Canadian organization attacking Palestinian rights groups: The Electronic Intifada
The following statement was issued on 1 February 2010:
The Board of Directors of Rights & Democracy, a not-for-profit organization created by Canada’s parliament in 1988 to encourage and support human rights around the world, recently voted, with substantial objection, to repudiate grants given to Al-Haq and Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights, two well-known Palestinian human rights organizations located respectively in the West Bank and in Gaza.
The Chairperson of the Board of Directors of Rights & Democracy, Mr. Aurel Braun, was quoted (in The Globe & Mail) as criticizing both organizations for being two “of the most vitriolic anti-Israeli organizations” and for “their accusations against Israel’s human rights violations.” Further, the article reports that Braun had said that “there is no way to ensure that some of the money given to groups in Gaza does not go to the banned terrorist organization Hamas.” He also led a personal attack against Al-Haq’s general director — the well-known human rights defender Mr. Shawan Jabarin — for allegedly being an activist in a PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] faction (ibid). These remarks made by the chairperson of Rights and Democracy are extremely grave as they seem to support the Israeli government’s policy of silencing human rights defenders.
In recent years, Israel’s attempts to silence any voice of opposition regarding its human rights violations have reached alarming levels. In addition to arrests of activists and the closing down of organizations, Israel has also denied many human rights defenders the possibility of effectively advocating for human rights by the imposition of travel bans. A new tactic used by Israel, supported by right-wing groups, is to go after the funders of human rights organizations. In this context, it came as a shock to us — Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights organizations — that instead of advocating for and defending human rights defenders, who work to counter Israeli violations of human rights and ensure respect for international human rights and humanitarian law, the board of Rights & Democracy has instead chosen to join the side of the violator.
The undersigned organizations contend that labeling esteemed human rights organizations such as Al-Haq and Al-Mezan as “questionable” under the aforementioned circumstances is to take sides with the violator. It seems that the board’s decision to repudiate grants to Al-Haq and Al-Mezan might well be because they have been doing their job too well, in particular their investigations of Israel’s human rights violations during last winter’s attack on Gaza. Or perhaps, it could be due to Al-Haq’s exposure of and litigation against the involvement of Canadian businesses in such human rights violations in the West Bank. Maybe it was this unexpected and apparently unwelcomed exposure that prompted Right and Democracy’s recent misguided conduct.
The contention that Al-Haq and Al-Mezan are some “of the most vitriolic anti-Israeli organizations,” because they “accuse” Israel of human rights violations on their websites is a distorted and misleading representation of the facts. Al-Mezan and Al-Haq carry out professional documentation of the human rights violations committed by all of the involved actors in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). Their documentation has been deemed reliable and precise by international bodies that apply the strictest relevant standards. Without this proper documentation by them and other human rights nongovernmental organizations, defending human rights is a mission impossible.
The two organizations receive support from a wide array of donors including governments and nongovernmental contributors who are satisfied with their work and their management due to the transparency that each organization exhibits.
The public smear campaign initiated by the Board of Directors of Rights & Democracy is intended to stop nongovernmental organizations from doing their vital work of human rights monitoring and reporting. It is equal to a call to cease altogether any meaningful promotion of respect and protection of human rights in the OPT, in clear contradiction to Canada’s declared interest in furtherance of universal values of human rights and the promotion of democracy.
In November 2009, the UN General Assembly reiterated its commitment to defend human rights defenders recognizing “the substantial role that human rights defenders can play in supporting efforts to strengthen peace and development, through dialogue, openness, participation and justice, including by monitoring, reporting on and contributing to the promotion and protection of human rights.”
Israel, recognizing that same strong role, carries out deliberate policies and practices that directly or indirectly seek to suppress, obstruct and delegitimize human rights organizations in Israel and the OPT. We denounce these policies and practices, and call on fellow human rights defenders around the world to also denounce them. We also denounce Israeli travel bans on human rights activists operating in the OPT and Israel, and especially the blanket travel ban on Gaza human rights defenders. While Israel is violating their rights, Rights and Democracy Board is trying to delegitimize them, using the same rhetoric.
We demand that we be allowed to meet, to advocate, and to struggle for what we all hold dear: human rights and social justice.
Signatories:
Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Right in Israel
Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association – Ramallah
Al Dameer Association for Human Rights – Gaza
AL-JANA – The Arab Resource Center for Popular Arts – Beirut, Lebanon
Al-Quds Human Rights Clinic
American Jews for A Just Peace
Arab Association for Human Rights – HRA
Architects & Planners for Justice in Palestine
The Association Swiss-Palestine ASP
Association for the Support of Needy, Palestinian Children – Switzerland
Association France-Palestine Solidarite (AFPS)
BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency & Refugee Rights
Boston Coalition For Palestinians Rights (BCPR)
Coalition of Women for Peace (Israel)
Defence for Children International – Palestine Section
Ensan Center for Democracy & Human Rights
Flemish Palestine Solidarity Committee
Gaza Community Mental Health Programme
Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement
Group for Justice and Peace in Palestine (JPP) – Switzerland
Habitat International Coalition – Housing and Land Rights Network
The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN)
International Committee of the National Lawyers Guild, USA
Institute for Policy Studies – Washington DC USA
International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN) – France
The Israeli Association for the Palestinian Prisoners
Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center (JLAC)
Jewish Voice for Peace, USA
Labor for Palestine
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate
Medico International
Medico Swiss
Mopat – Movement Palestine for All – Brazil
The Netherlands Palestine Committee
New York City Labor against the War
Olive Oil Campaign Switzerland
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) – UK
Palestinian Center for Rapprochement between People
Palestine Think Tank
STW (Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign)
Palestinian Workers Union – Greece
The Peace People in Belfast
Physicians for Human Rights-Israel
Public Committee against Torture in Israel (PCATI)
Right to Education Campaign – Birzeit
Tlaxcala Translations Collective
US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel
Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counseling (WCLAC)
Women in Black Union Square in New York City
Women in Black (Vienna)
Women in Black, Maastricht, Netherlands
Interview: “We need a new, united strategy as one people”: The Electronic Intifada
Adri Nieuwhof, 3 February 2010
Mohammad Zeidan (Arab Association for Human Rights) The Arab Association for Human Rights (HRA), based in Nazareth, is one of the first human rights organizations in Israel. HRA was founded during the first Palestinian intifada by lawyers and community activists to monitor human rights violations. HRA is a member of Ittijah, the Union of Arab Community Based Associations, and is involved in human rights education, research and international advocacy. The Electronic Intifada contributor Adri Nieuwhof recently interviewed Mohammad Zeidan, the general director of HRA.
Adri Nieuwhof: Can you discuss HRA’s work and what drives you?
Mohammad Zeidan: HRA is active in three fields: human rights education linked to community outreach; research and reporting on violations of human rights of Palestinians living in Israel; and international advocacy to bring the needs of our community to international attention. Without international attention Israel will not change its policies toward its Palestinian minority. I am driven by the feeling that there is a need for community action against racial discrimination in all aspects of Palestinian life in Israel. With human rights education we help our communities to know their rights and the protection of their rights.
AN: What are the major challenges concerning the rights of Palestinians in Israel ?
MZ: For the Palestinian minority, [chief concerns include] the rise of the culture of racism among the majority of Israeli society, the public support for racist ideas — for instance the transfer of the Palestinian population from Israel. [Also of concern are] proposals for new laws that restrict basic minority rights, like organizing politically and the use of our land. And it is a challenge, how can we link our issues to the broader problems of Palestinians fighting the occupation [in the West Bank and Gaza Strip]. I think in our community we are faced with the challenge to mobilize the young generation for political action. They are the future leaders. It is important they become aware of their identity, linked with the Palestinian Arab international community.
AN: Do you think the situation of Palestinians in Israel has improved over the past ten years?
MZ: There is no sign of improvement. All the change is backwards. The situation is deteriorating. We are winning small victories, but the challenges are becoming bigger. [Israeli] racism is growing. Since 1977 you can see Israeli support for the right wing is growing. Take for example the support for [Avigdor] Lieberman. The left wing is disappearing.
AN: Does HRA have allies in Israel and abroad?
MZ: The Palestinian minority in Israel is our ally. And we have allies among [Jewish] Israelis, people who are concerned about human rights issues. We challenge the Jewish character of the State of Israel, and this makes it hard for Israelis to support our work. They can support specific action. Internationally we have much better allies. We saw a rise in support abroad, especially after the war in Gaza, even in the United States. The international support is not reflected as the political level. There is a gap between the popular support and the government.
AN: Palestinian human rights defenders in the occupied West Bank are confronted with a wave of repression. How is the situation in Israel?
MZ: There is also oppression in Israel. Nongovernmental organizations have been shut down by administrative order, but not at the scale as in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). Israel is not interested to put [itself] on the agenda [by bringing attention to human rights violations within its borders]. They don’t want to open another front. Getting international support gives us a kind of protection. It makes it harder for Israel to deal with us the way they deal with Palestinians in the OPT.
AN: Have the closure of Gaza and Israel’s attack on the territory last winter had an impact on the Palestinian community in Israel?
MZ: In principle the Palestinians in Israel, like most Palestinians, reacted to Gaza. The biggest demonstration in Israel ever was organized in Sakhnin in the Galilee [region in northern Israel] in December 2008. Over 100,000 people participated in a demonstration against the military attacks on Gaza. It was the first time we came out in such big numbers. In general the war made the issue of the oppression much stronger. This is strengthening our identity. We feel more and more that we are part of the Palestinian people, a process that already began before the war.
AN: What is your advice to Palestine solidarity activists and citizens abroad?
MZ: I would say that for Palestinian activists the main issue is the unity of all the Palestinians. We should work together, and mobilize all powers. And we have to rethink our strategy. Sixty years of promoting the two-state solution did not get us anywhere. The facts on the ground have made this impossible. We need a new, united strategy as one people, that takes all of us into consideration — regardless of our political affiliation or geographic distribution.
On the role of Europe and the international community I would like to say that the public support needs to be translated to political action. This is not happening right now. On the contrary, Israel is receiving more support from the European Union (EU) with talks about the upgrading of the relationship between the EU and Israel, and with Europe’s refusal to hold Israel to account by withholding support to the Goldstone report. It has an impact on the credibility of the EU and its member states as democratic states.
Adri Nieuwhof is an independent consultant based in Switzerland.
Ursula Lindsey: Egypt’s Wall: IOA
In late December 2009, Arab TV channels aired footage of throngs of demonstrators, surrounded by the usual rows of riot police, on the streets of downtown Cairo and in front of foreign embassies. Street protests in Egypt have been sharply curtailed in the last few years, but the scene was familiar to anyone who had been in the country in 2005, when protests against President Husni Mubarak’s regime and in favor of judicial independence were a semi-regular occurrence. Yet there was something unusual about these protesters: They were all foreigners.
The demonstrators were Palestine solidarity activists from 43 countries, and they had come to Egypt planning to cross the Egyptian-controlled Rafah gate into Gaza and participate in the Gaza Freedom March, a peaceful procession to the border of the tiny coastal strip with Israel. The march was scheduled to commemorate the anniversary of Operation Cast Lead — the winter 2008-2009 Israeli military assault that, according to Amnesty International, killed some 1,400 Palestinians in Gaza — and to protest the ongoing international blockade of the territory.
But the international activists, who started arriving in Cairo on December 27, found that the Egyptian authorities had no intention of letting them into Gaza. Bus companies that had been hired to transport the would-be marchers to Rafah were told by state security to cancel their agreements; activists who made their way to the Sinai Peninsula on their own were turned back or detained.
Hence, the protests. Several hundred French activists headed to the French Embassy, where they briefly blocked traffic, and then staged a five-day sit-in on the sidewalk. Americans tried to reach the US Embassy, but were held up by Egyptian security forces and eventually allowed to enter in small groups to confer — fruitlessly — with State Department personnel. The activists also took more creative tacks. Giant Palestinian flags and banners were unfurled on three separate occasions on the steps of the Pyramids. About 30 people undertook a hunger strike, led by 85-year-old Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein.
The Egyptian authorities finally offered to let 100 of the 1,400 internationals into Gaza. On the morning of December 31, after bitterly contentious meetings and a fair amount of soul searching, 85 activists departed; the rest rejected the offer, seeing it as a shallow public relations maneuver antithetical to the march’s fundamental demand: free access to Gaza.
Those still in Cairo held a vigorous, day-long rally in Tahrir Square — just across from the Egyptian Museum — and, later, a candlelit New Year’s Eve vigil. The demonstrators held signs that read “Free Gaza” in English; they alternated chants of “Resistance,” “Viva Palestina,” “We are not afraid” and — in a reproach to the Egyptian police — “Shame on you!” They were hemmed in by large contingents of state security forces, who shooed away curious passersby and aggressively discouraged media coverage.
Then, a few days after the Gaza Freedom Marchers left Egypt, another convoy of internationals going by the name Viva Palestina — made up of hundreds of volunteers and vehicles delivering medical aid — reached the Sinai port of al-‘Arish. They entered Gaza on January 6, after clashes with police left 50 activists injured.[1] A Palestinian protest at the border in support of the convoy also turned violent, leaving one Egyptian border guard dead and several Palestinians wounded.
The rallies and aid delegations took place a few weeks after the discovery that the Egyptian authorities have commenced building a subterranean steel wall along the border with Gaza, in order to block the tunnels that Gazans have used to undercut the international embargo upon their territory. Quickly dubbed “the wall of death” by Hamas officials and “the wall of shame” by Egyptian critics, this latest measure to enforce the blockade of Gaza has sparked another heated round of recrimination in Egypt and the Arab world. The debate over the barrier, the foreign protesters in Cairo, the clashes near the Gaza border — all this has focused renewed, intense and, as far as the Mubarak regime is concerned, unwelcome attention on Egypt’s policies toward the besieged Palestinian enclave.
The Siege
Gaza has been under one degree or another of “closure” since the outbreak of the second intifada in the fall of 2000, but Israel and its allies imposed an import embargo after Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006. The blockade was tightened considerably in June 2007, after Hamas fighters seized the Palestinian Authority (PA) security and administrative apparatus in Gaza from loyalists of the rival Fatah faction. Israel permits only a very restricted list of items to pass through the crossings it controls; most construction materials, much needed to repair the damage of Cast Lead’s bombardments, are not allowed. According to the BBC, the average volume of imported supplies has dropped to a quarter of its 2005 level. UN agencies estimate that at least half of all Gazans suffer from “food insecurity.”
The blockade of Gaza would not be possible without Egyptian cooperation. After Israeli soldiers left Gaza in 2005, the Bush administration sponsored a deal whereby the Rafah crossing — the only gateway to Gaza not on the Israeli border and hence no longer physically controlled by Israel — would be jointly monitored by Egypt and the Presidential Guard of the PA. In practice, Egypt and the PA continued to accept Israeli remote control of the crossing via closed-circuit television. When Hamas ousted the Presidential Guard in 2007, Egypt closed Rafah — claiming that it could not enforce an agreement one of whose parties was absent — and has opened it only sporadically since.[2]
In January 2008, Hamas militants blew up part of the long-standing wall above ground along the Egypt-Gaza boundary and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians streamed into the Egyptian town of Rafah. For 11 days, until the Egyptians were able to seal the border again, the inhabitants of Gaza went on a joyful shopping spree, leaving the shelves of Rafah stores bare.
Otherwise, Gaza has weathered the blockade thanks to the tunnels, through which Palestinians smuggle food, cigarettes, fuel and — allegedly — drugs, cash and weapons. According to the director of the UN Relief Works Agency, 60 percent of Gaza’s economy depends on the tunnels.[3]
The “Engineering Installations”
The new wall Egypt is building is intended to cut off these underground lifelines. Construction was first reported by the highbrow Israeli daily Ha’aretz, in an article stating that the wall will be more than five miles long, driving steel panels down to 100 feet below the surface.[4] Some claim the barrier will be connected to pipes that will saturate the ground along the border with pumped-in seawater, thus rendering the tunnels liable to collapse. It has also been widely reported that the wall is being built with American assistance; a US Embassy official in Cairo confirmed to a delegate from the Gaza Freedom March that the US Army Corps of Engineers has provided technical support.
Egyptian officials justified the construction of what they prefer to call “engineering installations” or “reinforcements” with a national security argument: Egypt as a sovereign state has a right and a duty to protect its borders. The tunnels are a threat — the terrorists who carried out the attacks in the Sinai resorts Taba and Sharm al-Sheikh are believed to have come through them. And the drugs, cash and weapons that purportedly flow into Gaza might leak into Egypt as well. Appearing on national TV on January 24, Minister of Interior Habib al-‘Adli gave an analogy “for the simple citizen,” asking: “Should I leave the door of my house open all night when the kids and the wife are inside? Where’s my sense of patriotism, my sense of loyalty to my house?”[5]
Furthermore, Egyptian officials continuously point out, Israel and Hamas are the ones truly responsible for the situation. Gaza is under Israeli occupation in the eyes of international law and Israel could lift the siege tomorrow; Hamas has made the plight of Gazans worse by removing the Presidential Guard, firing rockets into Israel, hence provoking further tightening of the siege, and resisting an Egyptian-brokered reconciliation with the office of Mahmoud Abbas, who lays continued claim to the PA presidency despite the expiration of his term in 2009.
On the other hand, the Egyptian government’s critics maintain that even genuine security concerns and treaty constraints cannot justify its participation in a blockade that contravenes international human rights law. Mohammed Al Baradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and a possible candidate in the 2011 presidential elections, told a Foreign Policy interviewer that at the same time they fight to prevent smuggling, Egyptian authorities could establish a “free trade zone” in the town of Rafah, noting that “there is a difference between protecting national security, which no one questions, and providing humanitarian assistance.”
Acting for Others?
In the Egyptian and pan-Arab press, Egypt is accused of being a tool of the Israelis and the Americans, enforcing the blockade on their behalf. Certainly, Israel and the US have been pressuring Egypt for years to “crack down” on smuggling, and, in 2008, Congress withheld $100 million in aid over this issue. And certainly Egypt’s cooperation in maintaining the siege is part of what makes it a valuable US strategic partner. Perhaps not coincidentally, criticism from Washington of Egypt’s human rights record and its illiberal political system has been remarkably muted since the 2007 closure of Rafah. And Egypt has recently won two important concessions from the United States: Part of the aid it receives will now be put into an endowment (which makes it harder for Congress to make the aid conditional on particular reforms); and on December 30, it was announced that Egypt will acquire at least 20 new F-16 fighter jets from US manufacturers.
Yet one should not discount Egypt’s internal reasons for backing the blockade. The Egyptian government mistrusts Hamas, an armed militant Islamist group that it considers both an Iranian proxy and an ally of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, its largest and best-organized opposition.
And Egypt fears becoming Gaza’s main opening to the outside world, and being further embroiled in the management of the troublesome, impoverished and crowded enclave. This involvement might facilitate Israeli plans to separate the West Bank from Gaza, or Hamas’ supposed ambitions to establish an independent “Islamic emirate,” writes one pro-regime intellectual.[6] These concerns are perhaps not unjustified: Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip from 1948 to 1967 and there are some in Israeli and American policy circles who would like to hand the area back over; meanwhile, the ongoing rift between the Western-recognized PA in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza has led to talk of a “three-state solution.”
The Egyptian authorities view Hamas-ruled Gaza as a serious security threat, a potential destabilizer of the entire Sinai Peninsula. The construction of the subterranean wall is the culmination of a decades-long process of Egyptian disengagement from the Palestinian cause and growing security cooperation with Israel — a process that was given one last dramatic push by Hamas’ election. The official line that Egypt sacrificed enough for Palestine from 1948 to the 1979 Camp David agreement strikes a chord with some Egyptians. Yet many, across the political spectrum, are deeply uncomfortable with the shift in policy that has turned the Palestinians, from historical “brothers,” into something like enemies. “Egyptian security doctrine has come — incomprehensibly — to consider Gaza and not Israel the main threat to Egypt,” writes Ahmad Yusuf Ahmad.[7] Similarly, the columnist Fahmi Huwaydi remarks that Egypt’s “strategic vision has changed, and Egypt has come to reckon the Palestinians and not the Israelis a danger. And if this sad conclusion is correct, then I cannot avoid describing the steel wall…as a wall of shame.”[8]
From High Dam to Low Wall
Within days of the announcement of the construction of the underground wall, people across the Arab world were venturing unfavorable comparisons between Mubarak’s “engineering installations” and President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s landmark project — the High Dam north of Aswan — playing on the double meaning of the words for “high” and “low” in Arabic. Wags suggested adding a comment upon Mubarak to Nasser’s epitaph: “The highly esteemed one (al-‘ali) built the High Dam (al-sadd al-‘ali); the low-down one (al-wati) built the Low Wall (al-sadd al-wati).”[9]
Egypt’s standing in the Arab and Islamic world is partly linked to its role as a patron of the Palestinian cause in the era of Nasser. Today, due to its participation in the Gaza blockade, its leadership and legitimacy in the region have come under considerable fire, recalling the outrage when President Anwar al-Sadat concluded a separate peace with Israel at Camp David. There have been demonstrations at Egyptian embassies in Turkey, Malaysia, Jordan and Lebanon — where the newly formed Campaign to Stop the Wall of Shame is targeting the Egyptian construction company Arab Contractors, which is reportedly building the wall.[10] Writing in al-Ahram Hebdo magazine, Egyptian journalist Hassan Abou Taleb laments, “Criticizing Egypt and its policies has become common in the Arab world…. These bitter critiques…have developed to the point that they disfigure the image of Egypt.”[11]
By highlighting its role in the Gaza siege, the Gaza Freedom Marchers put the Egyptian government in a distressing position — particularly since the authorities could not crack down on the international demonstrators as harshly as they would have on locals without causing a diplomatic incident. Several internationals were beaten and thrown to the ground in scuffles with the police. But generally their demonstrations were met with an unusual (by local standards) degree of tolerance.
In fact, the Egyptian government machinery seemed initially discomfited by the bad publicity attending the foreign convoys to Gaza. Some have suggested that the reluctant, defensive and disorganized response of the government to the criticism and questioning of its policies toward Gaza is indicative of “the degree of embarrassment felt by a government that — it has become clear — is helpless.”[12]
The defensiveness came out as a combination of bluster and conspiracy theory. Officials in the Foreign Ministry referred to the international activists as “conspirators” and “troublemakers.” Foreign Minister Ahmad Abu al-Ghayt said the members of the Viva Palestina convoy “committed hostile acts, even criminal ones, on Egyptian territory.”[13] British MP George Galloway, who led the delegation, has been declared persona non grata in Egypt.[14]
Others insinuated that opposition to the wall and the blockade was part of a plot to humiliate Egypt. Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Mufid Shihab suggested that the Gaza Freedom Marchers were mostly “Algerian women with French nationality…carrying a message of the Algerian media into the heart of Cairo.”[15] The accusation, innocuous as it may sound, was venomous in view of the rift between Egypt and Algeria following Algeria’s victory over Egypt in a World Cup qualifying match, and ensuing violence in both countries (and in Sudan, site of the match) targeting the other country’s nationals. Shihab also blamed the coverage on the al-Jazeera network — “the Qatari channel of discord,” he called it — for fomenting anti-Egyptian feeling.
In the end, the Egyptian official political establishment has more or less declared the subject of its policies toward Gaza verboten. President Mubarak, in a speech on January 24, announced flatly: “We do not accept debate on this issue with anyone.”
The authorities have also resorted to religious authority to try to quash dissent: The Islamic Research Council, headed by the Sheikh of al-Azhar (Egypt’s highest, semi-official Muslim institution), on December 31 issued a legal ruling in support of the wall. The council released a statement saying: “It is one of Egypt’s Islamically legitimate rights to place barriers that prevent the damage inflicted by the tunnels built under Egyptian land at Rafah, which are used to smuggle drugs and other products, threatening and upsetting the security and stability of Egypt and its interests.” “Those who oppose the construction of this wall violate the shari‘a,” the council concluded. Other Islamic scholars immediately and indignantly contradicted this fatwa, and al-Azhar was condemned by many for seeming to put religion at the service of unpopular government policies.
Activism and Its Limits
International activists chose to come through Egypt to get to Gaza because this route was the only one available; entering through Israel, they felt, would have been impossible. They hoped that Egypt would be sympathetic to their mission, and at first they did their best to avoid confrontation with the regime. When Egypt announced in advance of their arrival that the way into Gaza would be closed, the activists were undeterred. Egypt had vowed to obstruct numerous delegations in the past, a December 21 press release from the Gaza Freedom March steering committee allowed. “But after public and political pressure, the Egyptian government changed its position and let them pass.”
At the demonstration on New Year’s Eve in downtown Cairo, participant Ali Abunimah, the Palestinian-American co-founder of the Electronic Intifada web magazine, said: “People did not come to Cairo with the goal of protesting Egypt or making trouble in Egypt. They came here to go to Gaza and show solidarity with people in Gaza and break the siege. And what has inevitably refocused attention on the Egyptian role is that it is Egypt that has prevented people from traveling to Gaza…and so it’s really Egypt that’s highlighting its own role in maintaining the siege in Gaza.”
The Gaza Freedom March did not coordinate with local activists; in fact, it did not allow them to join. A statement on the march’s website read: “Unfortunately, the Egyptian government decides who can and cannot cross into the Gaza Strip from Egypt. In our experience, it has been difficult for Egyptian citizens and people with Palestinian Authority passports to enter the Gaza Strip. We have tried to overcome this unfair restriction on previous trips, but without success. So, unfortunately, we cannot take people with Egyptian or Palestinian passports.”
Muhammad Wakid, an activist and member of the Socialist Studies Center in Cairo, says locals understood the choice to exclude them was necessary “so as not to alienate the regime, so as to maximize access to Gaza.” Wakid notes that “our presence would have been a liability; it would have changed their focus.”
Once the internationals were stuck in Cairo — and their focus was changed for them — they reached out to local pro-Palestinian groups. But there remained significant differences. The Gaza Freedom Marchers, for example, asked Egyptians not to chant pro-Hamas, pro-Hizballah or anti-Mubarak slogans at their joint demonstration on December 29 on the steps of the Journalists’ Syndicate. The Egyptians refused. And then there was a pricklier problem. “We couldn’t possibly consult or coordinate with [the Gaza Freedom Marchers] given the presence of Israeli activists,” says Wakid. This position was shared by Egyptian activists of all political persuasions — even the goal of breaking the siege could not trump their opposition to normalization of relations with Israel through direct contact with Israelis.
Despite these differences, and despite deploring the internationals’ naiveté in thinking they would be allowed to enter Gaza, for the most part Egyptian activists were supportive. “We wished them well from afar,” says Wakid. “They had an important effect,” says Diya’ al-Sawi, a founder of the Egyptian Committee to Break the Siege of Gaza. “They changed world public opinion toward the Egyptian regime.” Critics of the march in the Western activist community were skeptical of the idea on the grounds that it was impractical and that it created the wrong focus — Egypt’s certain denial of access would shine the spotlight on Egypt, instead of Israel (and the US), the real forces behind the blockade. For Egyptian activists, however, opposition to the Gaza blockade and opposition to the Mubarak regime are one and the same. They are pleased that the international media attention attracted by the Gaza Freedom Marchers and Viva Palestina convoy helped to cement the connection.
Furthermore, Arab public intellectuals used the foreign activists to chide Arab governments and populations for insufficient solidarity with the Palestinians. Salama Ahmad Salama, writing in al-Shurouq newspaper, noted: “These marches, of course, may not solve the problem. But at least they ring an alarm bell from time to time, and do something to grab the attention of world opinion, whereas the Arab countries and peoples have submitted to the existing situation and are no longer able to resist it, but rather have come to beg for solutions and concessions that the Palestinians themselves refuse.”[16]
In fact, despite the severe constraints under which Egyptian pro-Palestinian activists operate — such as the threat of arrest, police abuse and the absence of international media coverage — they continue to organize actions on a regular basis.
The same week the Gaza Freedom Marchers were in Cairo, Islamist students demonstrated against the construction of Egypt’s underground barrier on several university campuses.[17] The “wall of shame” has also been the subject of spirited parliamentary debate and court challenges: Members of Parliament are leading a legal effort calling on the president and the Ministry of Interior to halt construction.[18]
On January 15, about 100 members and supporters of the Committee to Break the Siege of Gaza tried to convene at the Doctors’ Syndicate in downtown Cairo in preparation for departure for Gaza. They encountered the heavy hand of state security: The nearby subway station was closed; the area was surrounded by riot police; taxi and bus drivers were detained; and the activists themselves beaten and harassed. They regrouped at an alternate location and decided to break into smaller groups that would travel separately by public transportation. But the groups were all apprehended, eventually, at different checkpoints on the way to Rafah, whereupon they were packed into minivans and driven back to Cairo under police escort. This sortie was the fifth attempt of the Committee — whose leader, Magdi Ahmad Husayn, was convicted of “smuggling” in January 2009 after visiting Gaza by tunnel — has made in the past year to break the blockade. They will try again in early April.
What Next?
What will the border between Sinai and the Gaza Strip look like in the coming months? Since the underground wall’s depth and shape are unconfirmed, it is hard to tell how effective it will be. Many Palestinian smugglers seem confident they will be able to bypass they barrier, whether by digging underneath it or punching through it. Nor is it known how soon the wall will be completed. The Mubarak government may drag out construction for months to come, as part of the endless bargaining and arm twisting going on among Israel, Egypt, the US, Hamas and the PA presidential office in Ramallah.
Meanwhile, even semi-constructed, the Egypt-Gaza wall, like other barriers around the world, is a visible and dramatic symbol — an embodiment of Egypt’s policy and a lightning rod for opposition.
The wall heralds a hardening of the Egyptian regime’s stance on Gaza — despite the embarrassment of so openly standing athwart the Palestinian cause, or perhaps because of it. Foreign Minister Abu al-Ghayt has announced that “Egypt will no longer allow convoys, regardless of their origin or who is organizing them, to cross through its territory.”[19] All foreign aid will have to be handed over to the Red Crescent, which will then deliver it — if and when the Rafah crossing is opened — to Gaza.
And the wall has also put Egypt, in ways the government finds quite awkward, at the center of the international argument over the Gaza blockade. Despite their ideological differences, Egyptian and international activists made contact in January, on the sort of unofficial level that is likely to endure. Egypt’s role in the blockade — a key preoccupation of local activists — has become part of the international pro-Palestinian agenda.
Ursula Lindsey is a Cairo-based reporter and writer
The Iron Maiden, Jeanne d’Arc of Late Zionism, the war criminal Tzipi Livni, threatens to occupy Britain:
Tzipi Livni: I’m coming to Britain: The Jewish Chronicle
By Stephen Pollard, February 3, 2010
Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni is planning to come to London to test the process for the issuing of arrest warrants for alleged war crimes.
Speaking exclusively to the JC, Ms Livni said: “I will do this not for me, not for provocation, but for the right of every Israeli to travel freely. I am not going to be restricted by extremists because I fought terror.”
The British system was, she said, “being abused by extremists for political reasons. Belgium and Spain have changed their laws, and the British know that they have to do so”.
Asked when she planned to come to London, she said she was considering a number of invitations. The JC understands from a source close to Ms Livni that, should the parliamentary deadline of February 23 pass without an announcement of a change in the law, she would take up one of the invitations within weeks.
If the law did not change, she said she would consult the Israeli Foreign Ministry on the exact legal situation, but would seek to act on behalf of all Israelis by visiting London.
“My intention is not to stay in Israel for ever. I don’t think as a decision-maker, who made decisions against terror, that I should plan never to leave Israel. The British fight terror, too. They do not remain in Britain. They travel.”
Ms Livni had originally been scheduled to come to London for a JNF conference at the end of last year. However, there is still no agreement at ministerial level on a change to the universal jurisdiction legislation. This now opens up the serious possibility that nothing will happen before the election.
The Foreign Office has confirmed that there have been further delays and said that no announcement is likely this week or next.
Foreign Secretary David Miliband first pledged a change to the law in December when the arrest warrant for Ms Livni was issued.The Ministry of Justice continued to maintain that Justice Secretary Jack Straw was not blocking the legislation.
However, the JC has spoken to several government sources who have said Mr Straw was “playing dirty” to delay an announcement.
The Ministry of Justice this week confirmed that any amendment to the law is likely to be attached to the Crime and Security Bill, which finishes its committee stage on February 23. The Government could then introduce an amendment at the report stage. An MoJ aide said that an amendment lies outside the scope of Mr Straw’s Constitutional Reform Bill, which ends its committee stage next week.
Meanwhile, backbench opposition to the Bill has been building. An early day motion opposing a change to the law now has 108 signatories, which would represent a significant rebellion so close to an election.
At a meeting earlier this week of the all-party parliamentary group on UK compliance with international law, lawyer Daniel Machover, who has been prominent in the campaign behind the arrest warrants of Israelis, presented the case for opposing the law change. MPs present committed themselves to a campaign to delay any announcement, a strategy which worked in 2005, when the issue was previously raised.
Veteran Labour rebel Bob Marshall-Andrews, who attended the meeting, chaired by Baroness Tonge, said: “I simply do not know what the government is going to do. If there is any moral, it is not to say the first thing that comes into your head.”
Shadow Attorney General Edward Garnier was also present at the meeting. The Conservative Party has pledged to support the government in its attempts to amend the legislation. However, it has serious reservations about parts of the Crime and Security Bill. The Tories are opposed to proposals in the bill on the collection of DNA evidence, ASBOs, stop and search and gangs.
Mr Garnier said: “It is no good blackmailing us to pass a bad piece of legislation. It is disingenuous to use our reasoned opposition to the Crime and Security Bill as an excuse. They know that if they come up with a sensible suggestion on universal jurisdiction, we will support them. But we need to know what they plan to do first.”
Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Danny Ayalon, will visit London next week. He is exempt from war crimes warrants because of his ministerial status.
The message is clear: Israel must not strike Iran: Haaretz
By Gideon Levy
In the sea of brainwashing, intimidation and cliches surrounding us, it’s sometimes worthwhile to listen to a voice from the outside, a voice no less proficient than the Israeli “experts” on security matters and Iran. The voice of reason. Such was the voice of the senior European diplomat who had served as an ambassador in Tehran for about five years and was visiting Israel this week.
Over dinner in his country’s ambassador’s residence, the man outlined his views about Iran, with which his country maintains extensive, complex ties. This man, now about to be appointed ambassador to Germany, continues to visit Iran, although his tenure there ended in 2004.
His message was clear and razor sharp – Israel must not attack Iran. This would only cause harm. If anything could bring Iran closer to the bomb, it would be an Israeli offensive, which seems imminent. The European diplomat is convinced that Iran does not intend to produce a nuclear bomb, only to walk on the edge and prepare for the option of developing it. This has become a matter of national honor for the Iranians.
The diplomat knows there is also another possibility, that Iran could be heading toward the bomb, and he realizes there is no guarantee this will not happen. And yet he is profoundly convinced that Iran will not do so.
An Israeli attack, on the other hand, which in his view would put off the bomb by merely two years, would only spur the Iranians to develop it. Tehran knows that the United States wouldn’t have dared to invade Iraq and Afghanistan had these countries had nuclear weapons. The Iranians are sure that this goes for them as well. So their way to maintain the regime, if it feels threatened, is to develop the bomb. The threats to attack Iran will only push them toward this.
An Israeli attack on Iran would also unite the Iranian people behind the regime, the man says. Israel’s enemy today is only the regime, not the people.
The Iranian people are busy with other problems and are not preoccupied with the Palestinian issue or whether Israel should or shouldn’t exist.
The last elections, whose results the diplomat is certain were forged, opened large cracks in public support for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s regime. The West must not stir things up in Iran now, he warns, because any agitation would only close the ranks and wipe out the opposition, which has yet to say its final word. The subversive processes must be allowed to do their work and refrain from interfering under any circumstances.
An Israeli attack would be worse than agitation because it would destroy the opposition abruptly and unite the people in support of their leader. As in any other country, any military humiliation would lead to increased support for the ruler, as we well know from our own conduct.
Since Ahmadinejad rose to power, the Iranian leadership has greatly increased its intervention in everyday life. Ahmadinejad has replaced the government bureaucrats with his own people from the provinces and the countryside. His control over the administration is stronger than ever, which probably stirs even more resistance. The Iranians have already proved their ability to overthrow tyranny. Women are a rising force in society and perhaps the word will come from them. “Cherchez la femme,” the diplomat said in French.
So what should we do? In certain situations, he said, one should do nothing. Any other option is immeasurably worse and more dangerous. So what do we do, the Israeli listener may ask himself, and reply: Make peace with Syria and the Palestinians, to undermine Iran’s threats. Senior Iranian officials have said that any peace between Israel and the Palestinians would be acceptable to them. This would destroy the basis for Iran’s threats to eliminate Israel.
Can the ranting and raving Israel, which sometimes hastens to attack and often uses violent language, the Israel that believes more than anything in wham-bam military solutions, listen to this wise advice? It’s very doubtful.
We won’t make peace, because why should we and what’s the hurry? After all, the campaign of scaring the Israeli people and intimidating the world serves the Israeli regime well.
It distracts the public from other problems and releases Israel from the need to deal with Goldstone, the occupation and all the rest.
So come on, Bibi, attack. And may God have mercy.
With a nod and a wink:
Read the following carefully – it is the realisation in Israel that its ‘friends’ need them ‘probing’ their behaviour in Gaza, so as to avoid facing further accusations and warrants. In a sense, what is said here is: there isa nod a a wink, so klet us us it and get out of trouble by pretending as is expected of us. Read the following sentence – it is all there: “If they need a commission of inquiry then that’s what we’ll give them.” Why did they not think of this before? To kill thousands of people is Ok, but not to investigate is not! So, let us kill, investigate, find no fault, and Bob is your Uncle! Well, in this case it is Sam, rather Bob…
Pressure mounts for Israel to hold Gaza war inquiry: The Guardian
Senior military law officer adds to voices denying war crimes but calling for examination to counter UN’s Goldstone report
Israel’s government is facing fresh calls for an independent inquiry into the military’s conduct during the Gaza war.
The senior military legal officer during the war said an inquiry is needed to head off attempted international prosecutions against senior Israeli officials. Last week Israel’s outgoing attorney general also said an inquiry was necessary.
Neither of the two believe the military committed grave breaches of international law or possible war crimes, as argued by international human rights groups and a UN investigation, but they fear Israel’s international legitimacy is suffering.
Richard Goldstone, the South African judge who authored a highly critical UN report on the war, called on both Israel and Hamas to hold credible independent inquiries or risk international legal proceedings. So far neither has agreed.
Colonel Pnina Sharvit-Baruch, who was head of the Israeli military advocate general’s international law department, has been quoted as saying it might have been better for Israel to co-operate with the Goldstone inquiry and that an independent commission of inquiry might head off further criticism.
“It’s possible that had we co-operated with the [Goldstone] commission, its report wouldn’t have been as bad. I don’t think anyone thought the report would be so severe,” she told Ha’aretz newspaper.
“We are now in a situation in which we need to give our friends – who don’t want to see lawsuits filed against us in their own courts – the tools to do away with such claims, along with other charges against us. If they need a commission of inquiry then that’s what we’ll give them. I really don’t think we have anything we need to hide … In terms of orders and targets prepared in advance I don’t think war crimes were committed.”
The reference to filing lawsuits seems to refer to the case in December when a British court briefly issued an arrest warrant for Tzipi Livni, the former Israeli foreign minister. A similar effort was made a few weeks earlier to secure a warrant against Ehud Barak, the defence minister. Although the British government did not endorse the Goldstone report at the UN human rights council and called it flawed, it has called on Israel to hold an independent inquiry into the conduct of the war.
Last week Menachem Mazuz, Israel’s retiring attorney general, said the Goldstone report was taking away Israel’s legitimacy. He disagreed strongly with the report, which he described as biased and containing unsubstantiated conclusions, but said the proper response was an Israeli committee of inquiry.
“I believe that Israel has a clear interest in conducting a serious, expert examination that will deal with the report and produce an opposing report. It would be a serious mistake not to establish some sort of committee,” he said in an interview with Ha’aretz. “We must remove the shame of accusing Israel of being a country that commits war crimes.”
The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has listed the “Goldstone effect” as one of Israel’s most serious security challenges. The Israeli government and military have issued their own responses to Goldstone, but some senior officials, notably Barak and General Gabi Ashkenazi, the chief of staff, are thought to be opposed to a further, more detailed inquiry even though similar commissions have been held following previous wars.
Israel defends its Gaza probe as ‘in line with international law’: Haaretz
The Foreign Ministry on Friday defended Israel’s response to allegations of war crimes during the war in the Gaza Strip last year, hours after United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon confirmed having received a full internal report from Jerusalem on the matter.
“This document completely expresses Israel’s commitment to conduct an honest internal probe according to the standards of international law,” the foreign ministry said. “Despite the difficult conditions of fighting against Hamas terror, Israel has stringently abided by international norms and will continue to do in the future – though our foremost obligation is to protect our citizens.”
Ban late Thursday acknowledged having received internal Israeli and Palestinian responses to UN allegations of war crimes during the 2008-2009 war in the Gaza Strip, adding that Israel had responded to every charge brought against it.
In a cautiously worded message to the UN General Assembly, Ban acknowledged Israel and the Palestinian Authority were looking into the behavior of Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants as demanded by a resolution the 192-nation assembly approved in November
But Ban withheld judgment on whether the probes were “independent, credible and in conformity with international standards.”
“No determination can be made on the implementation of the resolution by the parties concerned,” Ban said in the letter that accompanied the documents given to him by the Israelis and the Palestinian Authority about their investigations.
One senior Western diplomat described Ban’s letter as “deadpan and procedural.” It was not immediately clear what, if anything, the General Assembly would do in response.
More than 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis died after Israel launched Operation Cast Lead against Gaza to try to end rocket fire against its cities. Critics charged that Israel used excessive and indiscriminate firepower but Israel blamed the militants for hiding among civilians.
The General Assembly resolution was a response to a UN report issued last September by an investigative panel headed by South African jurist Richard Goldstone.
The Goldstone report said the Israeli army and Palestinian militants committed war crimes during the conflict from late December 2008 to mid-January 2009 but focused more on Israel.
It also said that if Israel and the Palestinians failed to carry out credible investigations, the matter should be referred to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Both the Jewish state and the Islamist group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, have rejected the suggestion they might have been responsible for war crimes.
“I have called upon all of the parties to carry out credible domestic investigations,” Ban said in the letter. “I hope that such steps will be taken wherever there are credible allegations of human rights abuses.”
Last week, Ban received a document from Israel defending its handling of complaints over its conduct in the Gaza war.
The Palestinian Authority, which has no control over Gaza and played no direct role in that conflict, gave the United Nations details of a commission of inquiry it had set up, along with preliminary findings.
Hamas said it gave the United Nations a response to the Goldstone report rejecting the charges against its fighters. The Hamas response was not included in Ban’s message to the General Assembly.
Israel had refused to cooperate with Goldstone and angrily rejected his findings. Last week, Defense Minister Ehud Barak called the report “distorted, biased and unbalanced.”
But after the General Assembly called on Israel and the Palestinians in November to investigate Goldstone’s charges and asked Ban to report back within three months, Israel decided it would provide the UN chief with information.
Despite its fury at Goldstone’s report, Israel last month paid $10.5 million to the United Nations for damage to UN property during the Gaza war.
The socio-political crisis deepens in Israel
Israeli society is now more polarised than ever before, with the right turning to McArthite and fascist tactics, not just gainst the Palestinians, either in Israel or the Occupied Territories of Palestine, but also mainly against ALL human rights organisations, the Zionist ‘left’, and other liberal forces eho are closely wedded to the central ideas of Zionism, though preferring less aggressive methods of implementation.
Ironically, Israeli claims that their state is a ‘democracy’ and even that it ius the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ are normally supported by the same organisations allowed to opearte. The mass arrests of human-rights activists in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, and legislative and political campaign against human-rights, might make such claims more difficult in the future:
When did the Israeli right become so McCarthyite?: Haaretz
Human right organizations are a nuisance. The moment the number of one of their PR people appears on my mobile, I groan inwardly. Another alleged case of wrongdoing by IDF soldiers in the West Bank. First, I have to sift through the initial report and decide whether there is any merit in it, which usually means an argument with the aforementioned PR person.
Next I try to corroborate the report from Palestinian and Israeli sources. And then there’s the phone call to the duty officer at the IDF Spokesman’s Office, who is going to say, “Why do you always believe what those anti-Israel people tell you?” (At this point, I should make it clear that I am referring in this column to Israeli human rights groups. The international ones simply publish their reports with much fanfare. They are not interested in working with the Israeli media to really get to the bottom of these stories).
B’Tselem, Yesh Din, Machsom Watch, Breaking the Silence and their ilk are nudniks, they are one-sided, they pick up any story floating around, often giving exaggerated credence to hearsay testimony and they have a tendency for overkill, conflating every report into a phenomenon. Yet we couldn’t do without them.
With their resources and their zeal they are serving as eyes and ears, not just for the Israeli media, but for the Israeli public as a whole. Despite all the media’s efforts, much of what goes on across the Green Line remains unreported and without the researchers of these organizations and their local informants, we would know even less. Yes, of course they are politically biased, and not all of their reports stand up to scrutiny, but they play a vital role in our poor democracy’s system of checks and balances. They draw attention to what many of us would prefer not to know about – but have to.
Delegitimizing the human rights movement
A concerted campaign by the government and private organizations has been underway in recent weeks to delegitimize the human rights movement. The latest attack came from the neo-Zionist student movement Im Tirzu, which published last week a detailed study on the connection between Israeli human rights groups and the Goldstone report. Im Tirzu’s researchers say the report contains 450 quotes from Israeli sources, 200 of them from either official government sources or the local media. The rest are from independent organizations, and for over three quarters of them information was provided by 16 organizations funded by the New Israel Fund. The study classified the quotes from Israeli sources as “positive,” “neutral” and “negative.” Of the 207 “negative” quotes that criticized the IDF and the government, 191 came from the 16 NIF-funded organizations. Basically, all the information was supplied by these organizations.
The bottom line according to Im Tirzu chairman Ron Shoval is that the NIF, which describes its objective as “promoting equality for all Israelis,” is funding organizations “working hard, directly and in sophisticated ways against the IDF and its legitimacy and the legitimacy of the state of Israel.”
What is being said here? Im Tirzu is not claiming that any of the information supplied by these organizations was false. It is simply questioning the very legitimacy of free speech in Israel. As Im Tirzu sees it, the human rights organizations and the New Israel Fund, which is funding them, should be tarred and feathered for pointing out that not everything the IDF did in Gaza was so great. Instead of trying to delegitimize Israel, they are trying to point out how, in their view, Israel should be acting to improve its legitimacy. What could be more pro-Israel than that?
Im Tirzu, I think, objects to these groups’ airing Israel’s dirty laundry by responding to the Goldstone commission’s call for information. It forgets that in the correct democratic scheme of things, human rights organizations supply information about the authority’s wrongdoing, its alleged trampling of individuals and minorities, and the government responds with its explanations. But the government refused to cooperate with Goldstone, a decision that many ministers and senior officials have since lamented.
If, indeed, Richard Goldstone is a vain and vindictive person, as some as his acquaintances have said in recent months, then the government would have certainly have been wise to make overtures to him and receive him and his commission with all due respect and supply them with expert witnesses and the extensive materials of the IDF’s internal reports. I don’t think that the Goldstone report would have given the IDF a glowing testimonial if the government had acted differently, but I am certain it would not have been quite as damning and obviously biased against Israel.
Some of the organizations that are pilloried by Im Tirzu do not support Goldstone either. Yael Stein, B’Tselem’s research director told the New York Times two weeks ago: “I do not accept the Goldstone conclusion of a systematic attack on civilian infrastructure. It is not convincing.”
Even if they disagree with the conclusions, these groups were still serving their purpose of striving for an open and transparent accounting by supplying the commission with information.
Im Tirzu states its mission as to “renew and reinstate Zionist discourse.” Since when was Zionism about stifling free and open discourse? When did the Israeli right become so McCarthyite? The right’s spiritual leader, Menachem Begin, himself a longtime victim of McCarthyism from the left, was a staunch believer in freedom of speech. Not that long ago, in the mid-1990s and during the disengagement from Gaza, it was the right wing complaining that it was being delegitimized and stifled. I think that organizations such as the New Israel Fund should see this as their problem also. If, indeed, they are so committed to the promotion of civil society in Israel, perhaps they should try and find a few right-wing groups also working for transparency and an opening of the public discourse, and maybe a bit of funding in the right place could nurture appreciation for freedom of speech across the political board. Let everybody be nudniks.
Amid row over contentious ad, Jerusalem Post fires Naomi Chazan of New Israel Fund: Haaretz
The broadside campaign by the Im Tirtzu movement against the New Israel Fund caught its president, Professor Naomi Chazan, in New York, where she traveled to chair a meeting of the fund’s board of trustees, scheduled months in advance.
“I’ve seen everything,” she said in a phone interview this week of the posters released by the movement depicting her with a horn emerging from her forehead and labeling her Naomi Goldstone Chazan. “I don’t know why they chose me – I can think of plenty of human rights supporters they could pick on. But I’m ever so proud to be a symbol of Israeli democracy. No doubt about it.”
“They’re using me to attack in the most blatant way the basic principles of democracy and the values of the Declaration of Independence: Values of equality, tolerance, social justice and freedom of speech,” she added.
On Thursday, Chazan received an e-mail from Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief David Horovitz, informing her the newspaper would cease publishing her column.
Chazan had provided the daily with one of its few leftist voices in recent years. Horovitz declined to respond to questions from Haaretz on Thursday night.
Also yesterday, some of the organizations supported by NIF released their own ads in response, demanding an independent Israeli investigation of Operation Cast Lead. “We have to make an honest inquiry: What happened in Cast Lead, who is responsible and how can we avoid hurting innocent civilians in the future,” read one ad.
Im Tirtzu claimed in a feature published in the Hebrew daily Maariv last Friday that it found that 92 percent of negative references to the IDF in the Goldstone report originating with Israeli sources came from organizations sponsored by NIF. The fund’s grantees include Adalah, Breaking the Silence, B’Tselem, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, Yesh Din and the Israeli branch of Physicians for Human Rights.
Following the feature, Im Tirtzu launched an explicit campaign against the fund. Chazan herself says there is no direct correlation between the positions of the fund and those of the grantees. “We really don’t support every single thing these organizations say, but we support their right to say it. Some organization’s only sin was signing a call to set up an independent committee of inquiry,” she said. “This is an attack against organizations that actually differ in their opinions about Goldstone. The only thing that unites them is a demand for an independent investigation, and this is totally mainstream. Even Dan Meridor called for such an investigation.”
Chazan calls the Im Tirtzu research and the public scandal it provoked as “gagging.” Neither does she spare the methodology of the report itself. “As a politics professor, I know how to read reports. They concealed all the important data. They didn’t say, for instance, that many of the quotes come from IDF officers or even directly from Ehud Olmert. The whole thing seems, to put it mildly, methodologically poor and not worthy of comment. I imagine that the actual Goldstone researchers, in most cases, did not need to do anything more than go to any Israeli news site and all the information was there.”
Meanwhile, the storm provoked by the campaign has reached the Knesset. The Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee rushed to set up a subcommittee to look into how foreign foundations sponsor Israeli organizations. MK Otniel Schneller (Kadima) announced he was working to reach a wide consensus on setting up a parliamentary inquiry commission to probe the conduct of NIF and its grantees, while a number of other MKs issued statements supporting the fund and freedom of speech in Israel.
“The Knesset is trying to gag the debate and fan incitement,” said Chazan. “This isn’t freedom of speech, this is incitement. It’s an attempt to eradicate legitimate protest and opposition. And without opposition, there is no democracy.”
Im Tirtzu is trying to cast itself as a centrist movement, refusing to explicitly state an alliance to any party, Left or Right. However, a Haaretz probe found that the influencial forces behind the movement make no secret of their rightist political loyalties. Financially, Im Tirtzu is supported by a foundation that has contributed to radical right-wing organizations such as the Women in Green; Pastor John Hagee, the head of Christians United for Israel (CUFI) which contributed to Im Tirtzu, has been implicated in the past by a number of anti-Semitic statements.
Ideologically, the movement’s chairman Ronen Shoval used to be spokesman of the “Orange Cell,” a student chapter at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem that fought against the disengagement from the Gaza Strip and supported the settlement project. Shoval was even honored for his efforts with a citation from the evicted settlement block of Gush Katif.
The main channel for donations to Im Tirtzu is the Central Fund of Israel. In addition to Women in Green and Im Tirtzu, it supports Honenu, an organization sponsoring legal defense to radical right-wing activists in trouble with the law. Honenu boasts of financially supporting the families of the Bat Ayin underground, convicted for trying to bomb a girls’ school in East Jerusalem in 2002; of Ami Popper, who shot four Palestinian laborers during the first intifada; Yishai Schlissel, an ultra-Orthodox man who stabbed participants in a Gay Pride parade in Jerusalem in 2005; and Haggai Amir, brother of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin Yigal Amir. Im Tirtzu’s Web site asks donations to be sent through the American foundation.
Shoval maintained yesterday that the American foundation’s services were used for technical reasons only. “We’re a small organization, and a small organizations needs a tax break for the donations it gets,” he said yesterday. “CFI is an organization that sends money to scores, if not hundreds, of Israeli organizations, left and right. Donations to it are tax deductable, and this is the only reason why we work with them. I am not familiar with their activities and I haven’t studied their organization in depth.”
Meanwhile, the Hebrew news Web site Walla! revealed this week that one of the donors to Im Tirtzu is CUFI, Christians United for Israel, led by evangelist preacher John Hagee. CUFI’s Web site stated it had given Im Tirtzu $100,000.
Hagee achieved notoriety in 2008, when saying that Hitler carried out the will of God, to return the Jews to Israel in accordance with the biblical promise. Then-presidential candidate John McCain responded by renouncing Hagee’s support. Walla! said that in one of his books, Hagee also claimed that Hitler was half-Jewish, a descendant of Jacob’s brother Esau. He added that the Holocaust took place because the Jews rebelled and renounced the true God. Hagee claimed the Jews’ rebelliousness was the reason for anti-Semitism and the persecutions they suffered through the years.
Shoval, however, is not detered by his donor’s problematic image. “Hagee also donates to Nefesh B’Nefesh, to Rabbi Grossman, to a hospital in Ashkelon and a college in Netanya,” he said. He gives to scores of important organizations in Israeli society, and none of these are suspected as right-wing. Don’t suspect us, either – we’re not financially well-off enough to say no to money, even if the source doesn’t perfectly match my personal world view.”
At 29, Shoval is the living spirit behind the organization. He had been a spokesman for Orange Cell, winning a citation from Gush Katif, and is listed as number 83 in Habayit Hayehudi’s Knesset elections slate. Yesterday, however, he voiced reservations from his political past. “I reject the orange groups. I was young. My opinions changed. I changed,” he said.
He also denied running on the Habayit Hayehudi Knesset ticket. “They put my name there without my permission. It was done by a public relations company they hired. I didn’t even vote for them,” said Shoval. “Im Tirtzu is not a right-wing movement, I don’t see myself as a right-wing person, and it’s important for me this is said.”
Since its launch, the movement carried out tours of Hebron, and its members published articles on such issues as the Nakba mourning prohibition bill and military service. During Operation Cast Lead, hundreds of members participated in a demonstration in support of the IDF, while more recently the movement made news by demanding that Tel Aviv University fires Dr. Anat Matar, who they alleged was behind the circulation of a portrait of a soldier allegedly suspected of murdering Bil’in activist Bassem Abu Rahma. They also protested against Sapir College lecturer Nizar Hassan, who ejected a student in military uniform from his classroom.
Shoval himself published a large number of articles, all carrying explicitly rightist views. But in an interview to the Arutz Sheva Web site, he said that his movement was different from the anti-disengagement one because they had learned the lessons. “Our criteria of success are how many secular activists did we recruit, and have we penetrated mass media, where we can convince the unconvinced, not preach to the choir,” he told the interviewer.
In an op-ed published in Haaretz, Shoval, who had also been a key figure in the reservists’ protest in the wake of the Second Lebanon War, said the soldiers were mistaken to avoid political statements. “The personal discourse used by us reservists, who tried to avoid expressing political opinions, left the people of Israel caught in a dangerous conception that remains unchanged,” he wrote. Ideas like the realignment plan, the Geneva Initiative and the Saudi initiative maintain the same flawed reasoning. The root of the problem, which remains unchanged, is the prevalent conception of the political, state and defense establishment, which says you can defend Gush Dan without the protective wall of Judea and Samaria.”
In another article, written after the stroke suffered by then-prime minister Ariel Sharon, Shoval wrote: “You were the worse prime minister. I’m hopeful you will recover quickly and regain leadership of Kadima, so that the Right can defeat you in democratic elections and we can restore to Israel the public standards it deserves.”
But yesterday he sought to dissociate himself from any party alliances. “We have decided that the movement does not work on the Judea and Samaria issue. We think the demographic issue needs to be resolved, and this should be done with defensible borders. In this aspect, we are a classic centrist movement close to Labor, Kadima and Likud.”
“The debate is not about left or right,” said Shoval. “This was the old debate. The new debate is between Zionists and non-Zionists. Some Zionists are leftists, and some rightists are not Zionist, like those who seek to make Israel a theocracy.”
“If your story will end up presenting us like a right-wing movement, you blew it,” he added.