March 17, 2011

EDITOR: The Chickens come home to roost

Ari Shavit is not exactly on the left in Israel, and his normal writing is quite nationalistic and main-stream. If he now compares the West Bank settlements to the striken nuclear plant in Fukushima, then something quite deep may be changing in Israeli society, maybe as a result of the changes in the Arab world since the beginning of this year.

West Bank settlements are Israel’s nuclear meltdown: Haaretz

The settlers are like the nuclear power station in Fukushima – a grandly built project of huge proportions, which was set up in the wrong place on the basis of false assumptions.
By Ari Shavit
On quite a few occasions this week, my mobile phone vibrated with text messages from the settlers’ lobby, Yesha. Once it was a quote from Minister Gideon Sa’ar (we must resume construction in Judea and Samaria ). Another time it was a quote from Minister Gilad Erdan (stop holding up the construction tenders in Judea and Samaria ). The third time it was a quote from MK Zeev Elkin (it’s time to build cities in Judea and Samaria ). The fourth time it was a quote from MK Yariv Levin (I demand the cabinet and Minister Barak approve construction in Judea and Samaria cities at once! ). The fifth time it was a quote from Minister Moshe Ya’alon (out of the mourning we must build and develop the settlements in Judea and Samaria ).

At first I thought all these texts were a Purim prank. After all, it’s inconceivable that intelligent people like Sa’ar, Erdan and Ya’alon still don’t understand what a disaster the settlements have brought upon us. It’s unthinkable that the sensible manager of the settlers’ council still doesn’t understand what a disaster additional construction in the settlements will bring upon us. It’s not possible that the settlers are still such space cadets.

But after six-seven texts, I realized it was no prank and no Purim. Those detached souls are really out of it. These delusionals are totally delusionary. The right has learned nothing and forgotten nothing, and continues to live in a parallel universe. There is no way out, then. A counter text must be sent to these guys from the right wing. Here is the text:

The settlers are like the nuclear power station in Fukushima – a grandly built project of huge proportions, which was set up in the wrong place on the basis of false assumptions. The builders of the Japanese power station didn’t take into account that one day the earth would quake and register a 9.0 magnitude on the Richter scale. Nor did the settlement builders. The Japanese power station builders didn’t take into account that one day the tsunami would strike it. Nor did the settlements’ builders. But both there and here the earth shook. The tsunami struck. The Fukushima power station turned into a nightmare; so did the settlements project.

The truth must be told: It was not the settlements that caused the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and stopping them will not end the conflict. But the settlements are escalating the conflict, and continuing construction in the settlements will cause Israel to lose it. So the settlements must be stopped not only for peace, but for national security. To ensure Israel’s future and to save Zionism.

The moral issue can be debated. The left will say the settlements are expressly immoral, and the right will say the settlements are supremely moral. But the realpolitik issue cannot be disputed. The settlers have won the campaign on the hills but lost the campaign in the world. For that reason, the settlements today are beyond the legitimate international fence. And they are putting Israel beyond the legitimate international fence.

The radioactive cloud of illegitimacy rising from the settlements is moving toward Israel and endangering its existence.

When the Fukushima power station was build in the ’70s, it was possible to hope that it would endure any earthquake and any surging wave. When the settlements were built in the ’70s and ’80s, it was possible to hope they would endure any political storm. Today it is clear that both hopes have been shattered. The Japanese power company’s basic assumptions and those of Gush Emunim (a messianic movement advocating Israeli sovereignty in the territories ) were found to be groundless. They led to building tremendous energy generators on the most dangerous fraction line possible.

It is inconceivable that after what has happened, the Japanese would set up a seventh and eighth reactor on the beach. It is inconceivable that after what has been discovered, the Israelis would set up more settlements on the mountain. The future is staring at us in the face – a massive project built 40 years ago is threatening the state that built it.

The radiation emanating from it is lethal. Enough with the texts, guys. Enough with floating out there in space. It’s time to cool down the settlements, extinguish them and look for alternative energy sources. It’s time to go back home.

EDITOR: Why the great shock?

The whole of Israeli society was deeply shocked after the murder of the settler family in Itamar, in the occupied West Bank. The same people were not in the least shocked when their troops murderted over 400 Palestinian children, and over 1000 adults, in the Cast Lead massacres in Gaza. Is Jewish blood thicker? It seems so.

A funeral for the State of Israel: Haaretz

In this unbearable week, the Fogel family has been all but forgotten in the welter of uses that have been made of them, polemic, political, personal.
By Bradley Burston
All this week I’ve resisted putting something terrible into words.

All this week I’ve been wondering why the Jerusalem burial ceremony for Ruth and Udi Fogel, their infant daughter Hadas and their two small sons Yoav and Elad, seemed so much like a funeral for the State of Israel itself.

What was the meaning of this funeral, and of the monstrous crime of slaughtering a lovely young family in its sleep? For the religious right, it seemed to be saying: This is what you can expect, now and forever, over and again, until the Messiah comes to put an end to this unbearable, unextinguished anguish.

For the rest of us, it seemed to be saying, if possible, something even worse:

This is exactly what you can expect. This is your future. An endless procession of killings and escalation and enmity and settlement and condemnation and heartbreak and no negotiations and a broken Jewish people and no compromise and more settlement and a shattered Judaism, until the day that a vote is taken and the Palestinians are more numerous than we, and the flag which is based on the prayer shawl and the Shield of David is pulled down for the last time.

For years now, and especially over the last decade, the adults on both sides have made children into legitimate targets. And now we, the adults on both sides, have made slain children into legitimate tools – for incitement, for escalation, for the production of more deaths of the innocent and the defenseless.

The length of this unbearable week, the Fogel family has been all but forgotten in the welter of uses that have been made of them, polemic, political, personal. No one felt this, nor expressed this, more powerfully than Motti Fogel, Udi’s younger brother, whose quiet words at the funeral struck chords deeper than did the agenda-ridden speechmaking of the high and mighty.

“All the slogans about Torah and settlement, the Land of Israel and the people of Israel are attempts to forget the simple and pain-torn fact: you are dead. You are dead, and no slogan will bring you back.

“You are not a symbol or a national event. Your life was a purpose in and of itself, and it should be forbidden for your terrible death to turn your life into some sort of tool.”

We are not the same people that we were before these murders. On both sides, the killing of children leaves terrible scars. The scars tempt us to feel the deaths of our own children and somehow process or deny or legitimize or excuse away the deaths on the side of our neighbor. Our enemy. Even worse, in some respects, than an eye for an eye, is the state to which we have descended – a blind eye for a blind eye.

If there is any meaning at all to this week and to this tragedy, it is this: No child is an enemy. No child.

If there is any hope in this, it may be in the words of a Palestinian shopkeeper in Nablus, the city a few miles north of the Fogels’ home in Itamar, a city Israelis have long feared as a center of some of the bitterest of their enemies.

“They were people who were at home, sleeping, in their place of safety,” the merchant said of the Fogels, out loud, on television. “Just like that – to come in and kill them with a knife? Where is your heart? Where is your sense of mercy? Where is your humanity? Where? This is simply – this man has no heart. He has nothing. Whoever did this is an animal.”

If there is any lesson in this, it is that the children of Itamar, of Nablus, of Jerusalem, of Rafah, of Tel Aviv, deserve better from us. We can choose to believe that the Gaza child throwing candies to celebrate the murders represents the will of the Palestinian people as a whole, just as Palestinians can decide that the Jewish child in the Sheikh Jarrah settlement who will on Sunday night sing Purim songs celebrating Baruch Goldstein, represents the will of the Jewish people as a whole.

Or we can choose to believe that all of us, Palestinian and Jew, are nothing more or less than human beings, loving, caring and, yes, mortally imperfect. And that most of us, on both sides, are people who, despite everything – despite their grief and their rage and their one-sided, blind-eye narrative and their truly unjust history and the guaranteed injustice of any possible solution – actually want the same thing: a future for their children in an independent country living alongside and at peace with the people who are now their enemy.

For every child. Both sides. For every child.

Richard Silverstein: The kidnapping of Dirar Abu Seesi: IOA

13 MARCH 2011
Not for the first time, Seattle, WA-based “blogger” Richard Silverstein plays a key role in revealing news stories about Israeli government activities — whether anti-democratic acts or outright crimes, as is the case now.  Much more than a “blogger,” Silverstein’s role in exposing such Israeli actions has been very important in that it exposed Israeli acts against Palestinians and others who stand in the way of “The Only Democracy in the Middle East.”

The latest story involves the kidnapping in the Ukraine of a Palestinian man responsible for running the Gaza power plant, suspected to have been carried out by the Israeli Mossad,  and his jailing at a secret location in Israel by the Shabak (Shin Bet).  In addition to the kidnapping — Extraordinary Rendition — Israel has also placed a gag-order on the case, apparently including a prohibition on Mr. Abu Seesi’s state-appointed attorney to discuss the case.

According to Silverstein,

Israel, in kidnapping him, has violated at least one major UN human rights convention (and probably many other sections of international law), the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.  The document has been signed by 110 countries with several notable exceptions including Israel and the U.S.

TA University operates undercover campus security force: Haaretz

A recent announcement published by the TAU students union calls on students who served in elite IDF combat units to join the university’s security detail voluntarily.
Tel Aviv University operates an undercover security force on campus, in addition to the armed guards at the entrances. The undercover detail, consisting of volunteer students, is intended as emergency back-up in case of a terror attack in the university grounds, TAU sources said.

A recent announcement published by the TAU students union calls on students who served in elite IDF combat units to join the university’s security detail voluntarily.

“They gave them weapons owned by the university and very clear instructions, and they had a special shirt, hat and card they could pull out in case of emergency,” said a TAU graduate who was involved in setting up the security detail over five years ago.

A student who recently applied to join the detail says he was told “the job does not require training but going over several regulations,” he said. “The procedure is not expected to take more than two hours. [They said] the job is only when you’re on campus, and then if an event occurs you will be spoken to.”

TAU officials said the volunteer detail operates as part of the university’s security department as a reserve force in case of a terror attack. “The volunteers are armed with university-owned weapons and undergo a periodical training similar to the one given security guards. In case of a terror attack, they can be called in to help,” university spokeswoman Orna Cohen said, in answer to Haaretz’ query.

However, security officials who heard of the volunteer detail said excessive motivation, weapons and the lack of an organized unit could lead to disaster in case of emergency. “The university’s demand for former elite commandos implies it wants a force that can act in extreme cases, like when a terrorist holes up in the university or starts firing in all directions,” a reserve IDF commando officer said.

“Despite their past training and experience, they will find that without coordination and planning it is very difficult to act effectively in a terror incident,” he said.

TAU lecturers and staff members were surprised to hear of the semi-security detail consisting of students operating on campus.

Attorney Dan Yakir, legal advisor for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, said “‘Secret agents’ units operating in TAU is worrying. The very operation of such a detail is wrong, as is basing it on volunteers. Academic campuses should by nature be free, safe places. The security guards in them should be employees who have been properly trained, act within clear rules and are identified by their uniform,” Yakir said.

TAU officials said the volunteers’ authorities are similar to those of the university’s security guards. The security guards’ instructions authorize them to detain a suspect up to three hours, search a person’s effects and vehicle and use reasonable force to catch a suspect and hold him until police arrive, prevent sabotage, stop the public disorder on campus, etc.

“They’re not looking for sheriffs,” a student explained. “They say if you have a weapon from your work in another place, the university would like to keep in touch with you. It’s a sort of on-call detail, but as far as I know it has never been activated.”

The TAU website says the security detail’s job is to maintain security and keep order on campus, deal with and enforce [the rules] of traffic and parking on campus, man the security hotline 24 hours a day and issue tags and entrance permits to the campus.

Students who volunteer for the undercover detail receive a parking permit on campus – an extremely coveted commodity.

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