Have a look and listen to the Great Man… Surprise, surprise! Barack Obama (otherwise known as O’Bomber) is really a thinking man’s president, not just someone who acts like one! He is thinking himself some time, though you will find no evidence of it in the following clip. What you will certainly find is the grand-master of evasion, trying ever-so-smooth, ever so condescending talk, with further proof, if proof be needed, that he is totally unable and unwilling to make any change in the long-term racist US policy in the Middle East. What is also interesting, is the fact the question asked is one he must have prepared himself for a million times, yet he is not only unable to answer it, he is unable to finish a single sentence properly, ahms and ahs like some granny on ganja, and on the whole, gives a performance worthy of Dubya. Hurray to George Bush the Third!
I just hope he goes on like this. Then all will be clear at last – how Israel has reduced a bright academic to the stature of a Neanderthal in just one year, proving that Darwin also works in reverse…
President O’Bomber loosing his pants in front of American students
The long arm of murder and devastation reaches everywhere. Zionist justice needs no courts, no trials, no witnesses – a shot in a dark alleyway, by the heroic murderers. No doubt Spielberg will immortalize them in his next installment of “After Munich: How we kill them everywhere with impunity”:
Hamas military commander ‘assassinated in Dubai’: BBC
A senior Hamas military commander has been assassinated by Israel in Dubai, the Palestinian Islamist group claims.
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, 50, a founder of the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, “died a martyr on 20 January in suspicious circumstances”, a statement said.
Hamas gave no further details, but vowed to “retaliate for this Zionist crime at the appropriate moment”.
An Israeli government spokesman would not comment, in line with Israel’s usual policy on similar allegations.
The authorities in the UAE have also not yet commented.
‘Close to leader’
A Hamas political bureau member in Damascus, Izzat al-Rishq, told the BBC that Mr Mabhouh, who had been living in Syria since 1989, had been very close to its exiled political leader, Khaled Meshaal.
“Mabhouh died a martyr in Dubai on 20 January 2010 in suspicious circumstances that require an inquiry in co-operation with the United Arab Emirates authorities,” Hamas said in a statement.
“We in Hamas hold the Zionist enemy responsible for the criminal assassination of our brother, and we pledge to God and to the blood of the martyrs and to our people to continue his path of jihad and martyrdom,” it added.
Hamas has not given details of how he was killed, but Mr Mabhouh’s brother told French news agency AFP that he was killed with an electric shock to the head.
Material had been sent to a Paris laboratory which “confirmed he was killed by electric shock”, Fayed al-Mabhouh told AFP.
Kidnap and murder
Hamas said Mahmoud al-Mabhouh had been responsible for the abduction in 1989 of two Israeli soldiers, who were both later killed.
Sgt Avi Sasportas and Sgt Ilan Sa’adon were kidnapped a few months apart as they hitchhiked from military bases to their homes during the first Palestinian Intifada.
Sgt Sasportas’s body was discovered close to where he was picked up as he went home to Ashdod.
Sgt Sa’adon’s body was not recovered for seven years.
Mr Mabhouh also masterminded a number of other attacks, for which the Israeli authorities demolished his home in Gaza, Hamas added.
He spent several periods in Israeli custody. After his last release, “he spent his life being hounded by the Zionist occupier until he succeeded in leaving the Gaza Strip,” it said.
“Our brother had been a target for the occupier ever since his participation in the kidnapping operation against the two Zionist soldiers, and for his role and support for the resistance.”
Mr Mabhouh’s body was flown to Syria on Thursday and his funeral is due to be held in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp, on the outskirts of Damascus, later on Friday.
Rockets
The Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades have carried out hundreds of attacks and suicide bombings targeting Israeli troops and civilians.
The Brigades have launched rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israeli towns close to the border.
The rocket fire at civilian areas was the reason the Israeli military gave for launching a 22-day attack on Gaza beginning in December 2008.
Hamas’s charter effectively calls for the destruction of Israel, although its leaders have more recently said they would consider a long-term ceasefire in exchange for a state on the land Israel occupied in 1967.
Israel has a long history of assassination operations targeting militants. Most famously, in 1987 in Tunisia, agents killed Abu Jihad, the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s military leader.
But in 1997, one mission went wrong, when two agents were arrested in Jordan after attempting to poison Mr Meshaal and Israel was forced to hand over an antidote by the US government.
More recently, Israel denied that it was behind the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, the military commander of the Lebanese Shia militant group, Hezbollah, in Damascus in 2008.
Swedish mayor calls both Anti-Semitism and Zionism forms of ‘unacceptable extremism’: Haaretz
Swedish Jews are upset about comments made this week by the mayor of Malmo, who said anti-Semitism and Zionism were both forms of “unacceptable extremism,” and urged local Jews to disassociate themselves from Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip.
“These statements and other events in Malmo are making the Jewish community feel very uncomfortable and some people, especially the young, are leaving the city,” George Braun, the president of the Jewish community in Gothenburg, about 250 kilometers from Malmo, told Haaretz. Ilmar Reepalu, mayor of Malmo, Sweden’s third largest city, spoke in an interview published in a Swedish newspaper on Wednesday, International Holocaust Remembrance Day. “We accept neither Zionism nor anti-Semitism,” Reepalu said. “They are extremes who put themselves above other groups, seeing others as something lesser.”
He said it was “terrible” that Jews felt so insecure in Malmo that they felt compelled to leave, but that a recent city-center demonstration in solidarity with Israel by local Jews stirred up feelings against them
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“I wish the Jewish Community would distance itself from Israel’s violations of the rights of the civilian population in Gaza,” he said. I wish that representatives of Muslims in Malmo would clearly say that the Jews in Malmo shouldn’t be mixed up in the Israel-Palestine conflict.”
Malmo’s Jewish community has complained about harassment by extreme left-wing and right-wing activists, but mostly by radical elements from the city’s Muslims, who make up about 15 percent of the population of 250,000.
Malmo drew international attention last March when the city council barred spectators from a Davis Cup tennis match in which Israelis were competing, citing public order concerns because of planned anti-Israel protests.
The Israelis won and the International Tennis Federation banned Malmo from hosting Davis Cup events for five years. Dr. Mikael Tossavainen of Tel Aviv University’s Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism, said Reepalu’s statements were “far from helpful in indicating that the Jews themselves have a share in the responsibility for their precarious position.”
He added: “Mr. Reepalu’s statements risk strengthening those who take out their frustration against Israel on the local Jews.”
Conspicuous failure: Al Ahram Weekly
From rich sounding promises, Obama’s Israel-Palestine policy appears reduced to simply managing, not resolving, the conflict, writes Khaled Amayreh in the West Bank
The conspicuous failure of the latest visit to the region by US envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell raises questions as to the Obama administration’s ability — or even willingness — to pressure Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian lands. Prior to his arrival, Mitchell was widely thought to be carrying “serious ideas” that would help resume stalled peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
However, after meetings with both Palestinian and Israeli leaders, it became clear that the American envoy was near completely empty handed, and that he was succumbing to Israeli intransigence. Seeking to obscure his surrender to Israeli whims, Mitchell tried to cajole the increasingly vulnerable Palestinian leadership to resume the moribund peace process without receiving any guarantees that renewed talks would go anywhere.
Mitchell pressed the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israel to start “low level talks” which he suggested might help leaders tackle the hard issues. However, in making such suggestions, Mitchell seemed to have forgotten that his proposal had been tried numerous times before but to no avail, mainly due to Israel’s refusal to give up the spoils of the 1967 war.
Mitchell also offered the PA leadership what one Palestinian official termed “secondary inducements” to return to the negotiating table with Israel, including enhancing Palestinian mobility in the West Bank and allowing PA police to operate in additional localities. But Mitchell refused to commit himself to pressure Israel to freeze settlement expansion and reportedly tried to circumvent the issue, saying that the sides would discuss the issue in bilateral negotiations.
Mitchell also suggested that the sides initiate “indirect talks”. The Israelis described the proposal as “interesting” while the PA called it “totally pointless”.
As Mitchell arrived in Israel, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu issued a plethora of provocative and uncompromising — even pugnacious — statements, suggesting that Israel will never agree to the establishment of a truly viable Palestinian state. Marking a Jewish holiday at the settlement of Gush Etzion north of Hebron, Netanyahu declared that, “we are here to stay” and “this [settlement] is Jerusalem’s southern gate while Maali Adumim is Jerusalem’s eastern gate.”
Earlier, he stated that, “in the context of any peace arrangement, Israel would completely surround any Palestinian entity from all sides,” adding that Israel would have to maintain a “presence” in “Judea and Samaria” (the biblical names of the West Bank).
Maintaining a broad smile throughout his visit, Mitchell didn’t try to challenge Netanyahu and instead kept repeating old platitudes about the continued commitment of the Obama administration to Palestinian-Israeli peace. However, it was obvious that at least some of Mitchell’s Arab interlocutors were exasperated, having seen the Obama administration waste precious time while Israel steals more Arab land.
One Palestinian official in Ramallah remarked: “Every new visit by Mitchell makes the prospect of resolving the conflict more elusive.” The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, complained bitterly that all that Mitchell wanted was to force the PA to absorb Israeli provocations.
The growing defiance displayed by Netanyahu finds encouragement in what is widely seen here as Netanyahu’s “victory” over Obama in the apparent tug-of-war between them over a settlement expansion freeze. Obama had been demanding that Israel freeze all settlement expansion in the West Bank, including Arab East Jerusalem. However, Netanyahu refused to budge. Eventually, it was Obama who really budged, allowing Netanyahu to emerge victorious.
To be sure, Netanyahu made a half-hearted decision to freeze some settlement building for 10 months. However, that freeze was disingenuous to a large extent, given continued building in numerous locations, as revealed by Israeli peace groups such as the Peace Now movement. On Tuesday, 26 January, the veteran Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar argued that, “only an idiot would say Israel has frozen settlements.”
The most interesting and aposite readings of Avatar are now emerging: first the claim, which looks very persuasive, that the film relates the narrative of the occupation and genocide of the indigenous population in North America. Below is the not less interesting reading by the amazing actor Juliano Mer Khamis, son of the late Arna Mer Khamis, the activist who has assisted the Palestinian school system for decades; Juliano, who expressed this view in a packed Israeli cinema, had escaped lynch by the skin of his teeth:
ISRAEL: ‘Avatar’ and the Palestinian blues: LATimes
“Avatar” may be rocking the box office, but it’s rocking the casbah too, getting people to ask who’s who with the blues and who exactly are the meanies in Israel.
This week, a screening of “Avatar” erupted into a small ruckus in a suburb when one moviegoer loudly announced that the Palestinians should learn from this movie what to do to the Jews, causing a commotion and angering others in the audience.
The opinionated moviegoer was Juliano Mer-Khamis. Born in Nazereth to a Jewish mother and Arab father, he is an accomplished actor of many years, a filmmaker as well as a political activist who is very outspoken against the occupation.
Mer-Khamis confirmed the incident and added in the newspaper Maariv: “No one dares to make the real analogy. ‘Avatar’ is one of the bravest films made. It portrays the occupation, but people aren’t making the analogy. Many would like to be like the blue people but don’t understand the meaning. This is why people got angry at the movie theater. It is no secret that I think the Israelis are occupiers and the Palestinians occupied. Israel sits forcefully on lands that belong to others and this is exactly what the movie is talking about.”
Mer-Khamis also suggests distributing the movie in the Palestinian town of Jenin. His choice of Jenin of all Palestinian locations is probably no coincidence: It is home to the Freedom Theatre, which he established a few years ago for the children of the Palestinian refugee camp there and to use “the magic and fantasy of theater to offer some respite” to the population, according to its website.
The Jenin theater was attacked with Molotov cocktails last year. Mer-Khamis was threatened, denounced in leaflets by militant Palestinians as morally corrupt and an agent of Zionism — probably a first for that allegation. The music center in town was also torched later. Mer-Khamis acknowledged that he was afraid but said that he wasn’t the type to run away. “It drives them crazy that a person who’s half-Jewish heads one of the most important projects in the northern West Bank,” he had told the news media at the time. The Jenin theater was a tribute to his mother, Arna Mer-Khamis, whose earlier work in the town was documented in the film “Arna’s Children.”
The video below is in Hebrew, and is the piece referred to in the article. There is no English translation, which is a pity, as it is funny and poignant:
Either way, “Avatar” already got on the wrong side of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman — or his spoof, really, on the “Eretz Nehederet” (‘It’s a Wonderful Country’) satire show.
Blowing off claims that his foreign policy had left Israel with no allies in the world, the “minister” introduced the country’s new best friend, “an ally out of this world”: the prime minister of “Avatar.”
The new diplomatic alliance lasts only until the blue thing explains that the movie is about a people resisting occupation.
A leftist movie, sniffs the “minister,” and he promptly shoots the blue being.
Sorry, folks, he says. There’s isn’t going to be an “Avatar No. 2.”
Video: A fake “Avatar” angers Israel on the satire show “Eretz Nehederet.”
The grand Zionist façade: Al Ahram Weekly
Assertions without substance, prejudice without apology, violence without regret; these are the foundations of the Zionist dream of Israel, writes Shahid Alam*
On 12 January, The New York Times carried an article by David Brooks on Jews and Israel. It so caught my eye that I decided to bring it to my class on the economic history of the Middle East. I sent my students the link to the article and asked them to read it carefully and come to class prepared to discuss and dissect its contents.
My students recalled various parts of the New York Times article, but no one explained its substance. They recalled David Brooks’ focus on the singular intellectual achievements of American Jews, the enviable record of Israeli Jews as innovators and entrepreneurs, the mobility of Israel’s new class of innovators, etc. One student even spoke of what was not in the article or in the history of Jews — centuries of Jewish “struggle” to create a Jewish state in Palestine.
But they offered no insights on Brooks’ motivation.
Why had he decided to brag about Jewish achievements, a temptation normally eschewed by urbane Jews? In my previous class, while discussing Edward Said’s critique of Orientalism, I had discussed how knowledge is suborned by power, how it is perverted by tribalism, and how Western writers crafted their writings about the Middle East to serve the interests of colonial powers. Not surprisingly, this critique had not yet sunk in.
I coaxed my students, asking them directly to explore if David Brooks had an axe (or more than one) to grind. Was there an elephant in the room they had missed? What was the subtext of the op-ed?
At last, one student moved in the direction of the missing elephant. David Brooks had not mentioned the “aid” that Israel had received from the United States. Did my class know how much? Several eyebrows rose when I informed my students that Israel currently receives close to $3 billion in annual grants from the US, not counting official loan guarantees and tax- deductible contributions by private charities. Since its creation, Israel has received more than $240 billion in grants from the US alone.
We had grasped the elephant’s ear, but what about the rest of it, its head, belly, trunk, tail and tusks? My students did not have a clue — at least, so it appeared to me.
My students did not understand — or perhaps did not show it — that no discussion about Israel, especially in the New York Times, could be innocent of political motives. Israel is a contested fact, a colonial-settler state, founded on ethnic cleansing, a state of the world’s Jews, but not of its Arab population. It continues to marginalise its Palestinians “citizens”, to dispossess the Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and strangulate them in Gaza.
Supported and coddled by the United States and other Western governments, Israel now faces growing protests from diverse segments of Western civil society. Churches, labour unions, professors, students and other activist groups are calling on corporations and governments to divest from, boycott and sanction Israel. As always, but now more than ever, advocates of Israel continue to manufacture myths, opinions, and “facts” that can cover for its crimes against the Palestinians and other Arabs in its neighbourhood.
Isn’t that what David Brooks was doing, I asked my class, by painting Jews and Israel in the colours of pure glory?
I saw a few nods of recognition. But one student demurred. “Doesn’t everyone glorify his own country? The US too had engaged in ethnic cleansing. What is the difference?”
There are two differences, I submitted. David Brooks is glorifying Israel but he is not Israeli. More to the point, he is glorifying Israel to cover up for Israel’s present and projected crimes against Palestinians. He is covering up for Israeli apartheid that exists here and now.
At this point, many in my class gasped at what they heard. It appeared to be a voice quarried from the past. It was a defence of genocide quite commonly advanced in previous centuries when European settlers were exterminating natives in the Americas, Oceania and Africa. “We had done so much better with the land than the natives.” Occasionally, such repugnant ideas from the past, which we think we have buried forever, leak into public discourse. Perhaps it is good that they do: they remind us that the past is not dead.
David Brooks starts his article with statistics to show that the Jews “are a famously accomplished group”. Do we need to be convinced of the accomplishments of the Jews? Is there anyone who contests this? So why does Brooks feel the need to support this with statistics? “They make up 0.2 per cent of the world population,” he informs us, “but 54 per cent of world chess champions, 27 per cent of Nobel physics laureates and 31 per cent of medicine laureates.” Just in case these comparisons fail to clinch the point, David Brooks offers more comparative statistics.
Does Brooks aim to belabour the point, or is he saying, ‘Look at all the great things we have done for you Gentiles. We are indispensable. Don’t you criticise what we do. Don’t you go against us’? Or does he feel so personally inadequate that this forces him to seek comfort not in Jewish accomplishments — as he claims — but in Jewish superiority?
Alas, the Jews in Israel have not matched the achievements of the Jews in the Diaspora. The Jewish state contains close to 40 per cent of the world’s Jewish population, but very few of the Jewish Nobel laureates are Israelis. Only nine Israelis in 61 years have won the Nobel Prize. If we exclude the three “Peace” laureates — and wouldn’t you, if you knew who they are — that leaves six. Only three of these six were born in Israel, and one was born there while his parents were visiting relatives in Tel Aviv. Hardly a great total. Ireland, with a smaller population, has six Nobel laureates.
David Brooks knows this. “The odd thing,” he writes, “is that Israel has not traditionally been strongest where the Jews in the Diaspora were strongest.” Why has Israel fallen short? Blame it on the Palestinians and the Arabs. “Instead of research and commerce, Israelis were forced to devote their energies to fighting and politics.”
That was in the past, however. Israel is now bubbling over with innovation and entrepreneurship. Tel Aviv is now “one of the world’s foremost entrepreneurial hot spots”. Once again, statistics are offered to establish Israel’s leadership in civilian research and development. Israel’s more ominous leadership in military technology is not mentioned.
Moreover — and this is David Brooks’ point — this technological success “is the fruition of the Zionist dream”. Then follows another piece of chauvinism. Israel was “not founded so stray settlers could sit among thousands of angry Palestinians in Hebron. It was founded so Jews would have a safe place to come together and create things for the world.”
David Brooks disguises Israel’s second round of colonial expansion that began in June 1967 as a diversion from the main goal of Zionism, a distraction created by “stray” settlers in Hebron. The close to half a million Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, supported, financed, and protected by the world’s fourth most powerful military are minimised as “stray” settlers in Hebron, who are a problem only because they are surrounded by “angry” Palestinians.
Israel was founded — David Brooks asserts, invoking the language of Zionism — so Jews could have a “safe place” and create “things for the world”. Has Israel been a safe place for the Jews? Safer than the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, or even the Arab world before 1917, when the Zionist movement gained official sponsorship from Britain? Plausibly, the answer is no.
One must also ask: What “things” has Israel created for the world? What “things” has Israel given to the Arab world, other than wars, massacres, ethnic cleansing, occupation, war crimes, and alibis to its rulers to create repressive regimes? What has it given to that other world — the Western world — that Brooks probably has in mind? Israel has jeopardised the strategic interests of Western powers in the Islamicate. On more than one occasion, it has brought the United States close to nuclear collision with the Soviet Union. The most valuable “things” that Israelis provide to Western powers, to the United States in particular as an occupying power in Iraq and Afghanistan, are the technologies and tactics they have been perfecting while crushing Palestinian resistance. But David Brooks does not wish to talk about that.
Then comes the coup de grace. This is the blow aimed to finish off Brook’s primary target, the Arabs. Jewish and Israeli accomplishments must finally be placed against the terrible paucity of Arab creativity in the sciences, technology and entrepreneurship. Arabs are asked to declare the patents they have registered in the United States. The astronomical gap between Arab and Israeli patents can only have one cause. The Arabs do not have the “tradition of free intellectual exchange and technical creativity”. In true Orientalist style, blame Arab failures on Arab culture.
Ironically, the two countries Brooks picks to make his point — Egypt and Saudi Arabia — are the closest Arab allies of the United States. The US never wags its finger at the despotic monarchy in Saudi Arabia or the repressive dictatorship that has controlled Egypt for decades. The United States works to bring “democracy” only to its enemies.
Yet for all its triumphalism and crude claims of superiority, the New York Times op-ed ends on a disappointing note. Israel’s innovators, the sons of Zionist dreamers, bring no real commitment to Israel. Just a little instability, and they will vote with their feet. “American Jews used to keep a foothold in Israel in case things got bad here. Now Israelis keep a foothold in the US.” As remarkable as it is, Israel’s success is “also highly mobile”.
Is Brooks the great friend of Israel that he must believe he is? All that any one has to do to destroy Israel’s economy, he writes, is “to foment enough instability so the entrepreneurs decide they had better move to Palo Alto, where many of them [Israelis] already have contacts and homes.”
What sad and strange thinking. Perhaps this is what happens when a person gets trapped inside the nightmare that was sold to the Jews as the great Zionist dream. Brooks confirms that this nightmare cannot be saved by Israel’s technological prowess. Apparently, Israel’s greatest success stories — its cutting-edge technology companies — are also footloose. They could be heading for the exits at the first sign of instability.
Technological prowess will not save Jewish apartheid. Nothing will. But Jews can shore up their lives and build a more promising future for themselves by discovering their common humanity with the Arabs, by making amends with the Palestinians, and learning to give back to the Palestinians what they have taken from them over the past nine decades.
The Zionists are prisoners of a bad dream: they must first free themselves — break free from the prison in which they can only play the part of tormentors — if they and especially their Palestinian victims are to live normal lives.
* The writer is professor of economics at Northeastern University. He is author of Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilising Logic of Zionism .
Israel responds to Gaza war report: AL Jazzera online
Barak has promised that individual Israeli soldiers will not be indicted for war crimes (AFP)
Israel has submitted to the United Nations details of the investigations it conducted into war crimes allegations raised in a reports into the 22-day Gaza war, which ended last January.
Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, told reporters in the southern Negev desert on Friday that his report backed the army’s actions during Operation Cast Lead.
“All of the soldiers and officers whom we sent to battle need to know that the state of Israel stands behind them even on the day after,” Barak said.
“The Goldstone Report is a distorted, false, and irresponsible report.”
The 575-page report, compiled by Richard Goldstone, a South African judge, concluded that there was “strong evidence” Israel had committed war crimes during its bombing and shelling of Gaza.
Hamas response
The Palestinian Hamas-run government in Gaza was also accused of war crimes during the conflict that left about 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead.
Hamas said it had prepared a 52-page response to the Goldstone report, which had accused the Palestinian fighters of targeting Israeli civilians by firing hundreds of rockets across the de-facto border.
Salah al-Bardaweel, a senior Hamas official, hinted at the content of the report on Thursday.
“The killing of three Israeli civilians as alleged by Israel and as mentioned in the Goldstone report was by mistake and the target was military installations inside the Zionist cities”, al-Bardaweel said.
The UN General Assembly in a November 5 resolution endorsed the Goldstone report and gave Israel and the Palestinians three months to undertake “independent, credible investigations” into the allegations against them
That deadline expires on Friday, February 5.
But Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, had asked both sides to report to him on the progress made so far so as to enable him to report back to the General Assembly before the February deadline.
With next week’s deadline nearing, Israel is still in the midst of a heated debate as to whether it should heed the General Assembly resolution calling for an independent inquiry.
So far it has had its own military investigate the incidents raised in the Goldstone report, but has not established a probe independent of the army.
Barak and army chief of staff have so far opposed a commission that would expose private soldiers to legal prosecution, because they fear that would compromise combat in the future.
According to the officials quoted in the Yediot Ahronoth newspaper, only higher-ranking officers with the rank of brigadier-general and up, as well as political leaders including former premier Ehud Olmert, would have to appear before the commission being considered by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli PM.
One government official told Yediot that Israel had “no choice” but to form such a commission if it wanted to escape prosecution at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Barak: Israel submits response to Goldstone report on Gaza: Haaretz
Friday marks three-month limit set by General Assembly for internal report on Operation Cast Lead.
Israel submitted to the United Nations its response to the allegations of war crimes made in the Goldstone commission report which investigated the Israel Defense Forces’ offensive in the Gaza Strip last year, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Friday.
Friday marks the three-month deadline set by the United Nations General Assembly for issuing its own report on the Israel-Hamas fighting in Gaza Strip.
“This morning we handed the UN a report of the investigations and operations that took place during Operation Cast Lead,” Barak, who was speaking at a Jewish National Fund tree-planting ceremony near the Negev town of Omer, said. “This report stresses that the IDF is like no other army, both from a moral standpoint as well as from a professional standpoint.”
“The Goldstone Report is a distorted, false, and irresponsible report,” Barak said. “All of the soldiers and officers whom we sent to battle need to know that the state of Israel stands behind them even on the day after.”
It was not clear if UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will have received enough information from the two sides to produce the requested report. Ban had been asked by the 192-nation assembly to produce a report based on accounts to be provided by the two warring parties.
The General Assembly has already endorsed the controversial investigation led by South African Judge Richard Goldstone on the 22-day fighting between December 2008 and January 2009.
Israel said late on Thursday night that it would issue on Friday its own formal response to Goldstone’s findings, Israel Radio reported. The government is expected to present the UN with a justification for IDF actions in Gaza – without referring specifically to claims made in the document.
The Goldstone report, which was commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, charged both Israel and Hamas with war crimes and acts that amounted to crimes against humanity, saying that the conflict dominated by Israel’s military superiority had killed 1,400 Palestinians and caused widespread damage to properties in Gaza.
The council had urged the General Assembly to debate the report and then refer the alleged crimes to the International Criminal Court at The Hague. That proposal has so far been ignored.
Instead, the General Assembly asked for its own report based on submissions from both sides – following another recommendation from the 547-page Goldstone report that both Israel and Hamas conduct their own investigations.
On Wednesday, Ban said he planned to produce the report.
But he added: “I have not seen anything yet, so I am not in a position to tell you what my report will be. I will have to report within three months, and the three months is now coming to an end.”
There were indications that Israel plans to send the results of its own investigation by Friday.
Judge Goldstone’s 547-page report was promptly and strongly denounced by Israel and the United States as biased against Israel. They said its findings were flawed.
But the Israeli government last year answered some of the specific charges in the report, and last week sent the UN a check for 10.5 million dollars to compensate for damage to UN properties in Gaza. The UN had demanded more than 11 million dollars.
Hamas militants in Gaza roundly supported the Goldstone report.
Israeli Ambassadors: “Economic Investments Are Also Central To National Security and the Political Field”:AIC
Israeli ambassadors identify the promotion of economic relationships at the highest level as a central pillar of their work, which can also assist them in advancing political relations. In a meeting with The Marker, they break their silence about the calls for boycott of goods from Israel, and talk about the struggle against them.
Israeli ambassadors abroad no longer view the development and strengthening of economic and business relations with countries in which they are stationed as a lesser goal than developing and strengthening political relations with them. On the contrary, according to them, a combination of the two goals allows them greater efficiency in attaining the political objectives for which they are responsible. The economic interest that they create in Israeli technology, for example, assists them in pushing aside calls for the boycott of Israel. The ambassadors work closely with the commercial attachés of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Labor and the commercial attaches of the Ministry of Finance. According to them, the contribution of the ambassador is in opening doors at the highest levels, which the attachés do not reach.
In several of the countries in which there exists a close connection between the business and government sectors, such as in China, a senior political authority involved in promoting businesses has double importance. However, even in competitive states such as France, in which business people are photographed more often on the President’s airplane before a joint flight than in front of their factories, the ambassador has substantial weight in promoting business.
In a meeting convened recently by The Marker, participants included the Ambassador to Britain, Ron Prosor, Ambassador to France Daniel Shek, Ambassador to Colombia Meron Reuben, the Consul Generalin Shanghai, Jackie Eldan, the Consul General in Boston Nadav Tamir, the Consul General in Mumbai Orna Sagiv; and the Deputy Director General of Economic Affairs in the Foreign Ministry, Irit Ben Abba .
In June 2008, a meeting was conducted amongst more than 100 senior officials of British Telecom (BT) and representatives of 19 Israeli communications startups, in an attempt to create business partnerships. “I opened the door to the BT CEO, Iain Livingston,” said Prosor. “After the meeting with him, things began to roll,” he added, and did not forget to give credit to the commercial attaché in London, Gil Erez, “who does excellent work.”
And indeed, this week BT joined a corporate agreement with the Chief Scientist of the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor, in the framework of which BT will cooperate with Israeli start-ups with the joint funding of both bodies.
The model for imitation for Prosor is Dick Cheney, Vice President under President George Bush. “Dick Cheney called Efraim Sneh, who at that time was the Minister of Transportation, and spoke with him about the importance of purchasing Boeing airplanes (made in the United States—O.K.) and not Airbus (made in France—O.K.). Sneh had no choice—he understood what decision he would make,” said Prosor.
“For years I have been trying to recover from that,” said Shek, the Ambassador to France. “I saw Martin Indyk, the former American ambassador to Israel, working to open government tenders for cars in Israel for American companies. That is the model,” he added. Shek also has a practical suggestion. According to him, representation abroad costs money and it is possible to also measure its success quantitatively—in money that it brings in as a result of business partnerships. According to him, embassies must cover the costs of their upkeep in this way, and the ambassador must be at the front of this venture.
Legislation against Boycott
2009 was characterized by two crises on the diplomatic-economic front of Israel. The global economic crisis reduced Israeli exports by approximately 20 percent. Additionally, in the wake of Operation Cast Lead in the beginning of 2009, and the lack of progress in political negotiations, the pressure of pro-Palestinian groups on consumers throughout the world to boycott Israeli goods increased. These pressures appeared, amongst other places, in Britain, South Africa, France, Turkey, Dubai, the United States and Malaysia.
They included calls for a consumer boycott on a variety of goods, from food and drink in supermarkets through communications equipment of Motorola, security equipment from Elbit Systems and diamonds from the upscale shops of Lev Leviev. Up until now, and under the pressure of industrialists, Israeli public relations swept calls for boycott under the carpet, with the assumption that it is best not to talk about it, as all publicity is liable to increase the phenomenon. On this background of denial, the willingness of Shek and Prosor to talk about how they deal with the calls to boycott Israel is remarkable.
Shek: “Paris is ‘London light’ from the perspective of calls for boycott. It is impossible to say there are no attempts to impose a boycott. In France they are focused on economic issues, whilst in London the boycott is also academic and cultural. In France it is completely marginal from an economic perspective, although it has a most substantial impact on image. Every few weeks bullies enter the supermarkets in order to throw crates of avocados and yell at clients not to purchase Israeli goods—this will not diminish the work of Agrexco in France, but it could cause an accumulative damage to Israel’s image. I perceive the role of ambassador to preserve a supportive environment for industrialists and exporters. This therefore provides a wide spectrum for public relations work. In a country in which the general atmosphere toward Israel is positive, exporters have a better chance of succeeding. I therefore do not disregard the implications, and we initiative several actions that the embassy coordinates but does not lead.
“For example, we get help from organizations such as chambers of commerce and friendship organizations and do not let this pass without a response. We enjoy a supportive legal environment as France has stringent legislation against boycott, and we encourage organizations to sue those who organize boycott. We conduct political activities in the embassy directly with ministers, organizations, students and consumers, who are waking up. This is being created. Along with this, we are careful not to go too far, as at the moment this does not have broad media exposure and I don’t want to be the one who provides a critical mass to break through to the general public opinion.”
Prosor: “In Britain, the subject of the academic and cultural boycott was expressed in the Edinburgh Festival, boycotts by trade unions or calls for boycott. This is a most important topic, as, from my perspective, it is a snowball that must be stopped with intelligent and focused actions before it becomes too large, without providing it media exposure. We view this in its entirety. Today the atmosphere against Israel in Britain is such that actions must take place everywhere in order to allow a healthy working atmosphere. There is a relationship between good economic relations and the impact of the boycott. We see differences in Wales and Scotland. In Wales, through focused work of the embassy, we succeeded in creating cooperation in the field of medical equipment and water between Israeli and local companies. It is clear that when one focuses on an area with economic advantages and makes connections with Israeli industry, surrounding issues have a lesser impact.
“Apart from calls for boycott from trade unions and additional groups, in practice there was no damage done to Israeli exports. There are calls to boycott Israel and there are sporadic actions, including in supermarkets. One month ago, the British government decided to tag products that come from settlements, and this decision is not being implemented. The calls to boycott the Eden Water factory in Scotland (from the end of 2008) have not at this stage actually harmed sales, and we are working so that sales will indeed not be hurt. At the moment, I do not see the boycott harming Israeli exports, but we must be prepared.”
Tamir: “The economic aspect creates a discourse different than the political discourse. When we hold events at MIT or Harvard on subjects related to Israeli innovations, we create a positive discourse about Israel, which pushes the political aspect to the margins.”
The Israelis Return
Tamir: “We learned that economic investments are a central component of national security, with which we must deal and which transform us into most important players in the political field. It is possible to create synergy amongst all of the fields, but the economic one is central.”
“For example, Edward Markey, a member of Congress who focuses on the environment and alternative energy, is important to the Israeli representatives in political fields. With the mediation of the embassy, he invited Shai Agassi to a hearing in his congressional committee. We now expect that in the future it will be easier to promote political matters with Markey.”
Ben Abba: “If possible, we must create events or interest in the world in singular Israeli products. In China and India this is most strong. This is how a critical mass is created that says ‘we want the technology—and it doesn’t matter if it comes from Israel.’ This is our task in the Foreign Ministry, to promote the most advanced technology.”
In hindsight, while 2009 chased a majority of the Israeli investors from India, it was also a time in which, through tax arrangements, tens of Israelis, some of whom are quite wealthy, returned to Israel from London and Shanghai. Those returning include Saul Zakai, Arnon Milchan, Sami Ofer, Shai Agassi, Yoav Gutsman and Teddy Sagi.
“In the past two years, I have not encountered new Israeli investments in India,” said Sagiv. “At the moment there are investments of Israelis in India at about US$3 billion. The most prominent are Moti Ziser in real estate, agriculture and life science and Meshulam Levinstein in real estate. In the first three quarters of 2009, there was a decline of approximately 40 percent in exports to India and 35 percent in imports from it. In the past year, we attempted to support exporters through the Shavit Programme (implemented by an export institute with government funding).”
Israeli innovation
Trade with France also declined—a more moderate 20 percent—but at the same time interest of large French companies in investments in Israel grew. “There are new French companies that are interested in entering Israel, and we will feel this in the coming two years,” said Shek. “It began with Renault. Renault is extremely proud that Israel will be the first country in which its electric cars will be marketed. Additionally, a subsidiary company of the French electric company, which focuses on alternative energy, is beginning to compete in solar tenders in Israel.”
The warm connections between the community of life science of Israel and Boston cooled off during the crisis and there was a sharp decline in American investments in Israeli companies, but there is compensation from different directions. “With us, the matter is strategic partnerships and investments,” said Tamir. “In 2009, a substantial decline in investments was felt, but there is significant interest in Israeli innovation, primarily in the areas on which the United States places emphasis, like alternative energy, in addition to security and life science.”
In China the crisis harmed the work of Israeli chip and electronic companies. According to Eldan, although in the second half of 2009 orders of large scope returned, some of the Israelis who left with the closure of the production lines did not return to Shanghai when they were reopened.
In 2009, Israeli companies began to discover the market of South America and Colombia. Telrad sent a permanent representative to Colombia and the Merhav Company implemented the largest investment, of US$250, in establishing a factory for producing ethanol from sugar with a Brazilian partner.
The defining characteristic of the Israeli business community in Britain was “returning home.” According to Prosor, the economic crisis, the change in British taxation and the rapid change in Israeli taxation policies created “a fairly massive exodus” of senior business officials who are returning to Israel.
Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel to retain key West Bank settlement in any peace deal: Haaretz
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Friday that Israel would retain control of a large West Bank settlement under any future arrangement with the Palestinians.
During a tree-planting ceremony in the northern West Bank settlement of Ariel on Friday, Netanyahu reaffirmed the town’s historic and strategic significance.
“Anyone who understands the geography of the Land of Israel knows how important Ariel is,” Netanyahu said. “The settlement enterprise here is the heart of our land.”
“Here is where our forefathers dwelled and here is where we will stay and build,” the prime minister said. “We want to strengthen the peace and co-existence with our neighbors but this will not stop us from continuing with our lives here, where we’ll continue to plant trees and to build.”
“Ariel, the capital of Samaria (the northern West Bank), will be an integral, inseparable part of the state of Israel in any future arrangement,” Netanyahu said.
Last week, Defense Minister Ehud Barak ordered a college in Ariel to be recognized as a “university center,” thereby winning praise from the right but an outraged response from both the political left and many academics.
The decision was vehemently opposed by the Council for Higher Education, which oversees all colleges and universities inside the Green Line. But because the Ariel University Center of Samaria is located in the West Bank, it is subordinate to a different, parallel, body, the Council for Higher Education in Judea and Samaria – which, like all Israeli institutions in the West Bank, is formally subordinate to the Israel Defense Forces’ GOC Central Command, who in turn answers to the defense minister.
The CHE-JS approved Ariel’s status upgrade back in 2007, and yesterday, Barak – who is also the Labor chairman – ordered GOC Avi Mizrahi to confirm this.
Recognition as a university center moves the college closer to full recognition as Israel’s eighth university, and Barak’s approval of this step had been part of the coalition agreement between Netanyahu’s Likud party and a third coalition member, Yisrael Beiteinu.
Not about Gaza, but is context of future attacks on Gaza and Lebanon, which are now oprnly discussed on the Israeli media:
Manufacturing Consent For Attack On Iran: ICH
Senate OKs Sanctions on Iran’s Fuel Suppliers
By Tom Doggett and Susan Cornwell
January 29, 2010 “Reuters” — Thursday, January 28, 2010; 6:58 PM — WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Senate on Thursday approved legislation that would let President Barack Obama impose sanctions on Iran’s gasoline suppliers and penalize some of Tehran’s elites, a move aimed at pressuring Tehran to give up its nuclear program.
The sanctions, approved on a voice vote, would target companies that export gasoline to Iran or help expand the country’s oil-refining capacity by, in part, denying them loans and other assistance from U.S. financial institutions.
The House of Representatives has already passed similar legislation. Differences between the two bills will have to be worked out before the measure becomes law.
Lawmakers and the Obama administration fear Iran’s uranium enrichment program will be used to develop weapons, while Tehran says it is for peaceful purposes such as generating electricity.
Many in Congress want to give Obama more tools to pressure Iran. Cutting off gasoline supplies would hurt Tehran’s economy; while Iran has the world’s third biggest oil reserves, it must import 40 percent of its gasoline to meet domestic demand because of a lack of refining capacity.
In his State of the Union address on Wednesday, Obama warned Tehran faced “growing consequences” over its nuclear program. The administration has been working with several other major powers to build a consensus on new sanctions to be imposed jointly.
But U.S. business groups have warned the White House that the lawmakers’ approach threatens to undercut this joint strategy. The critics say broad-based sanctions sought by lawmakers would upset U.S. allies whose companies would be affected, and frustrate joint action with other countries against Iran.
The sanctions in the Senate bill would extend to companies that build oil and gas pipelines in Iran and provide tankers to move Iran’s petroleum.
The measure also prohibits the U.S. government from purchasing goods from foreign companies that do business in Iran’s energy sector.
The Senate acted on the same day that Iran hanged two men convicted in the wake of political unrest in the country. “The situation in Iran is terrible and it’s worsening. People are dying in Iran as we speak,” said Senator John McCain just before the Senate vote.
Other provisions in the bill would:
* Impose a broad ban on direct imports from Iran to the United States and exports from the United States to Iran, exempting food and medicines;
* Require the Obama administration to freeze the assets of Iranians, including Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, who are active in weapons proliferation or terrorism;
* Allow state and local governments and private asset fund managers to easily divest from energy firms doing business with Iran;
* Strengthen export controls to stop the illegal black market export of sensitive technology to Iran through other countries and impose tough new licensing requirements on those who refuse to cooperate.
New Major Divestemnt action by Carleton University Students
OTTAWA, January 27, 2010 – Carleton students have released a report detailing how the Carleton University Pension fund invests in companies involved in violations of human rights and of international law.
Video report on YouTube
The report was created by Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA – Carleton), who are launching a campaign to end Carleton’s unethical investments and adopt a socially responsible investment policy.
BAE Systems, L-3 Communications, Motorola, Northrop Grumman and Tesco supermarkets are the five companies profiled in the report. The report documents how these companies manufacture weapons and weapons components that are used to kill and maim Palestinian civilians, that support the illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and that perpetuate Israel’s illegal siege of the Gaza strip.
“Students are appalled to learn that Carleton is affiliated with companies providing support for illegal military occupation” says SAIA – Carleton member Yafa Jarrar. “We thought our University was guided by more than just the balance sheet.”
Carleton Faculty who have heard about SAIA Carleton’s campaign have been shocked to learn their pension fund is tied into such unethical investments.
“I do not want my pension fund profiting from the sale of Hellfire missiles and Apache Helicopters,” say Trevor Purvis, who teaches Law at Carleton. “By investing in the firms, not only does Carleton violate its own ethical principles, but it essentially makes Carleton complicit in breaches of international law and human rights violations.”
The divestment campaign will be launched this Thursday with an informational discussion featuring members of SAIA – Carleton, Faculty for Palestine, and the Carleton South African Anti-Apartheid Action Group. It will be held at 7 PM, in 360 Tory Building, Carleton University. All are welcome to attend.
To support our campaign, sign our hard-copy petition at the event on Thursday night, or look for us in the Atrium. If you are a member of a Carleton student group, club, association, or union that you think might endorse the campaign, please contact saia.carleton@gmail.com. For more background on our campaign, visit http://carleton.saia.ca <http://carleton.saia.ca/>
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LINK TO DIVESTMENT DOCUMENT:
http://carleton.saia.ca/documents/DivestmentCampaign/CarletonUniversityDivestmentReport.pdf
The following shocking report has just been published in Israel. In a sense, there is nothing new in it to those of us who have listened through the years to Palestinians. But this time, it comes from the horse’s mouth, directly. However, the sheer inhuman sentiment, and the grave banality of evil, are quite extraordinary! Please send to any supporter of Israel…
Female soldiers break their silence: YNet News
Six years after first collection of Breaking the Silence testimonies, organization releases booklet of testimonies from female soldiers who served in territories. Stories include systematic humiliation of Palestinians, reckless and cruel violence, theft, killing of innocent people and cover-up. Here are only some of testimonies
“A female combat soldier needs to prove more…a female soldier who beats up others is a serious fighter…when I arrived there was another female there with me, she was there before me…everyone spoke of how impressive she is because she humiliates Arabs without any problem. That was the indicator. You have to see her, the way she humiliates, the way she slaps them, wow, she really slapped that guy.”
The Breaking the Silence organization on Friday released a booklet of testimonies by female soldiers recounting various abuse cases involving Palestinians in the West Bank.
In recent years, females have been increasingly involved in combat and field operations in the IDF and Border Guard. Among other things, these female soldiers engage in daily contact with the Palestinian population – at roadblocks and in Palestinian communities.
According to the latest testimonies, many of these young women have trouble coping with the violent reality they are exposed to and find themselves facing situations that contradict their values. Some of them end up engaging in acts, or turning a blind eye to acts, that will burden them years later. Like their male counterparts, some of these females have a need to speak about what they saw.
“The girls have greater difficulties in telling the story, because they’re the minority to begin with” the organization’s director Dana Golan says.
‘Each soldier would give them a pet’
In the framework of the latest project, Breaking the Silence gathered the testimonies of more than 50 female soldiers who served in various posts in the territories. Ynet presents some of the highlights in this report.
Golan noted that female soldiers were not more sensitive to the Palestinians than their male comrades.
“We discovered that the girls try to be even more violent and brutal than the boys, just to become one of the guys,” she said.
A female Seam Line Border Guard spoke of the chase after illegal aliens: “In half an hour you can catch 30 people without any effort.” Then comes the question of what should be done with those who were caught – including women, children, and elderly. “They would have them stand, and there’s the well-known Border Guard song (in Arabic): ‘One hummus, one bean, I love the Border Guard’ – they would make them sing this. Sing, and jump. Just like they do with recruits… The same thing only much worse. And if one of them would laugh, or if they would decide someone was laughing, they would punch him. Why did you laugh? Smack… It could go on for hours, depending on how bored they are. A shift is eight hours long, the times must be passed somehow.”
Most of the female soldiers say that they sensed there was a problem during their service, but did nothing.
Another female soldier’s testimony, who served at the Erez checkpoint, indicates how violence was deeply rooted in the daily routine: “There was a procedure in which before you release a Palestinian back into the Strip – you take him inside the tent and beat him.”
That was a procedure?
“Yes, together with the commanders.”
How long did it last?
“Not very long; within 20 minutes they would be back in the base, but the soldiers would stop at the post to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes while the guys from the command post would beat them up.”
This happened with every illegal alien?
“There weren’t that many…it’s not something you do everyday, but sort of a procedure. I don’t know if they strictly enforced it each and every time…it took me a while to realize that if I release an illegal alien on my end, by the time he gets back to Gaza he will go through hell… two or three hours can pass by the time he gets into the Strip. In the case of the kid, it was a whole night. That’s insane, since it’s a ten minute walk. They would stop them on their way; each soldier would give them a ‘pet’, including the commanders.”
‘Child’s hand broken on the chair’
A female soldier in Sachlav Military Police unit, stationed in Hebron, recalled a Palestinian child that would systematically provoke the soldiers by hurling stones at them and other such actions. One time he even managed to scare a soldier who fell from his post and broke his leg.
Retaliation came soon after: “I don’t know who or how, but I know that two of our soldiers put him in a jeep, and that two weeks later the kid was walking around with casts on both arms and legs…they talked about it in the unit quite a lot – about how they sat him down and put his hand on the chair and simply broke it right there on the chair.”
Even small children did not escape arbitrary acts of violence, said a Border Guard female officer serving near the separation fence: “We caught a five-year-old…can’t remember what he did…we were taking him back to the territories or something, and the officers just picked him up, slapped him around and put him in the jeep. The kid was crying and the officer next to me said ‘don’t cry’ and started laughing at him. Finally the kid cracked a smile – and suddenly the officer gave him a punch in the stomach. Why? ‘Don’t laugh in my face’ he said.”
Was there also abuse of women?
“Yes” the same soldier replied. “Slaps, that kind of thing. Mainly slaps.”
From men?
“Also. From whoever. It was mainly the female combat soldiers who beat people. There were two who really liked to beat people up. But also men, they had no problem slapping a woman around. If she screamed, they’d say, ‘Shut it,’ with another slap. A routine of violence. There were also those who didn’t take part, but everyone knew it happened.”
Sometimes an entire “production” was necessary to satisfy the violent urges. “There’s a sense of violence,” a border policewoman in the Jenin area said. “And yes, it’s boring, so we’d create some action. We’d get on the radio, and say they threw stones at us, then someone would be arrested, they’d start investigating him… There was a policewoman, she was bored, so okay, she said they threw stones at her. They asked her who threw them. ‘I don’t know, two in grey shirts, I didn’t manage to see them.’ They catch two guys with grey shirts… beat them. Is it them? ‘No, I don’t think so.’ Okay, a whole incident, people get beaten up. Nothing happened that day.”
An education noncommissioned officer from the Border Guard took her officers for a Sunday of culture – a show in Tel Aviv. When they got back to their base in the Gaza Strip, they were appalled by the dissonance – one moment they’re clapping in a theater, the next moment they’re acting like beasts.
“Crossing the checkpoint, it’s like another world… Palestinians walk with trolleys on the side of the road, with wagons, donkeys… so the Border Guards take a truck with the remains of food and start throwing it at them… cottage cheese, rotten vegetables… it was the most appalling thing I experienced in the territories.”
The soldier said she tried to protest, but was silenced by the commanding officers. When she tried to go around them to higher authorities, she found a solution. “Almost immediately I got into an officers’ course.”
‘You don’t know which side you’re on’
Some of the testimonies document incidents of vandalism of Palestinian property, and even theft. The same female soldier who recounted her time at the Erez checkpoint said, “Many times the soldiers would open the Palestinians’ food.”
And would they take it as well?
“Yes. They take things all the time at checkpoints in the territories. You’ll never see a soldier without musabaha (chickpea past similar to hummus). And that is something they give many times… They are so desperate to pass that they even sort of bribe the soldiers a little…”
A female Border Guard officer spoke of how Palestinian children would arrive at checkpoints with bags of toys for sale – and how the Border Guard would deal with them: “‘Okay, throw the bag away. Oh, I need some batteries,’, and they would take, they would take whatever they wanted.”
What would they take?
“Toys, batteries, anything… cigarettes. I’m sure they took money as well, but I don’t remember that specifically.” She also spoke of one incident in which the looting was caught by a television camera, and the affair blew up. “Then, the company commander gathered us and reprimanded us: ‘How did you not think they might see you?’” No one was punished: “Really, it was an atmosphere in which we were allowed to hit and humiliate.”
Some of the gravest stories come from Hebron. A Sachlav female soldier spoke of one of the company’s hobbies: Toy guns. “Those plastic pellets really hurt… we had a bunch of those… you’re sitting on guard and ‘tak’ you fire at a kid, ‘tak’ – you fire at another kid.”
She recounted an incident in which a Palestinian reporter took a picture of one of the soldiers aiming a gun at a boy’s head. She said a “special patrol” went into Hebron, and came back with the pictures. The soldier said they either paid the reporter, or threatened her.
And the pictures were circulated in the company?
“No, they were destroyed the same day.”
What did the company commander say about it?
“He said it’s a good thing they didn’t reach the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit.”
Some of the testimonies from Hebron deal with the difficult position the soldiers find themselves in, between Palestinians and settlers – who they say are even harder to handle. Some of the female soldiers were shocked with the level of violence the settlers’ children used against the Palestinians. “They would throw stones at them, the Jewish kids,” a Nahal female soldier said, “and the parents would say anything… you see this every day in Tel Rumeida.”
Doesn’t it seem strange to you that one child throws a stone at another child?
“Because the one child is Jewish and the other is Palestinians, it’s somehow okay… and it was obvious that there would be a mess afterwards. And you also don’t really know which side you are on…I have to make a switch in my head and keep hating the Arabs and justify the Jews.”
In her frustration, the same female soldier told of how she once spit on a Palestinian in the street: “I don’t think he even did anything. But again, it was cool and it was the only thing I could do to… you know, I couldn’t take brag that I caught a terrorists… But I could spit on them and degrade them and laugh at them.”
Another female Sachlav soldier told the story of the time an eight-year-old settler girl in Hebron decided to bash a stone into the head of a Palestinian adult crossing her passing by her in the street. “Boom! She jumped on him, and gave it to him right here in the head… then she started screaming ‘Yuck, yuck, his blood is on me’”.
The soldier said the Palestinian then turned in the girl’s direction – a move that was interpreted as a threat by one of the soldiers in the area, who added a punch of his own: “And I stood there horrified… an innocent little girl in her Shabbat dress… the Arab covered the wound with his hand and ran.” She recalled another incident with the same child: “I remember she had her brother in the stroller, a baby. She was giving him stones and telling him: ‘Throw them at the Arab’.”
9-year-old shot to death
Other testimonies raise concerns as to the procedures of opening fire in the territories, particularly crowd control weapons. A female Border Guard detailed to protocol she called “dismantling rubber” – the dismantling of rubber bullets from clusters of three to single bullets, and peeling the rubber off of them. She also said that, despite the clear orders to fire in the air or at the demonstrators’ feet, it was common procedure to fire at the abdomen.
A female Border Guard officer in Jenin spoke of an incident in which a nine-year-old Palestinian, who tried to climb the fence, failed, and fled – was shot to death: “They fired… when he was already in the territories and posed no danger. The hit was in the abdomen area, they claimed he was on a bicycle and so they were unable to hit him in the legs.”
But the soldier was most bewildered by what happened next between the four soldiers present: “They immediately got their stories straight… An investigation was carried out, at first they said it was an unjustified killing… In the end they claimed that he was checking out escape routes for terrorists or something… and they closed the case.”
A female intelligence soldier who served near Etzion recounted an incident in which snipers killed a boy suspected of throwing a Molotov cocktail. The soldiers coordinated their stories, and the female soldier was shocked, mainly by the happy atmosphere that surrounding the incident: “It was written in the situation evaluation after the incident that from now on there will be quiet… This is the best kind of deterrence.”
‘They don’t know how to accept the women’
The female soldiers repeatedly mention the particular difficulties they had as women, who had to prove that to were “fighters” in the midst of the goading male soldiers on the one hand, and the Palestinians, who have a hard time handling women in uniform on the other hand. The following story of a female Border Guard officer sums the matter up.
When the interviewer asked her if the Palestinians “suffer even more from the women in the Border Guard”, she said: “Yes. Yes. Because they don’t know how to accept the women. The moment a girl slaps a man, he is so humiliated, he is so humiliated he doesn’t know what to do with himself… I am a strong and well-built girl, and this is even harder for them to handle. So one of their ways of coping is to laugh. They really just started to laugh at me. The commander looks at me and tells me, ‘What? Are you going to let that slide? Look how he’s laughing at you’.
“And you, as someone who has to salvage your self-respect… I told them to sit down and I told him to come…I told him to come close, I really approached him, as if I was about to kiss him. I told him, ‘Come, come, what are you afraid of? Come to me!’ And I hit him in the balls. I told him, ‘Why aren’t you laughing?’ He was in shock, and then he realized that… not to laugh. It shouldn’t reach such a situation.”
You hit him with your knee?
“I hit him in the balls. I took my foot, with my military show, and hit him in the balls. I don’t know if you’ve ever been hit in the balls, but it looks like it hurts. He stopped laughing in my face because it hurt him. We then took him to a police station and I said to myself, ‘Wow, I’m really going to get in trouble now.’ He could complain about me and I could receive a complaint at the Military police’s criminal investigation division.
“He didn’t say a word. I was afraid and I said. I was afraid about myself, not about him. But he didn’t say a word. ‘What should I say, that a girl hit me?’ And he could have said, but thank God, three years later I didn’t get anything and no one knows about it.”
What did it feel like that moment?
“Power, strength that I should not have achieved this way. But I didn’t brag about it. That’s why I did it that way, one on one. I told them to sit on the side, I saw that he wasn’t looking. I said to myself that it doesn’t make sense that as a girl who gives above and beyond and is worth more than some boys – they should laugh at me like that because I am a girl. Because you think I can’t do it…”
Today, when you look at it three years later, would you have done things differently?
“I would change the system. It’s seriously defective.”
What does that mean?
“The system is deeply flawed. The entire administration, the way things are run, it’s not right. I don’t know how I would… I don’t think I did the right thing in this incident but it was what I had to do. It’s inevitable under these circumstances.”
You’re saying the small soldiers on the ground are not the problem, but the whole situation surrounding them?
“Yes, this entire situation is problematic.”
The Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson’s Office said in response to the publication: “These are anonymous testimonies, without any mention of a time or a place, and their reliability cannot be examined in any way. The IDF is a controlled state organization, which learns and draws lessons, and cooperates with any serious body with the shared goal of exhausting any inquiry when such an examination is inquired.
“The forces in the Central Command are engaged in a daily battle against the terror organizations. The soldiers undergo a professional training which includes a special reference to the contact with the Palestinian population, mental preparation led by professionals, a routine training by their commanders and ongoing control.
“Another aspect in the supervision over the IDF’s activity is the investigative-legal aspect. The IDF includes a number of bodies whose job it is to probe incidents in which any activity against the orders is suspected. Appealing to these bodies is the right, but also the duty, of any soldier or commander, who feels that any activity is being done against orders. Female soldiers and commanders receive the same training given to the fighters.”