial waters and border crossings [including those into Egypt] is a gross violation of international law”, Michael said.
“The purpose of the mission is to draw attention to the fact that Israel is using its illegal choke hold on Gaza to wage economic warfare on an already desperately impoverished population by arbitrarily closing the strip’s border crossings to exports, restricting the supply of food and medicines, closing offshore fisheries to Palestinian fishermen and brazenly stealing customs duties that belong to the Palestinian people.”
According to Sharyn, Break the Siege is about showing “solidarity with people who are living under terrible conditions” and letting the “Palestinians know they are not forgotten”, as well as placing international pressure on Israel.
Should they make it to Gaza, Sharyn expects “to be given gallons of sugary tea and have multiple families attempt to feed me their entire week’s food supply in one sitting”. However she doesn’t expect the same welcome from the Israeli military, which is likely to “make it very evident” that it holds Gaza “in an iron grip” and “will attempt to stop our boat reaching the port. Since our Israeli colleagues will be on board with us, I hope the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] will decide a violent attack wouldn’t be a good idea.”
Also travelling on the ship will be 82-year-old Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein, whose parent’s perished in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Hedy told GLW she received “a wake up call” about Israel and Palestine in 1982 when she learned “about the massacres in the two refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon”.
“I needed to find out what and why it happened; what preceded it, what had taken place since 1948. The more I learned and the more I understood, the more I began to speak out publicly against the policies and practices of the Israeli government and military.”
Hedy hopes that the Break the Siege campaign will also serve as a “wake up call” for others and will contribute to a sustained global campaign to educate people about the reality of what is going on in the OPT.
Michael said the activists hoped that the campaign would assist in “mobilising people against Israeli apartheid” and that people would not only publicise and help finance the campaign, but also organise solidarity actions around the world to coincide with the ship’s departure and its arrival in Gaza.
“The Israel-Palestine conflict has become the defining struggle between racism and justice in the world today. It is impossible to support justice, human rights and democracy without opposing Israeli apartheid”, Michael said.
The Break the Siege campaign needs your support. Visit http://www.freegaza.org.
“We’ve tried to enter Palestine by land. We’ve tried to arrive by air. Now we’re getting serious. We’re taking a ship”.
In August 2007, up to 70 human rights activists from 13 countries will attempt to non-violently break the Israeli and international siege of the densely populated Gaza Strip by sailing a ship into Gazan territorial waters with US$25,000 worth of humanitarian aid to donate to the Palestinian Red Crescent.
Israel has prevented the activists — who include teachers, students, musicians, politicians and holocaust survivors — from carrying out humanitarian work in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). The campaign aims to raise international awareness about the prison-like closure of the Gaza Strip and to pressure the international community to review its sanctions policy and end its support for continued Israeli occupation.
Green Left Weekly spoke to three activists involved in the campaign.
Sharyn, who lives in Britain, gained the dubious distinction in 2002 of becoming the first international peace activist with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) to be shot by the Israeli military, just four days after she arrived in the OPT. Despite this, Sharyn returned a further five times to carry out human rights work in the OPT before she was placed on the Israeli government’s official blacklist of individuals prevented from entering Israel and the OPT.
Fellow Australian activist Michael, who was the ISM’s media officer in 2003 when US activist Rachel Corrie was crushed to death while trying to prevent an Israeli armoured bulldozer from demolishing a home in Rafah in the Gaza Strip, has also been blacklisted by Israel. When Michael tried to return to Palestine in 2004, he was detained for a week as a “security risk” and deported without ever leaving Israel’s Ben Gurion airport.
According to Sharyn, “this blacklist has been [Israel’s] plan B after plan A of simply shooting us drew international condemnation”. Both Michael and Sharyn told GLW that the idea for the Break the Siege campaign was born in November 2006 because so many human rights and peace activists had been prevented from entering the OPT.
According to Michael, “The original idea was for these peace activists to arrive simultaneously at Ben Gurion airport and demand admittance to the OPT. However, it was soon decided that the real story was not Israel’s treatment of internationals, but of the Palestinians themselves, and that we needed to focus on Israel’s siege of Gaza.” This led to the plan to charter a boat.
“Israel claims that since it pulled its settlers out of Gaza, the strip is a ‘foreign country’ that is no longer under Israeli occupation. If this is the case then its total control over Gaza’s air space, territorial waters and border crossings [including those into Egypt] is a gross violation of international law”, Michael said.
“The purpose of the mission is to draw attention to the fact that Israel is using its illegal choke hold on Gaza to wage economic warfare on an already desperately impoverished population by arbitrarily closing the strip’s border crossings to exports, restricting the supply of food and medicines, closing offshore fisheries to Palestinian fishermen and brazenly stealing customs duties that belong to the Palestinian people.”
According to Sharyn, Break the Siege is about showing “solidarity with people who are living under terrible conditions” and letting the “Palestinians know they are not forgotten”, as well as placing international pressure on Israel.
Should they make it to Gaza, Sharyn expects “to be given gallons of sugary tea and have multiple families attempt to feed me their entire week’s food supply in one sitting”. However she doesn’t expect the same welcome from the Israeli military, which is likely to “make it very evident” that it holds Gaza “in an iron grip” and “will attempt to stop our boat reaching the port. Since our Israeli colleagues will be on board with us, I hope the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] will decide a violent attack wouldn’t be a good idea.”
Also travelling on the ship will be 82-year-old Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein, whose parent’s perished in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Hedy told GLW she received “a wake up call” about Israel and Palestine in 1982 when she learned “about the massacres in the two refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon”.
“I needed to find out what and why it happened; what preceded it, what had taken place since 1948. The more I learned and the more I understood, the more I began to speak out publicly against the policies and practices of the Israeli government and military.”
Hedy hopes that the Break the Siege campaign will also serve as a “wake up call” for others and will contribute to a sustained global campaign to educate people about the reality of what is going on in the OPT.
Michael said the activists hoped that the campaign would assist in “mobilising people against Israeli apartheid” and that people would not only publicise and help finance the campaign, but also organise solidarity actions around the world to coincide with the ship’s departure and its arrival in Gaza.
“The Israel-Palestine conflict has become the defining struggle between racism and justice in the world today. It is impossible to support justice, human rights and democracy without opposing Israeli apartheid”, Michael said.
The Break the Siege campaign needs your support. Visit http://www.freegaza.org.
Thursday, 28 June 2007
Israeli Apartheid is the Core of the Crisis
June 23 / 24, 2007
There Has Never Been a True Left in Israel
Oren Ben Dor
It is unethical to blame Israel's 1967 occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem for events in Gaza. At the heart of the factional violence in Gaza and the political crisis in the Palestinian leadership lies the constant marginalization of a voice which poses an ethical challenge to an uncritically accepted presumption. Sadly, but hardly surprisingly, initial reactions to the situation have used it to further marginalize this voice.
The presumption challenged is that it is morally acceptable to have a state whose legal structures assign preferential stake to all those who pass some test of Jewishness. It is not surprising that the Israeli right wing rejects this challenge. But why is the message also rejected by those Israelis, and their Western supporters, who claim to be concerned about human rights?
It is true that some Israeli left wingers refer to the post-1967 occupation as an apartheid regime. There are good reasons for such comparison with the old South African system. In the Occupied Territories, Palestinians are subject to arbitrary military regulations, while Israeli settlers are governed by Israeli law. It is no accident that the barrier being built by Israel in the West Bank is called by Israelis the "gader hafrada". Like the Afrikaans word "apartheid", the Hebrew word "hafrada" means "separation". The Israeli barrier separates Jewish settlements from Palestinian villages, usually also separating those villages from their farmland.
But the apartheid label should not be restricted to the post-1967 occupation. There is a more fundamental form of apartheid, of which the occupation is but a manifestation.
Apartheid in historic Palestine originated, and has persisted, in the ideology of creating a state in which Jews would be separated from non-Jews in terms of their stake in the political community. It was an apartheid mentality that nourished the desire of establishing and maintaining a state with a Jewish demographic majority and character. The well-planned ethnic cleansing, in 1948, of 750000 indigenous people was apartheid practice par excellence. It is apartheid which prevents the expelled and their descendants from returning: this apartheid denies residence to expellees from my former home district, the Galilee, but grants it, not just to Israeli-born Jews like me, but to Jews all over the world. It is apartheid law that creates a wall of discrimination between Jewish and Arab citizens of the Israeli state. It is an Apartheid mentality that prompts some Israeli Jews to view their Arab fellow-citizens as a "demographic threat".
When "Israel's right to exist" is used as a litmus test for moderation and pragmatism, the subtext is that it is reasonable for apartheid practices which are at the core of the state as currently constituted to be allowed to continue. Thus, those who mouth this mantra, and those who try to limit the apartheid label to "the occupation", are complicit with the apartheid inside pre-1967 Israel.
Tough questions need asking. Does not moral condemnation directed against the post-1967 occupation and its apartheid practices both conceal, and thus entrench, the apartheid mentality that lies at the core of the Israeli state? Is the argument merely about the boundaries of the area in which apartheid can have free play, or should criticism be directed at such practices wherever they exist?
If Israel demolished the concrete wall and withdrew to its exact pre-1967 limits, would the self-described Israeli left-wingers agitate against the continuance of apartheid inside those borders? If not, what makes apartheid inside the pre-1967 borders acceptable? If the notion of Jewish statehood necessitates apartheid, why is this not subject to the same challenge as South African apartheid? These are questions that ought to be canvassed among the Israeli "left".
The truth is that there has virtually never been any real "left" in Israel. So-called left-wing Israelis share their right-wing compatriots' support for the state ideology.
Any moral condemnation which restricts its ambit to the post-1967 occupation is at best simplistic, at worst misleading. By focusing on "the occupation", it serves to entrench the apartheid ideology which is central to the essence of the Israeli state.
The economic and diplomatic boycott imposed on the elected Hamas government, which has resulted in the recent violence in Gaza, was intended to force it to accept Israeli apartheid. Only when the world is ready to call by its true name the premise upon which Israeli statehood is based, will it not take violence to advance a morally coherent and credible criticism of Israel.
The denial of this core apartheid, of which the Gaza violence is a symptom, must stop. We should say it loud and clear. The apartheid system which lies at the core of Israeli statehood should be dismantled. It is unethical to rationalize the apartheid notion of a Jewish state. It is not consistent to be a friend of Israel, thereby endorsing its apartheid-based statehood, while criticising its apartheid practices in the Occupied Territories. Apartheid should have no sanctuary in any future vision of two states for historic Palestine.
Only when this realization sinks in will it be possible to envision a stable political solution--a single state over all historic Palestine-- in which redress can be made for past injustices and equal citizenship provided for all, Arabs and Jews.
Oren Ben-Dor teaches legal and political philosophy at the School of Law, University of Southampton, UK. He can be reached at: okbendor@yahoo.com
There Has Never Been a True Left in Israel
Oren Ben Dor
It is unethical to blame Israel's 1967 occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem for events in Gaza. At the heart of the factional violence in Gaza and the political crisis in the Palestinian leadership lies the constant marginalization of a voice which poses an ethical challenge to an uncritically accepted presumption. Sadly, but hardly surprisingly, initial reactions to the situation have used it to further marginalize this voice.
The presumption challenged is that it is morally acceptable to have a state whose legal structures assign preferential stake to all those who pass some test of Jewishness. It is not surprising that the Israeli right wing rejects this challenge. But why is the message also rejected by those Israelis, and their Western supporters, who claim to be concerned about human rights?
It is true that some Israeli left wingers refer to the post-1967 occupation as an apartheid regime. There are good reasons for such comparison with the old South African system. In the Occupied Territories, Palestinians are subject to arbitrary military regulations, while Israeli settlers are governed by Israeli law. It is no accident that the barrier being built by Israel in the West Bank is called by Israelis the "gader hafrada". Like the Afrikaans word "apartheid", the Hebrew word "hafrada" means "separation". The Israeli barrier separates Jewish settlements from Palestinian villages, usually also separating those villages from their farmland.
But the apartheid label should not be restricted to the post-1967 occupation. There is a more fundamental form of apartheid, of which the occupation is but a manifestation.
Apartheid in historic Palestine originated, and has persisted, in the ideology of creating a state in which Jews would be separated from non-Jews in terms of their stake in the political community. It was an apartheid mentality that nourished the desire of establishing and maintaining a state with a Jewish demographic majority and character. The well-planned ethnic cleansing, in 1948, of 750000 indigenous people was apartheid practice par excellence. It is apartheid which prevents the expelled and their descendants from returning: this apartheid denies residence to expellees from my former home district, the Galilee, but grants it, not just to Israeli-born Jews like me, but to Jews all over the world. It is apartheid law that creates a wall of discrimination between Jewish and Arab citizens of the Israeli state. It is an Apartheid mentality that prompts some Israeli Jews to view their Arab fellow-citizens as a "demographic threat".
When "Israel's right to exist" is used as a litmus test for moderation and pragmatism, the subtext is that it is reasonable for apartheid practices which are at the core of the state as currently constituted to be allowed to continue. Thus, those who mouth this mantra, and those who try to limit the apartheid label to "the occupation", are complicit with the apartheid inside pre-1967 Israel.
Tough questions need asking. Does not moral condemnation directed against the post-1967 occupation and its apartheid practices both conceal, and thus entrench, the apartheid mentality that lies at the core of the Israeli state? Is the argument merely about the boundaries of the area in which apartheid can have free play, or should criticism be directed at such practices wherever they exist?
If Israel demolished the concrete wall and withdrew to its exact pre-1967 limits, would the self-described Israeli left-wingers agitate against the continuance of apartheid inside those borders? If not, what makes apartheid inside the pre-1967 borders acceptable? If the notion of Jewish statehood necessitates apartheid, why is this not subject to the same challenge as South African apartheid? These are questions that ought to be canvassed among the Israeli "left".
The truth is that there has virtually never been any real "left" in Israel. So-called left-wing Israelis share their right-wing compatriots' support for the state ideology.
Any moral condemnation which restricts its ambit to the post-1967 occupation is at best simplistic, at worst misleading. By focusing on "the occupation", it serves to entrench the apartheid ideology which is central to the essence of the Israeli state.
The economic and diplomatic boycott imposed on the elected Hamas government, which has resulted in the recent violence in Gaza, was intended to force it to accept Israeli apartheid. Only when the world is ready to call by its true name the premise upon which Israeli statehood is based, will it not take violence to advance a morally coherent and credible criticism of Israel.
The denial of this core apartheid, of which the Gaza violence is a symptom, must stop. We should say it loud and clear. The apartheid system which lies at the core of Israeli statehood should be dismantled. It is unethical to rationalize the apartheid notion of a Jewish state. It is not consistent to be a friend of Israel, thereby endorsing its apartheid-based statehood, while criticising its apartheid practices in the Occupied Territories. Apartheid should have no sanctuary in any future vision of two states for historic Palestine.
Only when this realization sinks in will it be possible to envision a stable political solution--a single state over all historic Palestine-- in which redress can be made for past injustices and equal citizenship provided for all, Arabs and Jews.
Oren Ben-Dor teaches legal and political philosophy at the School of Law, University of Southampton, UK. He can be reached at: okbendor@yahoo.com
Monday, 28 May 2007
Off Side in Israel
May 23, 2007
SBS's Dateline reporter Sophie McNeil reports on the discrimination faced by the Palestinian citizens of Israel. Transcript and video here.
SBS's Dateline reporter Sophie McNeil reports on the discrimination faced by the Palestinian citizens of Israel. Transcript and video here.
Howard's dubious Jewish National Fund honor
Sonja Karkar, The Electronic Intifada, 21 May 2007
There is something worrying about a prime minister of a liberal, democratic country who imposes values on his country's citizens and those who wish to become citizens, yet does not adhere to those values when he regards it politically expedient to ignore them. This is precisely what Prime Minister John Howard has done in accepting the "honour" of having a forest named after him in Israel's Negev Desert and also the Jerusalem Prize for his support of Israel and its "values". And John Howard is in good company: Sir Robert Menzies and Bob Hawke -- both former Australian prime ministers -- also have forests in Israel named after them, as well as a former governor-general, Sir Zelman Cowen.
The naming of the John Howard forest was arranged by a quasi-private land agency, the Jewish National Fund (JNF) which deliberately discriminates against non-Jews in its allocation of long-lease agreements. This arrangement services Israel's apartheid policies aimed at bringing about the Judaisation of all of the land originally known as historic Palestine. The Israeli government relies on the JNF and international Zionist organizations to bring in Jews from abroad to settle on land forcibly taken from the non-Jewish inhabitants -- a practice which is discriminatory and illegal. Already the JNF holds 13 per cent of the land and now is currently advertising its "Blueprint Negev" as "A Miracle in the Desert". Only Jews will have access to the new development in keeping with the JNF's charter, which is focused on looking after Jews globally.
The Negev Desert was and is the home of the indigenous Bedouin Arabs who are now citizens of present-day Israel. Some 80,000 have been living in 45 unrecognised villages in the southern Negev Desert and although they have a right to vote in Israel's national elections and have a duty to pay taxes if they work, they have been calculatingly ignored when the Israeli government approves of planning projects for new Jewish communities. Their lands have been systematically confiscated and thousands of them have been forced to live in poor and densely populated shanty towns that is anathema to their traditional life on the land. These shanty towns are totally neglected by the Israeli government and the Bedouins have no access to even basic infrastructure like water, electricity and sewage. There are no roads or medical and welfare services and no municipal authority to administer services. The Bedouins, therefore, have no access to any authority that might issue permits for building and when out of necessity they do build, they live in constant fear of having their homes destroyed.
The similarity of conditions between the Bedouin Arabs and black South Africans during the Apartheid era is obvious. Like the white South Africans, Jewish Israelis seek to preserve their privileged position in Israel at all costs, tragically to the detriment of the non-Jewish citizens. All Israel's policies, therefore, are geared to ensure the exclusivity and security of the Jewish state. Thus, mass expulsions followed by home demolitions and razing of villages is a familiar story in Israel just as forced removal was the modus operandi in South Africa. Under Israel's former Prime Minister Sharon, a five-year plan was approved by the Israeli cabinet, to force the Bedouins living in the unrecognised villages to leave. There was no consultation, just a gradual increase in house demolitions, the spraying of herbicide on crops to stop land cultivation and the filing of eviction suits. Places were renamed and Jewish towns, villages and cooperatives were built in place of the Bedouin villages. The Bedouins, who once owned 94 per cent of the total land, have had their land declared state property. They now own less than three per cent, and those who refuse to leave their unrecognised villages, are called "squatters".
The JNF -- which has marketed itself in the last decade as a premier Zionist environmental organization -- plans to settle half a million Israelis in the Negev in 25 low density housing communities over ten years. But, what the JNF calls the last great natural reserve of Israel, has been the subject of legal proceedings by Bedouin Arabs wanting to reclaim their land, and John Howard's forest sits right in the middle of this disputed land. It would have been far more prudent for our prime minister to decline these honours than associate himself with a state that practices racial discrimination and human rights abuses against its own non-Jewish citizens. After all, Howard was at great pains to stop the Australian cricket team from playing in Zimbabwe as a protest against Robert Mugabe's "grubby" regime. Equally and clearly, the JNF's acts on behalf of Israel, do not measure up to our Australian values of a fair go, tolerance and inclusion. The prime minister ought to bring his values into line with the rest of Australia, instead of associating himself so unreservedly with Israel.
Sonja Karkar is the founder and president of Women for Palestine in Melbourne, Australia.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ben-Gurion "sold" land belonging to Palestinian refugees to the Jewish National Fund
Meron Benvenisti, Ha'aretz, 29/05/2007
Of the more than 2.5 million dunams owned by the JNF, two million dunams were not purchased with the small coins put into the blue boxes, but were rather lands abandoned by Arabs that David Ben-Gurion, in a typical maneuver, "sold" to the JNF in 1949-1950. The first deal was clinched on January 27, 1949. It included the sale of a million dunams of abandoned land in various areas in return for about 18 million Israeli pounds.
This was an improper and also an illegal decision. The Israeli government sold the JNF lands that it did not own, but which had rather been captured in the war (and even the laws that it had enacted by then did not grant the state ownership of these lands). Ben-Gurion thereby achieved three aims. First of all, he transferred responsibility for the abandoned lands, on which new settlements were planned, from the Mapam party, which held the agriculture portfolio, to the JNF, which was under the influence of his own party, Mapai. Secondly, he could claim to have clean hands with respect to the continued confiscation of lands. And thirdly, he established a political fact that barred the way to the refugees' return.
A week before the decision on the sale of the million dunams, the United Nations General Assembly had passed Resolution 194, under which the refugees were to be permitted to return to their homes, and if they chose not to return, they would receive compensation. Ben-Gurion did not want Israel's sovereignty to be sullied by matters that stank of illegality, deviation from international norms and immorality.
The heads of the JNF knew very well that the sale was illegal, but it was important to them to establish that the JNF would continue serving as the institution that held the Jewish people's lands and developed them for purposes of settlement. They insisted that the government commit itself to "making (in the future) all the legal arrangements so that the lands will be registered under the JNF's full ownership under the laws of the State of Israel."
There is something worrying about a prime minister of a liberal, democratic country who imposes values on his country's citizens and those who wish to become citizens, yet does not adhere to those values when he regards it politically expedient to ignore them. This is precisely what Prime Minister John Howard has done in accepting the "honour" of having a forest named after him in Israel's Negev Desert and also the Jerusalem Prize for his support of Israel and its "values". And John Howard is in good company: Sir Robert Menzies and Bob Hawke -- both former Australian prime ministers -- also have forests in Israel named after them, as well as a former governor-general, Sir Zelman Cowen.
The naming of the John Howard forest was arranged by a quasi-private land agency, the Jewish National Fund (JNF) which deliberately discriminates against non-Jews in its allocation of long-lease agreements. This arrangement services Israel's apartheid policies aimed at bringing about the Judaisation of all of the land originally known as historic Palestine. The Israeli government relies on the JNF and international Zionist organizations to bring in Jews from abroad to settle on land forcibly taken from the non-Jewish inhabitants -- a practice which is discriminatory and illegal. Already the JNF holds 13 per cent of the land and now is currently advertising its "Blueprint Negev" as "A Miracle in the Desert". Only Jews will have access to the new development in keeping with the JNF's charter, which is focused on looking after Jews globally.
The Negev Desert was and is the home of the indigenous Bedouin Arabs who are now citizens of present-day Israel. Some 80,000 have been living in 45 unrecognised villages in the southern Negev Desert and although they have a right to vote in Israel's national elections and have a duty to pay taxes if they work, they have been calculatingly ignored when the Israeli government approves of planning projects for new Jewish communities. Their lands have been systematically confiscated and thousands of them have been forced to live in poor and densely populated shanty towns that is anathema to their traditional life on the land. These shanty towns are totally neglected by the Israeli government and the Bedouins have no access to even basic infrastructure like water, electricity and sewage. There are no roads or medical and welfare services and no municipal authority to administer services. The Bedouins, therefore, have no access to any authority that might issue permits for building and when out of necessity they do build, they live in constant fear of having their homes destroyed.
The similarity of conditions between the Bedouin Arabs and black South Africans during the Apartheid era is obvious. Like the white South Africans, Jewish Israelis seek to preserve their privileged position in Israel at all costs, tragically to the detriment of the non-Jewish citizens. All Israel's policies, therefore, are geared to ensure the exclusivity and security of the Jewish state. Thus, mass expulsions followed by home demolitions and razing of villages is a familiar story in Israel just as forced removal was the modus operandi in South Africa. Under Israel's former Prime Minister Sharon, a five-year plan was approved by the Israeli cabinet, to force the Bedouins living in the unrecognised villages to leave. There was no consultation, just a gradual increase in house demolitions, the spraying of herbicide on crops to stop land cultivation and the filing of eviction suits. Places were renamed and Jewish towns, villages and cooperatives were built in place of the Bedouin villages. The Bedouins, who once owned 94 per cent of the total land, have had their land declared state property. They now own less than three per cent, and those who refuse to leave their unrecognised villages, are called "squatters".
The JNF -- which has marketed itself in the last decade as a premier Zionist environmental organization -- plans to settle half a million Israelis in the Negev in 25 low density housing communities over ten years. But, what the JNF calls the last great natural reserve of Israel, has been the subject of legal proceedings by Bedouin Arabs wanting to reclaim their land, and John Howard's forest sits right in the middle of this disputed land. It would have been far more prudent for our prime minister to decline these honours than associate himself with a state that practices racial discrimination and human rights abuses against its own non-Jewish citizens. After all, Howard was at great pains to stop the Australian cricket team from playing in Zimbabwe as a protest against Robert Mugabe's "grubby" regime. Equally and clearly, the JNF's acts on behalf of Israel, do not measure up to our Australian values of a fair go, tolerance and inclusion. The prime minister ought to bring his values into line with the rest of Australia, instead of associating himself so unreservedly with Israel.
Sonja Karkar is the founder and president of Women for Palestine in Melbourne, Australia.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ben-Gurion "sold" land belonging to Palestinian refugees to the Jewish National Fund
Meron Benvenisti, Ha'aretz, 29/05/2007
Of the more than 2.5 million dunams owned by the JNF, two million dunams were not purchased with the small coins put into the blue boxes, but were rather lands abandoned by Arabs that David Ben-Gurion, in a typical maneuver, "sold" to the JNF in 1949-1950. The first deal was clinched on January 27, 1949. It included the sale of a million dunams of abandoned land in various areas in return for about 18 million Israeli pounds.
This was an improper and also an illegal decision. The Israeli government sold the JNF lands that it did not own, but which had rather been captured in the war (and even the laws that it had enacted by then did not grant the state ownership of these lands). Ben-Gurion thereby achieved three aims. First of all, he transferred responsibility for the abandoned lands, on which new settlements were planned, from the Mapam party, which held the agriculture portfolio, to the JNF, which was under the influence of his own party, Mapai. Secondly, he could claim to have clean hands with respect to the continued confiscation of lands. And thirdly, he established a political fact that barred the way to the refugees' return.
A week before the decision on the sale of the million dunams, the United Nations General Assembly had passed Resolution 194, under which the refugees were to be permitted to return to their homes, and if they chose not to return, they would receive compensation. Ben-Gurion did not want Israel's sovereignty to be sullied by matters that stank of illegality, deviation from international norms and immorality.
The heads of the JNF knew very well that the sale was illegal, but it was important to them to establish that the JNF would continue serving as the institution that held the Jewish people's lands and developed them for purposes of settlement. They insisted that the government commit itself to "making (in the future) all the legal arrangements so that the lands will be registered under the JNF's full ownership under the laws of the State of Israel."
Sunday, 27 May 2007
Cry, the beloved country
Gideon Levy, Ha'aretz, 25 May 2007
PRETORIA, South Africa - It was like being in the movies. Only there would you see an inert photo suddenly come to life. We were standing at the memorial museum in Soweto, next to a photo of a dead boy with other children around him, and our guide Antoinette was telling us about it. Antoinette said that the young girl in the picture was her.
The photo is at the entrance of the museum, built to commemorate the blacks' struggle against apartheid, which began here. Across the way is Nelson Mandela's tiny hut, nearby is the house of Desmond Tutu and down the street is the present home of Winnie Mandela.
The picture was stunningly familiar to us. We were four: MK Ran Cohen (Meretz); Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations; Diana Buttu, a former legal advisor to the PLO; and myself. We were all making the same associations: Hector is Mohammed al-Dura; the white soldiers shooting at children are us.
The passage of time was evident with Antoinette. The teenager in the picture was now a woman in her late forties. Her brother would have been 44, but a bullet from the rifle of a white policeman deprived him of the chance to witness the miracle of how the cruel racist regime collapsed.
It was another UN conference about peace with the Palestinians, but this time it was being held in a particularly "loaded" location. We were only two Israelis there, but the calling cards I collected were quite varied: Arab and African ambassadors, the previous Egyptian foreign minister, representatives of Muslim countries and diplomats posted in Pretoria. The Syrian ambassador smiled and did not offer his card; the Libyan ambassador did the same. But they listened to us attentively.
The new regime has been good for South Africa; no Palestinian refugee camp looks nearly as attractive as Soweto 2007. But not far away is a shantytown called Alexandra and the sights there are worse than in any Palestinian refugee camp we've seen. This is where South African blacks who haven't been able to pull themselves out of poverty live, together with refugees from neighboring Zimbabwe.
Less than a kilometer separates the impoverished Alexandra from a fancy Johannesburg neighborhood called Sandton. There, behind the electric fences and personal bodyguards, hide the city's wealthy - many of them Jews and a good number former Israelis. On Shabbat we ate cholent. On Friday night we dined with a former Israeli from Nahalal. We drove to Alexandra with a guy who originally hails from Tivon, who has been here for 30 years and owns a huge agricultural enterprise that employs 1,800 black workers earning $2 an hour.
It's impossible not to admire what has occurred in this battered land since the yoke of white tyranny was lifted.
Not in his name
At the conference luncheon, Ronnie Kasrils, South Africa's minister for intelligence services, hurried over to grab a seat next to us. Kasrils, a Jew, had never been to Israel (where he has relatives) until his visit to the territories earlier in the month, when he invited Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh to his country. He then made his first, quick trip to Tel Aviv, saw Rabin Square and ate fish in Jaffa. "It was the most pleasant evening I had," he acknowledges.
Tom Segev once wrote that he is "a guy I wouldn't choose to be stuck in an elevator with," but I would be glad to get stuck with Ronnie Kasrils, inside or outside an elevator. He is a Jew in conflict with his people, perhaps also with his identity - a courageous freedom fighter and communist, who joined the oppressed race in its struggle, was exiled from his country for 27 years and is now a minister.
A son of Lithuanian Jews, who had a bar mitzvah and belonged to Jewish youth movements, Kasrils is one of the most fascinating characters to come out of the local Jewish community - which now thoroughly denounces him. He brandishes his Jewishness openly, perhaps defiantly, even when he recently made an official visit to Iran and Syria. He once founded a movement called "Not in My Name," to underscore his disassociation from the injustices committed by Israel in the territories. Ronnie Kasrils hates the Israeli occupation.
When we talked he said the Israeli occupation is worse than apartheid: The whites never shelled the black neighborhoods with tanks and artillery.
Just like the pogroms
If this warm, outgoing 69-year-old has any personal security protection, it is invisible. We sat in a vacant room in a building on the University of Pretoria campus and talked. "You're an Israeli and I'm a South African," he emphasized immediately, as if to negate any common identity. "I'm confident that the circle will be closed one day and people will understand that I'm not anti-Jewish or anti-Israeli ... It really pains me as a Jew that in this country such hostility has developed toward Israel, because of its treatment of the Palestinians ...
"When we saw on television the drama going on in your country, the oppressive pictures of the methods you use toward the Palestinians, the uprooting of trees, the tanks entering Jenin, and the old woman weeping over the demolition of her house and crying 'The Jews, the Jews' - it's just like what my grandmother used to tell me about the pogroms: The Cossacks are coming, the Cossacks are coming. I'm trying to say: It's not the Jews, it's Zionisms that's doing this. So I decided to get up and say something. I found this in the Jewish tradition: to open your mouth, in the name of conscience.
"The man who greeted me when I returned to South Africa after the years of exile was Rabbi Cyril Harris ... He gave me a red skullcap with a dedication: to the freedom fighter. When I started to express criticism of Israel, I thought that the Jews would denounce Ariel Sharon, but then I found out that I was naive. I was stunned to see that the Jewish community here didn't care who was in power in Israel and how extreme the policy was against the Palestinians ...
They would blindly support any government. Rabbi Harris became my enemy. He called me a fringe Jew and my response was: We were the only ones who stood up against apartheid and now we're the minority against the injustice.
"When I visited the territories I also passed through Israel and I saw the forests that cover the remnants of the Palestinian villages. As a former forestry minister, this was especially striking to me. I also went into a few settlements. It was insane. Young Americans spat on the flag that was on my car. The occupation reminds me of the darkest days of apartheid, but we never saw tanks and planes firing at a civilian population. It's a monstrousness I'd never seen before. The wall you built, the checkpoints and the roads for Jews only - it turns the stomach, even for someone who grew up under apartheid. It's a hundred times worse.
"We know from our experience that oppression motivates resistance and that the more savage the oppression, the harsher the resistance. At a certain point in time you think that the oppression is working, and that you're controlling the other people, imprisoning its leaders and its activists, but the resistance will triumph in the end.
"We saw the entrance to Qalqilyah, the wall, the people standing hours in line at the checkpoints. It's a beautiful country, I love its landscapes, but I know that it's big enough to contain more people. Israel has developed very impressively, but how much more impressive it would be if you brought about a just solution ... I don't care if it's two states or one - it's up to you, the Israelis and the Palestinians, to decide.
"I had coffee with the commander of the Erez checkpoint. It reminded me of the central prison in Pretoria, a place I've visited many times. And it was so awful to go through this thing in order to get to Gaza. At first I said that I don't want to speak with the man at the checkpoint, but then I decided that was foolish. The Israelis were actually very nice to me.
"What is Zionism to me? When I was 10 years old, it meant security and a national home for the Jews. I waved the Israeli flag at my bar mitzvah and I was very proud of my Judaism. The first book I received for my bar mitzvah was 'The Revolt,' by Menachem Begin. My biggest hero was Asher Ginsberg, Ahad Ha'am ... Later on I started reading not only Herzl, but also [historians] Ilan Pappe, Benny Morris and Tom Segev, and I came to see 1948 in a different light. I understood that it was an ethnic cleansing.
"South Africa changed me and strengthened my South African identity. And then I began to understand that the main problem of Zionism is the exclusivity of the establishment of a national home and the concept of the chosen people. Very soon I started to oppose it. The establishment of a national home for Jews alone seemed to me like a parallel of apartheid. The apartheid leaders also spoke about a chosen people. In 1961, prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd said that Israel is like South Africa. That opened my eyes. For many years we were also aware of the military cooperation between Israel and South Africa - a joint offensive naval force, missile boats, the Cheetah planes and the big secret of the nuclear weapons. Prime minister Johannes Vorster, who had a declared Nazi past, received a hero's welcome from you. This added to my feelings regarding Israel.
"I am very conscious of the Holocaust and of anti-Semitism, but my experience here leads me to one conclusion: that all forms of racism must be fought by means of a common struggle. I have a dream: That you will change your outlook, as happened here, and that change will come. When politicians reach agreements, it's amazing how fast ordinary folks can come to a change in thinking. Change the leadership and the economic conditions and you'll see how easy the change is."
PRETORIA, South Africa - It was like being in the movies. Only there would you see an inert photo suddenly come to life. We were standing at the memorial museum in Soweto, next to a photo of a dead boy with other children around him, and our guide Antoinette was telling us about it. Antoinette said that the young girl in the picture was her.
The photo is at the entrance of the museum, built to commemorate the blacks' struggle against apartheid, which began here. Across the way is Nelson Mandela's tiny hut, nearby is the house of Desmond Tutu and down the street is the present home of Winnie Mandela.
The picture was stunningly familiar to us. We were four: MK Ran Cohen (Meretz); Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations; Diana Buttu, a former legal advisor to the PLO; and myself. We were all making the same associations: Hector is Mohammed al-Dura; the white soldiers shooting at children are us.
The passage of time was evident with Antoinette. The teenager in the picture was now a woman in her late forties. Her brother would have been 44, but a bullet from the rifle of a white policeman deprived him of the chance to witness the miracle of how the cruel racist regime collapsed.
It was another UN conference about peace with the Palestinians, but this time it was being held in a particularly "loaded" location. We were only two Israelis there, but the calling cards I collected were quite varied: Arab and African ambassadors, the previous Egyptian foreign minister, representatives of Muslim countries and diplomats posted in Pretoria. The Syrian ambassador smiled and did not offer his card; the Libyan ambassador did the same. But they listened to us attentively.
The new regime has been good for South Africa; no Palestinian refugee camp looks nearly as attractive as Soweto 2007. But not far away is a shantytown called Alexandra and the sights there are worse than in any Palestinian refugee camp we've seen. This is where South African blacks who haven't been able to pull themselves out of poverty live, together with refugees from neighboring Zimbabwe.
Less than a kilometer separates the impoverished Alexandra from a fancy Johannesburg neighborhood called Sandton. There, behind the electric fences and personal bodyguards, hide the city's wealthy - many of them Jews and a good number former Israelis. On Shabbat we ate cholent. On Friday night we dined with a former Israeli from Nahalal. We drove to Alexandra with a guy who originally hails from Tivon, who has been here for 30 years and owns a huge agricultural enterprise that employs 1,800 black workers earning $2 an hour.
It's impossible not to admire what has occurred in this battered land since the yoke of white tyranny was lifted.
Not in his name
At the conference luncheon, Ronnie Kasrils, South Africa's minister for intelligence services, hurried over to grab a seat next to us. Kasrils, a Jew, had never been to Israel (where he has relatives) until his visit to the territories earlier in the month, when he invited Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh to his country. He then made his first, quick trip to Tel Aviv, saw Rabin Square and ate fish in Jaffa. "It was the most pleasant evening I had," he acknowledges.
Tom Segev once wrote that he is "a guy I wouldn't choose to be stuck in an elevator with," but I would be glad to get stuck with Ronnie Kasrils, inside or outside an elevator. He is a Jew in conflict with his people, perhaps also with his identity - a courageous freedom fighter and communist, who joined the oppressed race in its struggle, was exiled from his country for 27 years and is now a minister.
A son of Lithuanian Jews, who had a bar mitzvah and belonged to Jewish youth movements, Kasrils is one of the most fascinating characters to come out of the local Jewish community - which now thoroughly denounces him. He brandishes his Jewishness openly, perhaps defiantly, even when he recently made an official visit to Iran and Syria. He once founded a movement called "Not in My Name," to underscore his disassociation from the injustices committed by Israel in the territories. Ronnie Kasrils hates the Israeli occupation.
When we talked he said the Israeli occupation is worse than apartheid: The whites never shelled the black neighborhoods with tanks and artillery.
Just like the pogroms
If this warm, outgoing 69-year-old has any personal security protection, it is invisible. We sat in a vacant room in a building on the University of Pretoria campus and talked. "You're an Israeli and I'm a South African," he emphasized immediately, as if to negate any common identity. "I'm confident that the circle will be closed one day and people will understand that I'm not anti-Jewish or anti-Israeli ... It really pains me as a Jew that in this country such hostility has developed toward Israel, because of its treatment of the Palestinians ...
"When we saw on television the drama going on in your country, the oppressive pictures of the methods you use toward the Palestinians, the uprooting of trees, the tanks entering Jenin, and the old woman weeping over the demolition of her house and crying 'The Jews, the Jews' - it's just like what my grandmother used to tell me about the pogroms: The Cossacks are coming, the Cossacks are coming. I'm trying to say: It's not the Jews, it's Zionisms that's doing this. So I decided to get up and say something. I found this in the Jewish tradition: to open your mouth, in the name of conscience.
"The man who greeted me when I returned to South Africa after the years of exile was Rabbi Cyril Harris ... He gave me a red skullcap with a dedication: to the freedom fighter. When I started to express criticism of Israel, I thought that the Jews would denounce Ariel Sharon, but then I found out that I was naive. I was stunned to see that the Jewish community here didn't care who was in power in Israel and how extreme the policy was against the Palestinians ...
They would blindly support any government. Rabbi Harris became my enemy. He called me a fringe Jew and my response was: We were the only ones who stood up against apartheid and now we're the minority against the injustice.
"When I visited the territories I also passed through Israel and I saw the forests that cover the remnants of the Palestinian villages. As a former forestry minister, this was especially striking to me. I also went into a few settlements. It was insane. Young Americans spat on the flag that was on my car. The occupation reminds me of the darkest days of apartheid, but we never saw tanks and planes firing at a civilian population. It's a monstrousness I'd never seen before. The wall you built, the checkpoints and the roads for Jews only - it turns the stomach, even for someone who grew up under apartheid. It's a hundred times worse.
"We know from our experience that oppression motivates resistance and that the more savage the oppression, the harsher the resistance. At a certain point in time you think that the oppression is working, and that you're controlling the other people, imprisoning its leaders and its activists, but the resistance will triumph in the end.
"We saw the entrance to Qalqilyah, the wall, the people standing hours in line at the checkpoints. It's a beautiful country, I love its landscapes, but I know that it's big enough to contain more people. Israel has developed very impressively, but how much more impressive it would be if you brought about a just solution ... I don't care if it's two states or one - it's up to you, the Israelis and the Palestinians, to decide.
"I had coffee with the commander of the Erez checkpoint. It reminded me of the central prison in Pretoria, a place I've visited many times. And it was so awful to go through this thing in order to get to Gaza. At first I said that I don't want to speak with the man at the checkpoint, but then I decided that was foolish. The Israelis were actually very nice to me.
"What is Zionism to me? When I was 10 years old, it meant security and a national home for the Jews. I waved the Israeli flag at my bar mitzvah and I was very proud of my Judaism. The first book I received for my bar mitzvah was 'The Revolt,' by Menachem Begin. My biggest hero was Asher Ginsberg, Ahad Ha'am ... Later on I started reading not only Herzl, but also [historians] Ilan Pappe, Benny Morris and Tom Segev, and I came to see 1948 in a different light. I understood that it was an ethnic cleansing.
"South Africa changed me and strengthened my South African identity. And then I began to understand that the main problem of Zionism is the exclusivity of the establishment of a national home and the concept of the chosen people. Very soon I started to oppose it. The establishment of a national home for Jews alone seemed to me like a parallel of apartheid. The apartheid leaders also spoke about a chosen people. In 1961, prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd said that Israel is like South Africa. That opened my eyes. For many years we were also aware of the military cooperation between Israel and South Africa - a joint offensive naval force, missile boats, the Cheetah planes and the big secret of the nuclear weapons. Prime minister Johannes Vorster, who had a declared Nazi past, received a hero's welcome from you. This added to my feelings regarding Israel.
"I am very conscious of the Holocaust and of anti-Semitism, but my experience here leads me to one conclusion: that all forms of racism must be fought by means of a common struggle. I have a dream: That you will change your outlook, as happened here, and that change will come. When politicians reach agreements, it's amazing how fast ordinary folks can come to a change in thinking. Change the leadership and the economic conditions and you'll see how easy the change is."
Saturday, 27 January 2007
Taken for a Ride by the Israeli Left
Taken for a Ride by the Israeli Left
Steven Friedman and Virginia Tilley, The Electronic Intifada, 26 January 2007
A Response to Uri Avnery
...it may seem odd that many people working hard for a stable peace in Israel-Palestine find Mr. Avnery so immensely irritating. The reason stems from his moral contradictions, all too common to liberal Zionism: that is, while taking an unflinching moral stand against racist abuses of Palestinians, he somehow drops the same principles in assuming that Israel itself has a right to preserve its "Jewish character" at the expense of Palestinian rights. For it is all too obvious that sustaining an "overwhelming" Jewish majority in Israel, essential to preserving its "Jewish character," requires that Israel sustain a whole cluster of racist practices, such as giant Walls to keep people from mixing and not allowing Palestinian exiles to return.
Liberal Zionists who cling to Mr. Avnery's analyses consistently trip over this moral fallacy. They want the occupation to end and find oppression of Palestinians morally abhorrent, and some even believe that discrimination against Palestinian Arabs must end. But they don't want Israel's status as a state run for only one ethnic group to end. They must therefore endorse whatever discrimination is deemed essential to preserving Israel's Jewish majority, particularly in keeping those Palestinians expelled from what is now Israel from ever coming back. In this view, Israel itself is morally okay -- a "miracle," as David Grossman recently put it -- or it would be okay if its leaders hadn't stupidly stumbled into military occupation after the 1967 war.
The result of this conundrum is moral chaos. While bald ravings about ethnic cleansing by racists like Avigdor Lieberman are considered repellent, the earlier ethnic cleansing that gave birth to Israel is considered acceptable -- a convulsion of war violence that has (it is never explained how) been morally transcended. The solution, in this view, is not to redress that founding sin but simply to stabilize Jewish statehood, which is understood mostly as relieving Jewish-Israeli fear of attack or annihilation. Recognizing that some modicum of justice is required to achieve this "peace", the liberal-Zionist goal is to create a Palestinian state next door (safely demilitarized, of course, and not necessarily within the 1948 green line).
It takes a special kind of denial to hold onto this worldview, especially in light of fresh histories like Ilan Pappe's The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, which demolish the soothing fantasy that Israel's history of ethnic cleansing was an accident of war. This isn't surprising in itself: nationalist myths everywhere dismantle slowly. But Mr. Avnery does not fall into the classic category. He exposed Zionist crimes before anyone else. Yet he has never lost his affection for Jewish statehood or his dedication to preserving Israel's Jewish majority in Israel. He knows that, in 1948, Zionist troops ruthlessly terrorized and expelled hundreds of thousands of defenceless Palestinians from their villages and threw them out of the country. But he believes that the agenda of preserving the Jewish-Israeli society that he treasures not only mandates but grants moral authority to not allowing them back.
It is from this muddle of contradictory tenets that Mr. Avnery approaches the "apartheid" charge, given new publicity by President Carter's recent book. In a recent Counterpunch essay, "Freedom Ride: Israel and Apartheid", he rejects any lessons the comparison suggests for a one-state solution in Israel-Palestine.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
This article was widely submitted to the many “alternative” websites that regularly publish Uri Avnery’s writings, including his piece “Death of a Myth” which is critiqued here. Most either ignored it or refused to publish it, revealing the esteem in which the tiny Zionist left in Israel – of which Avnery is the figurehead – is held by Western radicals. Miftah was one brave exception.
Uri Avnery’s original article, “Death of a Myth”, can be found at http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=7850
A Reply to Uri Avnery's 'Death of a Myth'
Miftah
Date posted: May 17, 2005
By Jonathan Cook
I couldn’t help but chuckle as I read Uri Avnery’s recent offering, "Death of a Myth", about the deathbed confession of Naomi Shemer regarding "Jerusalem of Gold", her song that became a second Israeli national anthem after the Six-Day War of 1967.
The Israeli public was apparently duped: Shemer had plagiarised the song from a Basque lullaby she had heard a few years earlier. Her defence was that the melody had been absorbed into her subconscious.
As Avnery implicitly admits, no one was more fooled than he. At the time of the Six-Day War, he was a member of the Knesset and unsuccessfully tried to pass a law to have the song replace the national anthem, "Hativkah" or "The Hope".
It would be nice to believe Avnery’s account of his behaviour and motives in the late 1960s in relation to promoting this "immortal song" as he calls it. But I suspect this retrospective view of his thinking around the time of the Six-Day War is another dose of the myth-making which Shemer indulged in for most of her life.
The evidence? Let’s consider the following account of Avnery’s position - not with the benefit of nearly 40 years of personal hindsight but from a book written a few years after 1967. Fouzi el-Asmar, an Arab intellectual from Lod who was much persecuted by the Israeli authorities, was working in Tel Aviv’s leftwing media with Avnery at the time of the Six-Day War.
In his book "To Be an Arab in Israel" (unfortunately, long out of print), el-Asmar recalls the extremely fearful and tense popular atmosphere in Israel just before the outbreak of war - and the extreme change of mood that swept the country after Israel’s rapid victory over the Arab armies arrayed against it.
-------
It is fortunate for Avnery that this book, one of the few accounts of the early Israeli left written in English by an Arab citizen, has been almost impossible to obtain since it was printed in 1976.
No one should hold it against Avnery that he has changed his positions repeatedly during the nearly six decades of Israeli history. But let him not judge the confessions of Naomi Shemer until he is a prepared to make a confession or two himself.
Steven Friedman and Virginia Tilley, The Electronic Intifada, 26 January 2007
A Response to Uri Avnery
...it may seem odd that many people working hard for a stable peace in Israel-Palestine find Mr. Avnery so immensely irritating. The reason stems from his moral contradictions, all too common to liberal Zionism: that is, while taking an unflinching moral stand against racist abuses of Palestinians, he somehow drops the same principles in assuming that Israel itself has a right to preserve its "Jewish character" at the expense of Palestinian rights. For it is all too obvious that sustaining an "overwhelming" Jewish majority in Israel, essential to preserving its "Jewish character," requires that Israel sustain a whole cluster of racist practices, such as giant Walls to keep people from mixing and not allowing Palestinian exiles to return.
Liberal Zionists who cling to Mr. Avnery's analyses consistently trip over this moral fallacy. They want the occupation to end and find oppression of Palestinians morally abhorrent, and some even believe that discrimination against Palestinian Arabs must end. But they don't want Israel's status as a state run for only one ethnic group to end. They must therefore endorse whatever discrimination is deemed essential to preserving Israel's Jewish majority, particularly in keeping those Palestinians expelled from what is now Israel from ever coming back. In this view, Israel itself is morally okay -- a "miracle," as David Grossman recently put it -- or it would be okay if its leaders hadn't stupidly stumbled into military occupation after the 1967 war.
The result of this conundrum is moral chaos. While bald ravings about ethnic cleansing by racists like Avigdor Lieberman are considered repellent, the earlier ethnic cleansing that gave birth to Israel is considered acceptable -- a convulsion of war violence that has (it is never explained how) been morally transcended. The solution, in this view, is not to redress that founding sin but simply to stabilize Jewish statehood, which is understood mostly as relieving Jewish-Israeli fear of attack or annihilation. Recognizing that some modicum of justice is required to achieve this "peace", the liberal-Zionist goal is to create a Palestinian state next door (safely demilitarized, of course, and not necessarily within the 1948 green line).
It takes a special kind of denial to hold onto this worldview, especially in light of fresh histories like Ilan Pappe's The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, which demolish the soothing fantasy that Israel's history of ethnic cleansing was an accident of war. This isn't surprising in itself: nationalist myths everywhere dismantle slowly. But Mr. Avnery does not fall into the classic category. He exposed Zionist crimes before anyone else. Yet he has never lost his affection for Jewish statehood or his dedication to preserving Israel's Jewish majority in Israel. He knows that, in 1948, Zionist troops ruthlessly terrorized and expelled hundreds of thousands of defenceless Palestinians from their villages and threw them out of the country. But he believes that the agenda of preserving the Jewish-Israeli society that he treasures not only mandates but grants moral authority to not allowing them back.
It is from this muddle of contradictory tenets that Mr. Avnery approaches the "apartheid" charge, given new publicity by President Carter's recent book. In a recent Counterpunch essay, "Freedom Ride: Israel and Apartheid", he rejects any lessons the comparison suggests for a one-state solution in Israel-Palestine.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
This article was widely submitted to the many “alternative” websites that regularly publish Uri Avnery’s writings, including his piece “Death of a Myth” which is critiqued here. Most either ignored it or refused to publish it, revealing the esteem in which the tiny Zionist left in Israel – of which Avnery is the figurehead – is held by Western radicals. Miftah was one brave exception.
Uri Avnery’s original article, “Death of a Myth”, can be found at http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=7850
A Reply to Uri Avnery's 'Death of a Myth'
Miftah
Date posted: May 17, 2005
By Jonathan Cook
I couldn’t help but chuckle as I read Uri Avnery’s recent offering, "Death of a Myth", about the deathbed confession of Naomi Shemer regarding "Jerusalem of Gold", her song that became a second Israeli national anthem after the Six-Day War of 1967.
The Israeli public was apparently duped: Shemer had plagiarised the song from a Basque lullaby she had heard a few years earlier. Her defence was that the melody had been absorbed into her subconscious.
As Avnery implicitly admits, no one was more fooled than he. At the time of the Six-Day War, he was a member of the Knesset and unsuccessfully tried to pass a law to have the song replace the national anthem, "Hativkah" or "The Hope".
It would be nice to believe Avnery’s account of his behaviour and motives in the late 1960s in relation to promoting this "immortal song" as he calls it. But I suspect this retrospective view of his thinking around the time of the Six-Day War is another dose of the myth-making which Shemer indulged in for most of her life.
The evidence? Let’s consider the following account of Avnery’s position - not with the benefit of nearly 40 years of personal hindsight but from a book written a few years after 1967. Fouzi el-Asmar, an Arab intellectual from Lod who was much persecuted by the Israeli authorities, was working in Tel Aviv’s leftwing media with Avnery at the time of the Six-Day War.
In his book "To Be an Arab in Israel" (unfortunately, long out of print), el-Asmar recalls the extremely fearful and tense popular atmosphere in Israel just before the outbreak of war - and the extreme change of mood that swept the country after Israel’s rapid victory over the Arab armies arrayed against it.
-------
It is fortunate for Avnery that this book, one of the few accounts of the early Israeli left written in English by an Arab citizen, has been almost impossible to obtain since it was printed in 1976.
No one should hold it against Avnery that he has changed his positions repeatedly during the nearly six decades of Israeli history. But let him not judge the confessions of Naomi Shemer until he is a prepared to make a confession or two himself.
Friday, 26 January 2007
Jimmy Carter's only Australian interview
ABC Radio National Breakfast - 25 January 2007
Breakfast audio is in three parts: 6.15–7am, 7.30–8am and 8.05–8.30am. Part One will start to play automatically. Paul Barry's interview with Jimmy Carter is in Part Three.
Breakfast audio is in three parts: 6.15–7am, 7.30–8am and 8.05–8.30am. Part One will start to play automatically. Paul Barry's interview with Jimmy Carter is in Part Three.
Thursday, 25 January 2007
EI EXCLUSIVE: Leaked Israeli document gives frightening glimpse of apartheid
EI Exclusive: LEAKED ISRAELI DOCUMENT GIVES FRIGHTENING GLIMPSE OF APARTHEID
By Ali Abunimah,
The Electronic Intifada, 25 January 2007
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6442.shtml
ISRAELI MINISTRY OF DEFENSE DOCUMENT PROVIDES GLIMPSE INTO THE MINDSET OF APARTHEID'S BUREAUCRACY, OUTLINES MOVEMENT RESTRICTIONS, BUREAUCRATIC ETHNIC CLEANSING, POLITICAL MANIPULATION AND ATTEMPT TO FOSTER COLLABORATORS. READ EI'S SUMMMARY AND ANALYSIS BELOW. FOR IMAGES AND TO DOWNLOAD THE FULL DOCUMENT VISIT THE LINK ABOVE.
President Jimmy Carter angered Israel and its friends by describing "the abominable oppression and persecution in the occupied Palestinian territories, with a rigid system of required passes and strict segregation between Palestine's citizens and Jewish settlers in the West Bank."
Now, The Electronic Intifada has obtained an Israeli Ministry of Defense Powerpoint presentation which provides a frightening glimpse into the mindset of the bureaucracy of apartheid.
The first page of the document bears the name "Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories" as well as the acronym "COGAT" at the bottom of each page. These appear to refer to the unit of the Israeli army that enforces the occupation against the Palestinian civilian population.
The top of the first slide also bears the names and insignia of the "State of Israel" and the "Ministry of Defense." Dated January 12, the presentation is titled "Key Measures for easing the daily lives of the Palestinian Population."
Far from that, the document provides detail of the regime of severe movement restrictions, bureaucratic ethnic cleansing and political manipulation and fostering of collaborators that Israel operates in the the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The document, in English, appears to be genuine. While its exact purpose or audience is not known, it may have been designed to impress foreign diplomats with Israel's generosity to the Palestinians.
Among the policies the document outlines are:
- Efforts to "empower Abu-Mazen" (Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas) by facilitating entry of "security equipment for the Presidential Guard" donated by foreign countries. (The United States recently announced that it would provide millions of dollars of weapons and equipment to this unit which serves as a personal militia for Abbas and his Fatah faction who seek to overthrow the democratically-elected Hamas government).
- Providing special privileges for "the movement of VIPs and senior Palestinians" and others allies of Abbas, including "facilitating movement without security checks."These special privileges, not available to millions of Palestinians are intended for "Strengthening Abu-Mazen,"presumably at the expense of the democratically-elected Hamas-led cabinet and legislative council dozens of whose members, far from enjoying VIP treatment, have been kidnapped and are being held without charge or trial by Israeli occupation forces.
- Special permits for 505 Palestinian "businessmen,"allowing them to be exempt from the pass laws that forbid overnight stays by Palestinians in Israel. They will also be subject to fewer security checks. This privileged class may also benefit from the "Possible return of $60 Million from the frozen tax money to the private sector, subject to identification of the businessman, and the formation of a working mechanism." This could possibly indicate that Israel, in collusion with Abbas, seeks to misappropriate Palestinian public assets it has illegally seized, bypassing the Palestinian Authority Finance Ministry and redistributing them to Abbas cronies.
- With frightening precision, allowing "42,899" Palestinian laborers to work "in Israel and the settlements" and exempting 2,000 Palestinian agricultural laborers from the pass laws so that "overnight stay in Israel" is"permitted." Of these workers, a mere 1,600 would be permitted to enter occupied East Jerusalem, the largest Palestinian city in the West Bank.
Millions of Palestinians around the world are forbidden from visiting or living in their country due to Israeli restrictions and laws that discriminate against non-Jews. A privileged few Palestinians have been able to do so, however, by virtue of their citizenship in the United States or European countries, whose citizens are generally allowed to enter Israel without visas as tourists. Even this precarious existence has recently been threatened by the new Israeli practice of denying them re-entry if they leave the country for any reason. While the document claims these restrictions will be eased, it also confirms the policy of prohibiting ordinary family life for Palestinians. Palestinians (always referred to as "foreign nationals") with foreign passports, even those with spouses and families Israel does recognize as residents,will be limited to a total cumulative stay not exceeding 27 months in their country. No other country calling itself a democracy systematically treats indigenous people as foreigners and deports them in this manner breaking apart families in the process.
Finally, the document lists a number of catergories of "humanitarian" workers who will be given some leeway from the strict pass laws. These include 1,450 religious personnel, 1,300 hospital employees, 300 hotel workers,and lawyers, teachers and residents of an enclave in occupied East Jerusalem that has been besieged by settlers and the apartheid wall.
Amidst a system of ruthless and obsessive control such as the one Israel operates against Palestinians, not even this token 'easing' designed purely for public relations can be taken for granted; Israel routinely lies about what it does. For example, during a summit meeting with Mahmoud Abbas in December, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert promised to remove dozens of checkpoints and obstacles impeding the movement of Palestinians inside the occupiedWest Bank. The Israeli occupation forces later claimed to have removed 44 of the hundreds of obstacles in fulfillment of Olmert's pledge. In fact, the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported on January 22, the Israeli army "admitted on Sunday that the 44 dirt obstacles it said had been removed from around West Bank villages did not actually exist."
What does exist, and is plain for all the world to see, is a horrifying regime of totalitarian control of millions of Palestinians who remain prisoners of Israel's racist system and the army and settler militias that enforce it.
By Ali Abunimah,
The Electronic Intifada, 25 January 2007
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6442.shtml
ISRAELI MINISTRY OF DEFENSE DOCUMENT PROVIDES GLIMPSE INTO THE MINDSET OF APARTHEID'S BUREAUCRACY, OUTLINES MOVEMENT RESTRICTIONS, BUREAUCRATIC ETHNIC CLEANSING, POLITICAL MANIPULATION AND ATTEMPT TO FOSTER COLLABORATORS. READ EI'S SUMMMARY AND ANALYSIS BELOW. FOR IMAGES AND TO DOWNLOAD THE FULL DOCUMENT VISIT THE LINK ABOVE.
President Jimmy Carter angered Israel and its friends by describing "the abominable oppression and persecution in the occupied Palestinian territories, with a rigid system of required passes and strict segregation between Palestine's citizens and Jewish settlers in the West Bank."
Now, The Electronic Intifada has obtained an Israeli Ministry of Defense Powerpoint presentation which provides a frightening glimpse into the mindset of the bureaucracy of apartheid.
The first page of the document bears the name "Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories" as well as the acronym "COGAT" at the bottom of each page. These appear to refer to the unit of the Israeli army that enforces the occupation against the Palestinian civilian population.
The top of the first slide also bears the names and insignia of the "State of Israel" and the "Ministry of Defense." Dated January 12, the presentation is titled "Key Measures for easing the daily lives of the Palestinian Population."
Far from that, the document provides detail of the regime of severe movement restrictions, bureaucratic ethnic cleansing and political manipulation and fostering of collaborators that Israel operates in the the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The document, in English, appears to be genuine. While its exact purpose or audience is not known, it may have been designed to impress foreign diplomats with Israel's generosity to the Palestinians.
Among the policies the document outlines are:
- Efforts to "empower Abu-Mazen" (Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas) by facilitating entry of "security equipment for the Presidential Guard" donated by foreign countries. (The United States recently announced that it would provide millions of dollars of weapons and equipment to this unit which serves as a personal militia for Abbas and his Fatah faction who seek to overthrow the democratically-elected Hamas government).
- Providing special privileges for "the movement of VIPs and senior Palestinians" and others allies of Abbas, including "facilitating movement without security checks."These special privileges, not available to millions of Palestinians are intended for "Strengthening Abu-Mazen,"presumably at the expense of the democratically-elected Hamas-led cabinet and legislative council dozens of whose members, far from enjoying VIP treatment, have been kidnapped and are being held without charge or trial by Israeli occupation forces.
- Special permits for 505 Palestinian "businessmen,"allowing them to be exempt from the pass laws that forbid overnight stays by Palestinians in Israel. They will also be subject to fewer security checks. This privileged class may also benefit from the "Possible return of $60 Million from the frozen tax money to the private sector, subject to identification of the businessman, and the formation of a working mechanism." This could possibly indicate that Israel, in collusion with Abbas, seeks to misappropriate Palestinian public assets it has illegally seized, bypassing the Palestinian Authority Finance Ministry and redistributing them to Abbas cronies.
- With frightening precision, allowing "42,899" Palestinian laborers to work "in Israel and the settlements" and exempting 2,000 Palestinian agricultural laborers from the pass laws so that "overnight stay in Israel" is"permitted." Of these workers, a mere 1,600 would be permitted to enter occupied East Jerusalem, the largest Palestinian city in the West Bank.
Millions of Palestinians around the world are forbidden from visiting or living in their country due to Israeli restrictions and laws that discriminate against non-Jews. A privileged few Palestinians have been able to do so, however, by virtue of their citizenship in the United States or European countries, whose citizens are generally allowed to enter Israel without visas as tourists. Even this precarious existence has recently been threatened by the new Israeli practice of denying them re-entry if they leave the country for any reason. While the document claims these restrictions will be eased, it also confirms the policy of prohibiting ordinary family life for Palestinians. Palestinians (always referred to as "foreign nationals") with foreign passports, even those with spouses and families Israel does recognize as residents,will be limited to a total cumulative stay not exceeding 27 months in their country. No other country calling itself a democracy systematically treats indigenous people as foreigners and deports them in this manner breaking apart families in the process.
Finally, the document lists a number of catergories of "humanitarian" workers who will be given some leeway from the strict pass laws. These include 1,450 religious personnel, 1,300 hospital employees, 300 hotel workers,and lawyers, teachers and residents of an enclave in occupied East Jerusalem that has been besieged by settlers and the apartheid wall.
Amidst a system of ruthless and obsessive control such as the one Israel operates against Palestinians, not even this token 'easing' designed purely for public relations can be taken for granted; Israel routinely lies about what it does. For example, during a summit meeting with Mahmoud Abbas in December, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert promised to remove dozens of checkpoints and obstacles impeding the movement of Palestinians inside the occupiedWest Bank. The Israeli occupation forces later claimed to have removed 44 of the hundreds of obstacles in fulfillment of Olmert's pledge. In fact, the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported on January 22, the Israeli army "admitted on Sunday that the 44 dirt obstacles it said had been removed from around West Bank villages did not actually exist."
What does exist, and is plain for all the world to see, is a horrifying regime of totalitarian control of millions of Palestinians who remain prisoners of Israel's racist system and the army and settler militias that enforce it.
Thursday, 11 January 2007
Indeed there is Apartheid in Israel
Indeed there is Apartheid in Israel
Shulamit Aloni, Yediot Acharonot, 31.12.06
A new order issued by the GOC Central command bans the conveyance of Palestinians in Israeli vehicles. Such a blatant violation of the right to travel joins the long list of humans rights violations carried out by Israel in the [Occupied] Territories.
On one occasion I witnessed such an encounter between a driver and a soldier who was taking down the details before confiscating the vehicle and sending its owner away. “Why?” I asked the soldier. “It’s an order – this is a Jews-only road”, he replied. I inquired as to where was the sign indicating this fact and instructing [other] drivers not to use it. His answer was nothing short of amazing. “It is his responsibility to know it, and besides, what do you want us to do, put up a sign here and let some antisemitic reporter or journalist take a photo so he that can show the world that Apartheid exists here?”
From now on, Israelis and International humanitarian organisations’ volunteers are prohibited from assisting a woman in labour by taking her to the hospital. [Israeli human rights group] Yesh Din volunteers cannot take a robbed and beaten-up Palestinian to the police station to lodge a complaint. (Police stations are located at the heart of the settlements.) Is there anyone who believes that this is not Apartheid?
Shulamit Aloni, Yediot Acharonot, 31.12.06
A new order issued by the GOC Central command bans the conveyance of Palestinians in Israeli vehicles. Such a blatant violation of the right to travel joins the long list of humans rights violations carried out by Israel in the [Occupied] Territories.
On one occasion I witnessed such an encounter between a driver and a soldier who was taking down the details before confiscating the vehicle and sending its owner away. “Why?” I asked the soldier. “It’s an order – this is a Jews-only road”, he replied. I inquired as to where was the sign indicating this fact and instructing [other] drivers not to use it. His answer was nothing short of amazing. “It is his responsibility to know it, and besides, what do you want us to do, put up a sign here and let some antisemitic reporter or journalist take a photo so he that can show the world that Apartheid exists here?”
From now on, Israelis and International humanitarian organisations’ volunteers are prohibited from assisting a woman in labour by taking her to the hospital. [Israeli human rights group] Yesh Din volunteers cannot take a robbed and beaten-up Palestinian to the police station to lodge a complaint. (Police stations are located at the heart of the settlements.) Is there anyone who believes that this is not Apartheid?
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