Israel’s new strategy: “sabotage” and “attack” the global justice movement: The Electronic Intifada
Ali Abunimah, 16 February 2010
An extraordinary series of articles, reports and presentations by Israel’s influential Reut Institute has identified the global movement for justice, equality and peace as an “existential threat” to Israel and called on the Israeli government to direct substantial resources to “attack” and possibly engage in criminal “sabotage” of this movement in what Reut believes are its various international “hubs” in London, Madrid, Toronto, the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond.
The Reut Institute’s analyses hold that Israel’s traditional strategic doctrine — which views threats to the state’s existence in primarily military terms, to be met with a military response — is badly out of date. Rather, what Israel faces today is a combined threat from a “Resistance Network” and a “Delegitimization Network.”
The Resistance Network is comprised of political and armed groups such as Hamas and Hizballah who “rel[y] on military means to sabotage every move directed at affecting separation between Israel and the Palestinians or securing a two-state solution” (“The Delegitimization Challenge: Creating a Political Firewall, Reut Institute, 14 February 2010).
Furthermore, the “Resistance Network” allegedly aims to cause Israel’s political “implosion” — a la South Africa, East Germany or the Soviet Union — rather than bring about military defeat through direct confrontation on the battlefield.
The “Delegitimization Network” — which Reut Institute president and former Israeli government advisor Gidi Grinstein provocatively claims is in an “unholy alliance” with the Resistance Network — is made up of the broad, decentralized and informal movement of peace and justice, human rights, and BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) activists all over the world. Its manifestations include protests against Israeli officials visiting universities, Israeli Apartheid Week, faith-based and trade union-based activism, and “lawfare” — the use of universal jurisdiction to bring legal accountability for alleged Israeli war criminals. The Reut Institute even cited my speech to the student conference on BDS held at Hampshire College last November as a guide to how the “delegitimization” strategy supposedly works (“Eroding Israel’s Legitimacy in the International Arena,” Reut Institute, 28 January 2010).
The combined “attack” from “resisters” and “delegitimizers,” Reut says, “possesses strategic significance, and may develop into a comprehensive existential threat within a few years.” It further warns that a “harbinger of such a threat would be the collapse of the two-state solution as an agreed framework for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the coalescence behind a ‘one-state solution’ as a new alternative framework.”
At a basic level, Reut’s analysis represents an advance over the most primitive and hitherto dominant layers of Israeli strategic thinking; it reflects an understanding, as I put it in my speech at Hampshire, that “Zionism simply cannot bomb, kidnap, assassinate, expel, demolish, settle and lie its way to legitimacy and acceptance.”
But underlying the Reut Institute’s analysis is a complete inability to disentangle cause and effect. It seems to assume that the dramatic erosion in Israel’s international standing since its wars on Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2009 is a result of the prowess of the “delegitimization network” to which it imputes wholly nefarious, devious and unwholesome goals — effectively the “destruction of Israel.”
It blames “delegitimizers” and “resisters” for frustrating the two-state solution but ignores Israel’s relentless and ongoing settlement-building drive — supported by virtually every state organ — calculated and intended to make Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank impossible.
It never considers for a moment that the mounting criticism of Israel’s actions might be justified, or that the growing ranks of people ready to commit their time and efforts to opposing Israel’s actions are motivated by genuine outrage and a desire to see justice, equality and an end to bloodshed. In other words, Israel is delegitimizing itself.
Reut does not recommend to the Israeli cabinet — which recently held a special session to hear a presentation of the think tank’s findings — that Israel should actually change its behavior toward Palestinians and Lebanese. It misses the point that apartheid South Africa also once faced a global “delegitimization network” but that this has now completely disappeared. South Africa, however, still exists. Once the cause motivating the movement disappeared — the rank injustice of formal apartheid — people packed up their signs and their BDS campaigns and went home.
Instead, Reut recommends to the Israeli government an aggressive and possibly criminal counter-offensive. A powerpoint presentation Grinstein made to the recent Herzliya Conference on Israeli national security actually calls on Israel’s “intelligence agencies to focus” on the named and unnamed “hubs” of the “delegitimization network” and to engage in “attacking catalysts” of this network. In its “The Delegitimization Challenge: Creating a Political Firewall” document, Reut recommends that “Israel should sabotage network catalysts.”
The use of the word “sabotage” is particularly striking and should draw the attention of governments, law enforcement agencies and university officials concerned about the safety and welfare of their students and citizens. The only definition of “sabotage” in United States law deems it to be an act of war on a par with treason, when carried out against the United States. In addition, in common usage, the American Heritage Dictionary defines sabotage as “Treacherous action to defeat or hinder a cause or an endeavor; deliberate subversion.” It is difficult to think of a legitimate use of this term in a political or advocacy context.
At the very least, Reut seems to be calling for Israel’s spy agencies to engage in covert activity to interfere with the exercise of legal free speech, association and advocacy rights in the United States, Canada and European Union countries, and possibly to cause harm to individuals and organizations. These warnings of Israel’s possible intent — especially in light of its long history of criminal activity on foreign soil — should not be taken lightly.
The Reut Institute, based in Tel Aviv, raises a significant amount of tax-exempt funds in the United States through a nonprofit arm called American Friends of the Reut Institute (AFRI). According to its public filings, AFRI sent almost $2 million to the Reut Institute in 2006 and 2007.
In addition to a state-sponsored international “sabotage” campaign, Reut also recommends a “soft” policy. This specifically involves better hasbara or state propaganda to greenwash Israel as a high-tech haven for environmental technologies and high culture — what it terms “Brand Israel.”
Other elements include “maintain[ing] thousands of personal relationships with political, cultural, media and security-related elites and influentials” around the world, and “harnessing Jewish and Israeli diaspora communities” even more tightly to its cause. It even emphasizes that Israel should use “international aid” to boost its image (its perfunctory foray into earthquake-devastated Haiti was an example of this tactic).
What ties together all these strategies is that they are aimed at frustrating, delaying and distracting attention from the fundamental issue: that Israel — despite its claims to be a liberal and democratic state — is an ultranationalist ethnocracy that relies on the violent suppression of the most fundamental rights of millions of Palestinians, soon to be a demographic majority, to maintain the status quo. There is no “game changer” in Reut’s new strategy.
Reut is apparently unaware even of the irony of trying to reform “Brand Israel” as something cuddly, while at the same time publicly recommending that Israel’s notorious spies “sabotage” peace groups on foreign soil.
But there are two lessons we must heed: Reut’s analysis vindicates the effectiveness of the BDS strategy, and as Israeli elites increasingly fear for the long-term prospects of the Zionist project they are likely to be more ruthless, unscrupulous and desperate than ever.
Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.
EDITOR: The preparation for the war on Iran
As Israel continues to gear up for this war, with the active support of the western nations, headed by the US and EU, with the same prapartions for tougher sanctions at the UN, which have paved the way to the attack on Iraq, the Haaretz editorial is seemingly trying to stop this war machine, more or less on its own… for the last four or five years, when they could shape the public opinion in Israel against this mad and criminal war-mongering, they were more or less absent. Now the the engines are being warmed up, they woke up. As the ‘liberal’ paper in Israel, the editors have again failed to stand outside the criminal consensus. So, now they are too late, and try hard to read the Obama nonesensical noises as a warning to Netanyahu. They are nothing of the kind. Obama is playing all the way with Netanyahu, who will do an important service for US war mongers, by attacking Iran ‘despite’ Obama’s ‘friendly warning’. It is the famous ‘a nod and a wink’ again…
Israel should heed Obama’s warning not to strike Iran: Haaretz Editorial
Israel should heed the friendly warning it received from the Obama administration, which opposes a preemptive Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, warned in Tel Aviv on Sunday of the unexpected consequences of an Israeli attack on Iran, just as he did during the days of the Bush administration. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in Qatar that Iran’s neighbors, who are worried about its nuclear plans, must rely on the American defense umbrella. And next week, Vice President Joseph Biden will visit Israel to pass on a similar message.
Both Israeli and Iranian leaders have escalated the threats they have been exchanging over the past few weeks. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at Auschwitz about a new Amalek. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told his Syrian counterpart Bashar Assad that if Israel goes to war, “we need to put an end to the Zionist regime once and for all.” And last week, on the anniversary of the Iranian revolution, Ahmadinejad announced that Iran will enrich uranium to 20 percent and declared that his country is capable of building an atomic bomb.
In these circumstances, the U.S. administration was right to send its senior officials to the Middle East in an attempt to calm both Israel and the Arab nations who are afraid of the Iranian nuclear threat.
U.S. President Barack Obama, after failing in his attempts at dialogue with Iran’s leaders, has toughened his stance and is now trying to recruit international support for harsher sanctions against Iran than were imposed in the past.
The likelihood that the American move will succeed is unclear, but Israel is required to give Obama a chance, for one simple reason: Israel will need full American support for any actions it may decide to take against the Iranian threat. If Israel goes to war, it will need intelligence help, prior warning, military equipment and diplomatic support from the United States.
No other country would or could aid Israel, and uncoordinated Israeli action would justifiably arouse U.S. anger, since it would endanger America’s vital interests in the region.
Thus, despite all the anger and fear that Ahmadinejad’s threats raise in Israel, for now, Israel should respond quietly and let Obama lead the effort to stop the Iranian nukes. Netanyahu has no better option.
EDITOR: Extrajudicial murder campaign by Israeli killing squads
The web is crawling with identifications of the murder suspects, after the Dubai video has been released yesterday, and the passport pictures were printed worldwide. Nothing new about this murderous policy – they have been killing Palestinians in this way since 1954, when Ariel Sharon has first commanded the Unit 101, the famous killing squad which propelled him upwards in the IDF ranks. If Zionism has achieved anything, it has achieved this – a great skill in killing people of all kinds.
Dubai police hunt 11 with EU passports for Hamas murder: IOA
DUBAI: Police are hunting 11 suspects with European passports, including a woman, for the murder in a Dubai hotel room of a top militant of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, the Gulf emirate’s police chief told AFP on Monday.
The hit team which killed Mahmud al-Mabhuh last month was made up of six British passport holders, three with Irish passports, including the woman, and the holders of a German and a French passport, Dhafi Khalfan said.
“We have no doubts that it was 11 people holding these passports, and we regret that they used the travel documents of friendly countries,” he told a press conference.
While not ruling out “the involvement of (Israel’s spy agency) Mossad or other parties in the assassination,” Khalfan said the names on the passports had been passed on to Interpol to request arrest warrants.
Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, has accused Israel of killing Mabhuh, 50, who was found dead in his luxury hotel room in Dubai on January 20, and vowed revenge.
Its members have acknowledged that Mabhuh, who was based in Damascus, was on a visit to Dubai to buy weapons for the militant group’s armed wing.
Mabhuh, who was born in northern Gaza, confessed to his involvement in the 1989 killings of two captured Israeli soldiers, in a video aired more than two weeks after his death.
Last month, Khalfan said “it seems (Mabhuh) opened the door” of his room, letting his killers in. “Mabhuh was suffocated,” he said, adding that “strangulation is possible.”According to Khalfan, Mabhuh entered the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a member, a day before his death using a passport that did not bear his family name.
Amid official silence in the Jewish state, Israeli newspapers have hailed the killing, with the rightwing Jerusalem Post calling it “another blow to the ‘axis of evil.’”
According to Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper, citing unidentified Middle East sources, Mabhuh on arrival in Dubai was followed by two men described by local police as “Europeans carrying European passports.”
The hit squad injected Mabhuh with a drug that induced a heart attack, photographed all the documents in his briefcase, and left a “do not disturb”sign on the door, it said.
It added that the Hamas leader was on a mission to buy arms from Iran, and was tracked from the moment he boarded Emirates flight EK 912 from Damascus on January 18.
Over the years, a number of Hamas leaders have died in what Israel calls “targeted killings.”In 2004, Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was killed in an Israeli helicopter gunship attack in Gaza. One month later, another Hamas leader in the enclave, Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, was killed when two missiles hit his car.
In 1997, Israeli agents tried to poison Hamas’s exiled political supremo Khaled Meshaal in Amman, while in 1995.
Israel is accused of waging covert war across the Middle East: Times online
Israel is waging a covert assassination campaign across the Middle East in an effort to stop its key enemies co-ordinating their activities.
Israeli agents have been targeting meetings between members of Hamas and the leadership of the militant Hezbollah group, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
They are also suspected of recent killings in Dubai, Damascus and Beirut. While Israel’s Mossad spy agency has been suspected of staging assassinations across the world since the 1970s, it does not officially acknowledge or admit its activities.
The current spate of killings began in December when a “tourist bus” carrying Iranian officials and Hamas members exploded outside Damascus. The official report by Syria claimed that a tyre had exploded but photographs surfaced showing the charred remains of the vehicle — prompting speculation that a much larger explosion had taken place.
Several weeks later a meeting between members of Hamas, which controls Gaza, and their counterparts from Hezbollah in its southern Beirut stronghold in Lebanon was also attacked, resulting in several deaths.
Hamas had sought to cover up the incidents because it was embarrassed, a senior Palestinian official in Ramallah told The Times.
“There has been growing co-operation between Gaza and Iran. Israel can read the writing on the wall and they know that with the help of Iran, the Hamas Government in Gaza will become stronger and will fight better.
“But Israel is overstepping their boundaries. Other countries don’t want to become a killing field for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
Most recently, the top Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was killed in Dubai on January 19, 2010. He is believed to have been poisoned by a woman who visited his room at the Al Bustan Rotana Hotel in Dubai.
Israeli officials said that Mabhouh had been a key figure in procuring Iranian-made longer-range rockets for Hamas that could be fired at targets in central Israel.
The exiled Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal has vowed revenge for Mabhouh’s death. He has also suggested that the current fighting between Hamas and Israel will become more regional. In an interview with the London-based al-Hayat newspaper, Mr Mashaal said that future wars with Israel would not be fought solely in the Gaza Strip.
Under the current Mossad chief, Meir Dagan, Israel is believed to have renewed efforts to kill high-level opponents. Only months after the former paratrooper assumed leadership of the intelligence service in October 2002, senior Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon began to be targeted. He was credited with ordering the killing of two relatively senior Hezbollah members who were killed in southern Beirut in July 2003 and August 2004.
More recently, Israel has been accused of planting a car bomb in Damascus that killed the top Hezbollah leader Imad Mughniyah in February 2008. The Israeli Cabinet minister Daniel Herschkowitz last week praised the Mossad chief as one of the agency’s most successful leaders.
When asked about Mossad’s involvement in the Dubai slaying, Eli Yishai, the Interior Minister, smiled and said: “All the security services make, thank God, great efforts to safeguard the security of the state of Israel.”
While some countries are questioning whether Israel isn’t taking credit to increase the reputation of its defence establishment, other moderate Arab States are now describing the assassinations as a “covert war” between Israel and Hamas.
Diplomats said they were aware that covert Israeli operations had increased. “We watch their comings and goings; we are aware that there is more activity both on our ground and other countries in the region,” said an Egyptian diplomat. “They are trying to embroil us all in their conflict.”
Tensions between Israel and Hamas have remained high, despite the relative quiet that has ensued since the end of Israel’s offensive in Gaza last winter. Israeli troops were placed on alert yesterday after intelligence suggested that Hamas planned to abduct soldiers. Israel said this week that it had foiled a kidnapping in December by arresting the Hamas operative Slaman Abu Atik on the Israeli-Gaza border. He planned to enter Israel via Egypt, said the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service.
Dubai suspects ‘had fake passports’: Al Jazeera online
Britain and Ireland have said that the passports used by nine people suspected of the killing of a senior Hamas figure in the United Arab Emirates are believed to be fake.
The nine passport holders are alleged members of an 11-person hit squad which Dubai police have said that they want to question over the murder of Mahmud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel room on January 20.
A spokesman for Britain’s foreign office said on Tuesday: “We are aware that the holders of six British passports have been named in this case.
“We believe the passports used were fraudulent and have begun our own investigation.”
Earlier, the Irish foreign affairs department said it had checked the details of the three purported Irish passport holders provided by the Dubai police and found them also to be false.
“We have run the passport numbers and names through our system and there are no passports in those names or with those numbers,” a department spokesman said.
“These purported passports are false. These are not genuine passports.”
Israel blamed
Dubai police officials released the passport details, photographs and surveillance footage of the 11 suspects on Monday.
The two remaining suspects were said to be the holders of a German and French passport.
‘To Israel I am stained with blood’ – Al-Mabhouh speaks to Al Jazeera 10 months before his murder
Alleged Israeli involvement could damage UK ties
Dubai prosecutors have issued an international arrest warrant against the 11 suspects, a statement released on Tuesday said.
Two Palestinians have been arrested over the killing, but the Hamas movement, which governs the Gaza Strip, has blamed Israeli agents for Mabhouh’s death.
Dhafi Khalfan, Dubai’s police chief, said on Monday that he had not ruled out “the involvement of Mossad [Israel’s intelligence agency] or other parties in the assassination”.
The group were believed to have rented a room across the corridor from al-Mabhouh around the time of the murder, spending just 24 hours in Dubai without using credit cards or local phone lines, the police chief said.
Khalfan showed a news conference airport surveillance video of the alleged assassination team arriving on separate flights before checking into separate hotels.
In the footage, which also included images from the hotel where al-Mabhouh was killed, the one woman among the group of suspects appears to be wearing a wig and at times wears a big hat and sunglasses.
Others were seen apparently posing as tourists, wearing tennis clothes and carrying rackets.
Authorities appear to have linked the group through the videos which show them entering and exiting the hotel, standing together in the hotel lobby and going in and out of the elevator on the floor where al-Mabhouh was staying.
In video click here to view report
Al Jazeera’s Ayman Mohyeldin reports on the Dubai police’s hunt for the Hamas figure’s killer
“He was strangled after receiving maybe an electric shock,” Khalfan said on Monday.
Al-Mabhouh entered the United Arab Emirates a day before his death using a passport that did not bear his family name, Khalfan said.
“Obviously, the gang knew that he was coming to Dubai, because they knew in advance and were able to come from Europe,” he told the news conference.
Israeli authorities have not commented on the killing, but Israeli media have welcomed al-Mabhouh’s death.
The Jerusalem Post newspaper said that the murder was “another blow to the axis of evil”.
Al-Mabhouh was born in the Gaza Strip, but had been living in Syria since 1989.
He is said to have engineered the capture of two Israeli soldiers during a Palestinian uprising in the 1980s and was imprisoned several times by Israeli forces.
Hamas has said he was an “important” member of Izz al-Din al-Qassam brigades, Hamas’s military wing named after a Syrian religious leader who fought British colonial forces in Palestine in the 1930s.
EDITOR: The Israeli left and its disappearing act
Below is another of those articles, under the broad theme of ‘whatever happened to the Israeli left?’. Well, whatever happened to it happened a long time ago, decades ago. Israel did not have a proper left wing movement for many decades, and there again, it may never have had it, as the only left of any description was a Zionist left, hence by definition racist and exclusivist. While trying to persuade us that the ‘left’ is silent, he also tries to persuade himself that Israel is a great liberal country to live in… he should decide, really. This is of the same colour as the interview with Naomi Chazan, yesterday: I love the country, so how can it treat me so badly? One can term those articles as “Mirror, Mirror on the wall” articles…
The silence of Israel’s liberals: The Guardian CiF
The gulf between the country’s cultural and political life will continue to widen unless the left wakes from its paralysis
Carlo Strenger
It is not a pleasant experience to look at Israel’s image in the world nowadays, to put it mildly. To the extent the country makes the headlines, it is in the context of the Goldstone report on Operation Cast Lead, the latest outlandish statement of foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman or Israel’s continuing occupation of large parts of the West Bank. Israel’s negative image is reflected in events such as ambassador Michael Oren being heckled on University of California Irvine campus and deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon apparently being threatened during an appearance at Oxford University.
Ultimately Israel’s standing in the world hinges on one central factor: the continuing occupation of large parts of the West Bank and maintaining dozens of mini-settlements there. To protect these, Israel maintains hundreds of roadblocks that make Palestinian lives miserable. Binyamin Netanyahu’s government has been playing hide-and-seek with the international community about the cessation of construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. His only tangible achievement is to have survived his first year in office without a major crisis with the US while keeping his rightwing coalition intact.
Looking at this small-time bickering and manoeuvring, most liberal Israelis experience a combination of dismay and often outright disgust. But, as Aluf Benn has pointed out recently, most Israelis feel politically quite apathetic – and Israel’s liberals are hardly heard anymore. While I think the observation is correct, I disagree with his diagnosis: I think that the reason for the political apathy of Israel’s citizenry is not lack of concern, but fear and hopelessness. In private conversation many Israelis are afraid that Israel will not survive in the long term; that at best it will remain in a state of low-intensity warfare, and at worst involved in bloody confrontations with its neighbours.
The contrast between Israel’s human, cultural, social, and economic reality and the paralysis maintained by its political class is stunning. First-time visitors from abroad are often surprised: based on what they see in the news they expect a backward, theocratic police state, and instead they find a vibrant, liberal country. They meet outgoing, curious, ambitious people who are open to the world. They see an economy based on entrepreneurship and a cultural scene that is dominated by liberal voices. No wonder they have difficulty connecting what they see to politicians like Lieberman or Eli Yishai whose attitude towards the world is run by deep suspicion, lack of civility and totally devoid of geopolitical sophistication, never mind moral sensitivity.
Why then this contrast between Israel’s human and cultural reality and its political class? Israel’s liberal citizenry has all but disappeared from the political scene: Until the late 1990s, the square in Tel Aviv renamed after Yitzhak Rabin after his assassination was the scene of demonstrations that hundreds of thousands attended: against Sharon after the massacre of Sabra and Shatila; for peace – including the rally at which Rabin was murdered. In the last years Rabin Square has not seen any major demonstrations of Israel’s liberals.
What has changed, then? For outside observers it may be difficult to understand to what extent Israel’s liberals were disempowered by the failure of the Camp David summit in 2000 and the ensuing second intifada. It is difficult to understand how traumatic the continuing shelling of southern Israel after the disengagement from the Gaza Strip has been. For many Israelis this meant that the promise of Israel’s left, Peace Now, had been shattered. The prediction that if Israel would offer the two-state solution along the 1967 borders, Palestinians would accept it, turned out to be wrong. Israel’s electorate never forgave the left for the failure of this prediction, and all but wiped it out in the last elections.
Hence the paradox of Israel’s current state of mind: two-thirds of the electorate consistently supports the two-state solution, but the vote goes ever more to the right. Israelis want the two-state solution, but are deeply afraid of implementing it. As a result they vote for politicians who address their fears rather than for those who offer hope – because they feel there is no hope they can believe in. These politicians, in turn, do everything to further isolate Israel with often boorish behaviour, thus reinforcing Israelis’ fears that they can depend only on military force for survival. The result is a form of moral numbness, in which criticism is shrugged off as another one of the relentless attacks on Israel.
Is there a potential comeback for Israel’s liberal wing? I wish I had a hopeful conclusion, but recent developments are making me ever more pessimistic. Tsipi Livni, who looked like a ray of hope, is having trouble keeping her Kadima party together. Labour leader and defence minister Ehud Barak has taken the last bit of credibility from the Labour party; and the left-leaning Meretz party has become a defunct fig-leaf without any relevance.
And while I tend to think that Netanyahu has made a strategic choice for the two-state solution, there is no way he can implement it with his current coalition. The only short-term scenario that could initiate some change would be for Netanyahu to sever his ties with Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party and to form a government together with Kadima based on an unequivocal acceptance of the two-state solution and immediate dismantling of isolated settlements.
For the time being the vibrant, creative and liberal Israel that I know continues to express itself in literature, film and music; it continues to work through countless NGOs devoted to causes ranging from supporting Palestinian mental health institutions to ecological initiatives; its creative energies are felt daily in academia and the thriving world of Israeli startups. I hope that it will awaken from its political paralysis before it is too late.
Palestinians fight Jewish-only housing in Jaffa: The Electronic Intifada
Jonathan Cook, 16 February 2010
Over the past few days graffiti scrawled on walls around the mixed Jewish and Arab town of Jaffa in central Israel exclaims: “Settlers, keep out” and “Jaffa is not Hebron.”
Although Jaffa is only a stone’s throw from the bustling coastal metropolis of Tel Aviv, Arab residents say their neighborhood has become the unlikely battleground for an attempted takeover by extremist Jews more familiar from West Bank settlements.
Small numbers of nationalist religious Jews, distinctive for wearing knitted skullcaps, have begun moving into Jaffa’s deprived main Arab district, Ajami, over recent months.
Tensions have been simmering since a special seminary was established last year in the heart of Ajami for young Jewish men who combine study of the Bible with serving in the Israeli army. Many such seminaries, known as “hesder yeshivas,” are located in the occupied territories and have earned a reputation for turning out extremists.
Last week Ajami’s residents were dealt a further blow when an Israeli court approved the sale of one of the district’s few remaining building plots to B’Emuna (Hebrew for “with faith”), a construction company that specializes in building subsidized homes for religious families, many of them in West Bank settlements.
The Association of Civil Rights in Israel, the country’s largest human rights law center, which petitioned the courts on the Arab residents’ behalf, called the company’s policy “racist.”
B’Emuna, which is expected to complete 20 apartments in the next few months, is applying for approval for a further 180, as well as a second seminary and a synagogue.
“We have no problem living peacefully with Jewish neighbors,” said Omar Siksik, an Arab councillor representing Jaffa in Tel Aviv’s municipality. “But these Jews are coming here as settlers.
“Like in Hebron, their policy is to weaken us as a population and eventually push us out of our homes,” he said, referring to a West Bank city where an enclave of a few dozen settlers has severely disrupted life for tens of thousands of Palestinians.
Jaffa’s fortunes have changed dramatically since early last century when it was the commercial hub of Palestine, famously exporting its orange crop around the world. During Israel’s founding in 1948, most of the town’s Palestinians were expelled or forced to flee, with the few remaining inhabitants confined to Ajami.
Today, Jaffa’s 18,000 Arab inhabitants are outnumbered two to one by Jews, after waves of immigrants were settled in empty homes during the 1950s.
Arab residents have long complained of being neglected by a municipality controlled from Tel Aviv. Ajami’s crumbling homes, ramshackle infrastructure and crime-ridden streets were on show in this year’s much-feted eponymous movie, nominated for an Oscar as best foreign-language film.
But the latest arrivals in Ajami are causing considerable anxiety, even from officials in Tel Aviv. Gilad Peleg, head of the Jaffa Development Authority, said he was “deeply concerned” at the trend of extremist organizations arriving “to shake up the local community.”
Nasmi Jabali, 56, lives in a modest single-story home close to the olive grove where the new apartments will be built. “We’ve seen on TV how these settlers behave in the occupied territories, and don’t want them living next to us,” she said. “They’ll come here with the same attitudes.”
But despite widespread opposition, the Tel Aviv District Court last week rejected a petition from 27 residents who argued that the Israel Lands Authority had discriminated against them by awarding the land to B’Emuna, even though its policy is to build apartments only for Jews.
Yehuda Zefet, the judge, accused the residents of “bad faith” in arguing for equality when they wanted the interests of the local Arab community to take precedence over the interests of Jews.
Siksik said the judge had failed to take into account the historical injustice perpetrated on Ajami’s population. “For six decades the authorities have not built one new house for the Arab population, and in fact they have demolished many Arab homes, while building social housing for Jews.”
Fadi Shabita, a member of the local Popular Committee for the Defense of Jaffa’s Lands, said the plots in Ajami being sold by the government originally belonged to Palestinian families, some of whom were still in the district but had been forced to rent their properties from the state.
“The land was forcibly nationalized many years ago and the local owners were dispossessed,” he said. “Now the same land is being privatized, but Ajami’s residents are being ignored in the development plans.
“For the settlers, the lesson of the disengagement [from Gaza in 2005] was that they need to begin a dialogue with Jews inside Israel to persuade them that a settlement in the West Bank is no less legitimate than one in Jaffa.”
B’Emuna told Israel National News, a settler website, that it was developing Jewish-only homes in several of the half dozen “mixed cities” in Israel to stem the flow of Jewish residents leaving because of poverty and falling property values caused by the presence of an Arab population.
B’Emuna has said it is looking to buy more land in Jaffa.
A short distance from the olive grove that is about to be developed is the Jewish seminary established last year. An Israeli flag is draped from the front of the building and stars of David adorn the gate at its entrance.
The manager, Ariel Elimelech, who was overseeing two dozen young men on Sunday as they pored over the Torah, said he commuted daily to Ajami from his home in Eli, an illegal settlement deep in the West Bank south of the Palestinian city of Nablus.
Elimelech said he favored coexistence in Jaffa but added that the seminary’s goal was to strengthen Jewish identity in the area. “We don’t call this place Ajami; it’s known as Givat Aliyah,” he said, using a Hebrew name that refers to the immigration of Jews to Israel.
He said the students performed a vital service by visiting schools to help in the education of Jewish children before performing 18 months of military service.
Kemal Agbaria, who chairs the Ajami neighborhood council, said residents would launch an appeal to the high court and were planning large-scale demonstrations to draw attention to their plight.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
EDITOR: British Justice – you couldn’t make it up!
In an incredible judgment, some of the protesters against the Gaza carnage were jailed for 2.5 years! While those who murdered 1400 people, as well as those who ordered the carnage, are still scot free, those who protested will go to jail. Doesn’t it make you feel proud to be British, proud to be human?
2.5 years in jail for London Gaza protesters: Socialist Worker online
by Siân Ruddick
Seven people who took part in the protests against the Israeli invasion of Gaza in 2009 were jailed last week.
Some were as long as two and a half years.
The judge said that the aim of his sentencing was to create a “deterrent effect”.
The length of the sentences went against the recommendations of the pre-sentence reports by the probation service.
The charges related to the demonstration on 10 January last year when police clashed with protesters outside the Israeli embassy in Kensington, London.
The accused all pled guilty to violent disorder – they were accused of throwing placard sticks and pushing or kicking police.
Only one of the defendants has a previous conviction, and most are in full time education.
Mohammed El-Araj, aged 20, was sentenced to two years, despite a pre-sentence report which suggested that he recieve a community order.
He was on his first ever demonstration.
The judge, undeterred by this, said, “Such offences often involve young men such as you who are of otherwise of exemplary character.
“But the sentences given must act as a deterrent for those who may commit such offences in the future.”
He went on to say, “Peaceful protest is the hallmark of a truly democratic society. They may sometimes even be boisterous. But what happened on 10 January goes way beyond this and warranted a measured response from the police.”
Both the police and the Independent Police Complaints Commission have dismissed complaints lodged about violence committed by police on the protests.
However several individuals are bringing civil action cases against the police.
Deaths
Two of the accused were of Palestinian origin.
Mohammed Khawaja, 24, was dealing with the tragic loss of his two cousins, shot dead by Israeli soldiers on 29 December in Gaza.
One was shot in the head, the other in the back.
The youngest defendant on the day was Mohammed El-Hourari, aged 17.
He received a one-year jail sentence. He was 16 at the time of the demonstration.
It was clear that police relied heavily on CCTV and surveillance evidence to build their cases.
In the hearing of Mustafa Hassan, 19, police video showed a man they claimed to be the defendant being zoomed in on and filmed for around three minutes.
Two of the defendants were arrested at their homes in dawn raids.
Police arrested Ibrahim Obeseyeh at around 4.30am.
His door was knocked down and his sister and brother in law were handcuffed as police searched his house.
Relatives of other defendants said police broke down two “wrong doors” along the street before finding the home of the accused.
The arrests and charges have sent shockwaves through the families and communities of those involved.
The sentences are a disgrace. Demonstrators were protesting against brutal war crimes being committed by Israel on the people of Gaza.
It is vital that a strong and united movement – supporting the Muslim community and the right to protest – stands up to police brutality and any attempt to drive us off the streets.
Case is thrown out of court
A judge threw the case against protester Khalid Afeneh out of court last week.
Police accused Khalid of violent disorder.
They alleged that he threw a sand bag at police, causing an officer’s eardrum to perforate.
But information acquired through Freedom of Information Act requests shows that the injury was not cited on any logs of police injuries from the demonstration.
Khalid maintained his innocence and, unlike some other defendants, entered a not guilty plea at all of his hearings.
He was called to court on Tuesday of last week after his lawyer made repeated requests for evidence against his client.
The police still refused to produce any evidence when requested by Khalid’s solicitors. Determined not to give in, Khalid said that he was prepared to go to trial.
The judge then decided that there was no case to answer and threw it out.
Khalid’s case shows the importance of standing up to police allegations and not being bullied into pleading guilty.
Further sentencing will take place on Friday 19 and Friday 26 February from 10am at Isleworth Crown Court, west London, TW7 5LP (the nearest station is Isleworth).
Students from Kings College London Action Palestine and Stop the War societies are planning to attend the hearings to show solidarity and call for real justice.
They are inviting anyone who can to join them.
EDITOR: the Iran War in preparation
As Israel, the US and its allies in war crimes are preparing for the attack, some are still hoping to stop or delay this coming madness. In the UK, the left, liberals, and the many millions who marched against the war in Iraq are in deep hibernation, or in denial, if you prefer that term. The issue hardly leaves the news pages, but it is difficult to read or hear a critical view against this coming horror. Hand Blix, once before used to make the Iraq war kosher, ius speaking against this, not for the first time:
Former IAEA Head Hans Blix: ICH
‘Iran Won’t Simply Sit There and Accept an Attack’
By Bernhard Zand
February 16, 2010 “Spiegel” — Hans Blix is the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and also worked as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq. He talks to SPIEGEL about whether Iran really has the ability to enrich uranium and if economic sanctions can ever be effective.
SPIEGEL: Tehran has announced that it has enriched a “first batch” of uranium from 3.5 to 20 percent. Does this mean that we now face a new stage in the escalation of the conflict with Iran?
Hans Blix: The government in Tehran originally declared that it only intended to enrich uranium to 3.5 percent, to produce fuel for nuclear reactors. But now it needs uranium enriched to about 20 percent for its research reactor, in order to produce isotopes for medical use. Tehran had the same problem once before, in the early 1980s. The United States had built a research reactor for Tehran, Iran had ordered nuclear fuel and had even paid for it, but then came the mullahs’ revolution, and America refused to deliver the fuel. The West has faced a dilemma since then: If we don’t supply them with the fuel, Iran has a reason to produce it itself. That’s what led to the compromise proposal of enriching Iranian fuel abroad.
SPIEGEL: The West has been engaged in negotiations for years. How else can it accommodate Iran?
Blix: Probably the best subject of negotiations is the location for exchanging low-enriched and highly enriched uranium, and there is an evident choice for that: Turkey. Both sides trust Turkey.
SPIEGEL: How long will it take the Iranians to accumulate enough fuel for the research reactor?
Blix: That’s completely unclear, and there are many people who even question whether they have the technical capability to enrich the material to 20 percent.
SPIEGEL: So was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad just boasting in recent speeches when he talked about Iran’s ability to enrich uranium?
Blix: Much of that is bravado and a reaction to perceived humiliation. Anyone can see that he’s just trying to show off when he claims that the regime can build 10 enrichment plants. No one in the world has 10 of these plants. The United States and France have one or two, and Argentina and the Netherlands have one each. It’s absurd to talk about 10 plants.
SPIEGEL: But if Iran is successful with its enrichment efforts, will that make it a “virtual nuclear power,” whereby all it needs to do is press a button and it will quickly have a deployable weapon?
Blix: I don’t join those who speak of a “virtual nuclear power,” and I told that to my successor Mohamed ElBaradei, who coined the term. Japan, for example, could activate masses of plutonium in an instant, as could, to a lesser extent, Brazil. But even those who have embarked along this road can also go back at any time. Germany, for example, never completed its nuclear reprocessing plant in Wackersdorf. (Editor’s note: The planned nuclear reprocessing plant in Wackersdorf, Bavaria, was the focus of violent protests in the 1980s. The project was abandoned in 1989.)
SPIEGEL: But what if Iran doesn’t want to step back? What if, in fact, Iran wants the bomb instead?
Blix: I don’t rule out the possibility that Iran wants nuclear weapons, but I find the probability higher that the political leadership is divided over the issue. Merely the ability to enrich uranium already serves as a deterrent, and for some in the regime it might even be sufficient. If there is a desire to have the bomb, it certainly goes back to the 1980s and the threat coming from the Iraqi nuclear program at the time. But Iraq collapsed in 1991 and again in 2003, and if there is anything that makes me optimistic today, it is the notion that Iran, following the disarmament of Iraq, no longer has a security-related reason to acquire nuclear weapons.
SPIEGEL: Doesn’t Iran feel surrounded by enemies?
Blix: I don’t think the Iranians perceive Israel as a threat. The conflict between the two countries over enrichment is relatively new. Afghanistan? No. Pakistan? No. And not Turkey or Russia, either.
SPIEGEL: And the United States?
Blix: Yes. Aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf are a different story. But this is precisely where we see the best options for a solution. In the case of North Korea, the United States offered a non-aggression agreement and the establishment of diplomatic relations. In the case of Iran, both options have not been discussed publicly to date. In other words, no one can claim that all the diplomatic options have already been exhausted.
SPIEGEL: What other possibilities does the West have to stop the Iranian nuclear program? What do you know about covert US operations in Iran?
Blix: I don’t have any evidence to support that, but it wouldn’t surprise me. The US Congress has approved millions for these purposes — not a very wise decision, by the way, because it just plays into the hands of the hardliners and harms the opposition.
SPIEGEL: Now new sanctions against Tehran are being discussed. Do you think they make sense?
Blix: Sanctions have certainly been successful before — just think of Libya. But it took a long time, and they are a blunt weapon. They were devastating in Iraq, where they harmed the people but hardly even affected Saddam. Whether sanctions can be effective against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard remains to be seen. In the case of North Korea, freezing certain bank accounts in Macau was obviously effective. Economic sanctions could certainly be appropriate, but I’m against military sanctions, because the only thing there is to bomb at the moment is intentions.
SPIEGEL: The Israelis have more or less openly threatened to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Blix: Hardliners who analyze the drawbacks of a diplomatic solution today should, with the same scrutiny, analyze the drawbacks of a military solution. It’s easy to let the bombs fall, and a military strike could set the nuclear program back by a few years — something that would be very welcome. But what would the long-term consequences be? Iran won’t simply sit there quietly and accept an attack.
SPIEGEL: Can air strikes even successfully destroy Iran’s nuclear program? Most of the facilities are buried deep underground.
Blix: Anyone who’s worried that al-Qaida might be making dirty nuclear bombs in the caves of the Hindu Kush ought to be much more concerned about the fact that such air strikes can’t do much harm. Iran is a big, sophisticated country, and you can’t destroy or occupy everything.
SPIEGEL: So you think a military strike would be pointless?
Blix: I believe, at any rate, that it’s impossible to eliminate Iran as a potential enemy. Despite Ahmadinejad’s inflammatory speeches, Iran hasn’t been an aggressive, expansionist country in a long time. Besides, the glow that the mullahs’ 1979 revolution kindled throughout the region has disappeared. After the discredited election, and after the corruption they have permitted, the mullahs can no longer spark enthusiasm in anyone — neither the Iranians themselves nor anyone else in the region.
Interview conducted by Bernhard Zand. Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan.
EDITOR: Giving the lie to O’Bomber lying words
How insensitive of Israeli settlers to flounce dear old President O’Bomber in Washington, and prove again that neither the Israeli nor the US givernments mean a word they say? Could they not at least build quietly? What a shame…
Israeli settlers disobey the order to stop building: BBC
At least 29 Israeli settlements in the West Bank are violating a government-ordered pause in building activity, the Israeli Defence Ministry has said.
The information was released in response to a question asked in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset.
A pressure group says there are at least four more settlements disregarding the government order.
The group, Peace Now, says Jewish settlers are working during the night and on the sabbath to avoid notice.
Peace Now says building work is continuing in at least 33 settlements in violation of an order to stop made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in November.
Stalled talks
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz said they have learned the government was looking at ways to enforce the no-building rule.
In November, the government of Benjamin Netanyahu ordered a 10-month cessation of building new settlements.
According to Peace Now, building on existing settlements has continued.
The information was released by the defence ministry following a question asked by Haim Oron of the left-wing Meretz party.
US attempts to revive peace talks have stalled over the Jewish settlement issue.
Palestinians say they will not return to peace talks unless Israel stops settlement building in the West Bank.
Israel has a long-standing commitment under an existing peace plan to stop settlement growth.
But the Israeli government has temporarily curbed construction as a goodwill gesture, though not in East Jerusalem.
All settlements in the the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are considered illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.
Israeli settlements still expanding: Al Jazeera online
Israel is continuing to build illegal settlements on Palestinian land, despite a 10-month suspension of new construction announced by the government.
Peace Now, an Israeli non-governmental organisation, says work is taking place at more than 30 settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Nour Odeh reports from Beit Sahour.