EDITOR: The Show Must Go On!
And it indeed does. We has already seen Akiva Eldar’s report about the settlements enlargements was indeed agreed beforehand by the US! O’Bummer and Clinton are now making noise, but no action will be forthcoming, you may depend on it, as the Israel Lobby looms large over the coming mid-term elections in November 2010. The US, who are boss and paymaster of the Israeli imperial enterprise, are the only force which may change Israel’s behaviour, but never do the least to change it. For the next week, we can expect a lot of sanctimonious words, and no action, until the whole issue sinks below the waterline, as did the Gaza Carnage, the Dubai murder, and so many others. They only need to ride the news ebb and flow.
Clinton Rebukes Israel for Housing Announcement: NY Times
By MARK LANDLER
WASHINGTON — In a tense, 43-minute phone call on Friday morning, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel’s plan for new housing units for Jews in East Jerusalem sent a “deeply negative signal” about Israeli-American relations, and not just because it spoiled a visit by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Mr. Biden, in Israel this week to declare American support for its security, had already condemned the move as undermining the peace process. But Mrs. Clinton went a good deal further in her conversation with Mr. Netanyahu, saying it had harmed “the bilateral relationship,” according to the State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley.
Such blunt language toward Israel is very rare from an American administration, and several officials said Mrs. Clinton was relaying the anger of President Obama at the announcement, which was made by Israel’s Interior Ministry and which Mr. Netanyahu said caught him off guard.
The Israeli leader repeated his surprise about the plan to Mrs. Clinton, a senior official said, and apologized again for the timing. But that did not appear to mollify Mrs. Clinton, who said she “could not understand how this happened, particularly in light of the United States’ strong commitment to Israel’s security,” Mr. Crowley said.
Hours after the phone call, Israel was again condemned for the plan in a statement issued by the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations, which work together in a group known as the Middle East quartet to mediate Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
The Israeli ambassador to Washington, Michael B. Oren, was summoned to the State Department on Friday by the deputy secretary of state, James B. Steinberg, a senior American official said. The Israeli Embassy declined to comment on Friday evening.
The coordinated moves were a remarkable show of displeasure by the Obama administration, which has been rebuffed in its yearlong effort to persuade Israel to freeze construction of settlements as a first step toward reviving the long-stalled peace talks. Mr. Obama has been personally involved, discussing the matter with Mrs. Clinton in their regularly scheduled Oval Office meeting on Thursday.
But the moves place the administration in a delicate position, two weeks before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group, holds its annual meeting in Washington. Both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Netanyahu are scheduled to speak at the gathering.
On Friday, Mrs. Clinton told the prime minister that the United States expected Israeli officials to take “specific actions” to show “they are committed to this relationship and to the peace process,” Mr. Crowley said.
He declined to say what those actions were, though other administration officials said the United States hoped Israel would do something drastic enough to send a signal to the already reluctant Palestinian Authority that it was committed to the peace process.
Mr. Biden also spoke to Mr. Netanyahu Friday, reiterating the message.
Mr. Netanyahu has not said he will try to rescind the plan for the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo, nor has he expressed regret for building in East Jerusalem.
Last November, the Israeli government imposed a 10-month partial freeze on the construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. But it exempted Jerusalem because Israel has annexed East Jerusalem and regards it as part of its united capital, a position the rest of the world rejects.
In the absence of direct talks, the United States has begun what it calls “proximity talks,” in which the administration’s special envoy for the Middle East, George J. Mitchell, carries messages between the Israelis and the Palestinians. He had expected to return to the region on Sunday, but will probably delay that by a day.
Next Friday, Mrs. Clinton is to meet in Moscow with leaders of the quartet.
She waited to call Mr. Netanyahu until after Mr. Biden had left Israel. Analysts said the administration held its fire until Mr. Biden left so it would not undermine the trip’s purpose, which was to reach out to the Israeli population.
In a speech at Tel Aviv University on Thursday, Mr. Biden spoke of the Obama administration’s “ironclad commitment to Israeli security.” But in language added after the settlement announcement was made, he said that “the status quo is not sustainable,” adding, “Sometimes, only a friend can deliver the hardest truths.”
Clinton rebukes Israel over East Jerusalem homes: BBC
Tensions are high in East Jerusalem after the Israeli announcement
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has sharply rebuked Israel over its recent decision to build new settlements in East Jerusalem.
She told Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu by telephone that the move was “deeply negative” for US-Israeli relations.
The BBC’s Washington correspondent, Kim Ghattas, says it was a rare and sharp rebuke from Washington.
Israel’s announcement overshadowed a visit by US Vice-President Joe Biden aimed at restarting peace talks.
Since then the Palestinians have indicated they will not return to the negotiating table unless the Israeli decision is revoked.
Apology
America’s top diplomat delivered her rebuke during a 43-minute telephone conversation with Mr Netanyahu, the US state department said.
US state department spokesman PJ Crowley said Mrs Clinton called “to make clear that the United States considered the announcement to be a deeply negative signal about Israel’s approach to the bilateral relationship and contrary to the spirit of the vice-president’s trip”.
Hillary Clinton called on Israel to show commitment to the peace process
“The secretary said she could not understand how this happened, particularly in light of the United States’s strong commitment to Israel’s security,” he added.
“She made clear that the Israeli government needed to demonstrate not just through words but through specific actions that they are committed to this relationship and to the peace process.”
The Quartet of Middle East peace mediators – the US, Russia, the EU and the UN – also condemned the Israeli housing announcement and said it would review the situation at its ministerial meeting scheduled for 19 March in Moscow.
Mr Netanyahu earlier apologised for the timing of the settlement announcement, which was made as Mr Biden was holding a day of talks in Jerusalem.
He said he had summoned Interior Minister Eli Yishai to reprimand him.
Israeli and Palestinian leaders had agreed to hold indirect, “proximity talks” in a bid to restart the peace process, which has been stalled for more than a year.
But after the announcement, the Palestinian Authority said talks would be “very difficult” if the plans for the homes were not rescinded.
Close to 500,000 Jews live in more than 100 settlements built since Israel’s 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. They are illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.
The latest announcement by the Jerusalem municipality approves 1,600 new housing units in the East Jerusalem settlement of Ramat Shlomo.
EU: Israel must renew peace talks if it wants closer ties: Haaretz
The European Union could use closer trade ties as leverage to urge Israel to resume peace talks with the Palestinians, the EU’s top diplomat said on Saturday ahead of a trip to the region.
EU high representative for foreign affairs, Catherine Ashton, who begins her first visit to the Middle East on Sunday, said the European Union would be active in getting peace talks to resume and had influence in the issue.
“We’re a huge supplier of aid and development in that region. We are strong with Israel in terms of trade and Israel wants to enhance its relationship with us, it wants to upgrade relations,” she said when asked what leverage the EU could have in talks given that the United States has struggled to be heard.
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“Our ambition is that they know – because they do – that the solution lies in a negotiated settlement. Our view is that it needs to happen quickly and now, with the opportunity that that affords Israel … to be able to enhance the relationships it wants with us in any event for the future.”
Ashton, who flies to Egypt on Sunday and is due in Israel on Wednesday after stopovers in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, said it was not about withholding Israel’s access to EU markets, but about showing what more could be granted if progress was made.
“What we have at the moment is a traditional relationship with Israel, they would like more,” she said.
The trip to the Middle East is Ashton’s most high-profile diplomatic mission since becoming the EU’s high representative last December, succeeding Javier Solana, who focused much of his time in office on Iran and Middle East negotiations.
Ashton’s visit comes at a sensitive time, with the United States expressing frustration with Israel on Friday over plans to build 1,600 settler homes in East Jerusalem, an announcement made while U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden was visiting.
Israel has since apologized for the timing of the announcement, but U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in strongly worded comments on Friday, said it was not the timing of the announcement that was the problem, but the substance.
“The announcement of the settlements on the very day that the vice president was there was insulting,” she told CNN.
Ashton, who is holding informal talks with some EU foreign ministers and Turkey’s foreign minister in Finland, told reporters she was concerned about Israel’s settlement announcement but that the focus should be on getting the Israelis and the Palestinians back on track with talks.
“My view remains that we have to get the talks moving and the solution lies in getting an agreement, and proximity talks are the beginning of that,” she said, referring to U.S.-led efforts to get both sides talking indirectly via mediators.
Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, who is also taking part in the meeting in Finnish Lapland, said he suspected Israel had purposefully made the announcement on new settlements, and said he had doubts about Israel’s commitment to peace.
“I would hope the Israelis are still interested in peace although there have been distinctly mixed signals recently,” he told reporters.
“I suspect the decision [to announce new settlements] was purposeful. Not by the prime minister but by someone who wanted to send that particular signal when the U.S. vice president was coming. It’s certainly coloured the entire relationship in a way that is detrimental to the peace process.”
Israel and America: Foolish tricks: The Guardian Editorial
By its continued settlement expansion, Israel makes the two-state solution ever harder to realise
Politics is ultimately about interests. Morals and highfalutin principles have their place, but a more reliable truth is that governments and countries usually act in their own self-interest. Usually. The way Israel greeted the visiting US vice-president, Joe Biden, this week offers an intriguing exception to the rule, a rare instance of a state acting in a way that brings itself almost no benefit and delivers a huge amount of self-inflicted harm.
Instead of embracing Mr Biden, Israel showed him the finger, choosing the very day of his visit to announce the construction of 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem. That counts as an in-your-face insult to a US administration that has demanded Israel freeze all settlement activity in the territories conquered in 1967, which include East Jerusalem. Little wonder that President Obama was said to be “incandescent with anger”, spending 90 minutes on the phone to his deputy drafting a statement of condemnation rare for its ferocity.
The Israeli press has been full of conflicting explanations for this extraordinary behaviour. Some suggest Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, was a fool, haplessly unaware that a lower-level planning committee was about to make the move. Others wonder if Mr Netanyahu was a knave, seeing some perverse value in advertising Israel’s defiance, demonstrating to the world that it can, in the words of one senior European official, “put sticks in the Americans’ eyes” and get away with it. As one Israeli commentator has put it, neither of these possible explanations are very attractive: they are like choosing between plague and cholera.
The harm done to Israel’s own interests is huge. It is bad enough to insult your most loyal ally, especially when that ally happens to be the sole superpower, with unique influence over the region. But it is positively reckless to insult the figure widely acknowledged to be Israel’s greatest friend within the entire US administration, a man who proudly calls himself a Zionist.
Above all, Israel’s move came just as the US was set to announce a new round of proximity talks with the Palestinians. Predictably, those have now been jeopardised. And yet what is the ultimate aim of those talks and the entire Middle East peace process? It is the establishment of a viable Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel. That scenario is the preferred outcome of a vast international consensus, but it is also, as most Israelis now recognise, in the best interests of Israel itself. By its continued settlement expansion, and its cack-handed treatment of its friends, Israel makes the two-state solution ever harder to realise. That is not just bad news for the Palestinians; it is bad for Israel.
Report: U.S. vows to halt Israeli building in East Jerusalem: Haaretz
U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell promised Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that the U.S. will bring a halt to Israeli building in East Jerusalem, a Palestinian official told the newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi on Saturday.
“In a telephone conversation, Mitchell said the U.S. would make sure Israel stops building in the area,” the Palestinian official told the London-based Arabic daily newspaper.
The U.S. has recently expressed frustration over Israel’s announcement on Tuesday of new settlement construction, a move that deeply embarrassed visiting U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and imperiled U.S. plans to launch indirect negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
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In an interview with CNN aired Friday night, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Israel’s announcement of new construction of homes in a Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem was “insulting” to the United States.
“I mean, it was just really a very unfortunate and difficult moment for everyone – the United States, our vice president who had gone to reassert our strong support for Israeli security – and I regret deeply that that occurred and made that known,” Clinton said during the CNN interview.
While Clinton did not blame Netanyahu personally for the announcement, she said, “He is the prime minister. Like the president or secretary of state…ultimately, you are responsible.”
U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Clinton spoke with Netanyahu on the phone and told him the announcement was a “deeply negative signal about Israel’s approach to the bilateral relationship…and had undermined trust and confidence in the peace process.”
“The secretary said she could not understand how this happened, particularly in light of the United States’ strong commitment to Israel’s security,” Crowley said.
“She made clear that the Israeli government needed to demonstrate not just through words but through specific actions that they are committed to this relationship and to the peace process,” he said.
Clinton’s rebuke of Netanyahu capped a week of tense exchanges between the United States and Israel, which on Tuesday announced it was building 1,600 new settler homes in an area of the occupied West Bank it annexed to Jerusalem.
The announcement infuriated the West Bank-based Palestinian leadership, which threatened to pull out of U.S.-brokered indirect “proximity” talks with Israel that Washington hoped would be the first step toward relaunching full peace negotiations after more than a year.
Another senior U.S. official said Friday that Netanyahu’s political standing is “perilous” because of divisions within his coalition over efforts to pursue peace with the Palestinians.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, predicted “a dicey period here in the next couple days to a couple of weeks” as Washington tries to get the indirect talks launched.
Quartet condemns Israel: Unilateral action cannot prejudge talks’ outcome
In addition to the U.S. condemnation of Israel’s announcement, the Quartet of Middle East peacemakers also condemned on Friday Israel’s announcement approving new construction in east Jerusalem.
“The Quartet condemns Israel’s decision to advance planning for new housing units in east Jerusalem,” the statement said. “The Quartet has agreed to closely monitor developments in Jerusalem and to keep under consideration additional steps that may be required to address the situation on the ground.”
“Unilateral action by the Israelis or Palestinians cannot prejudge the outcome of (peace) negotiations and will not be recognized by the international community,” the statement said.
“The Quartet will take full stock of the situation at its meeting in Moscow on March 19,” the statement said.
The Quartet called on all concerned to support the urgent resumption of
dialogue between the parties and to promote an atmosphere that is conducive to successful negotiations to resolve all outstanding issues of the conflict.
The group reiterated that Arab-Israeli peace and the establishment of an
independent, contiguous and viable state of Palestine is in the fundamental interests of the parties, of all states in the region, and of the international community.
ADL ‘stunned’ by U.S. condemnation of Israel
The U.S. based Anti-Defamation League said late Friday that it was “stunned” by Clinton’s “dressing down” of Israel.
“We cannot remember an instance when such harsh language was directed at a friend and ally of the United States,” said Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), in a statement.
The ADL called Clinton’s remarks a “gross overreaction” to a “policy difference among friends.”
“One can only wonder how far the U.S. is prepared to go in distancing itself from Israel in order to placate the Palestinians in the hope they see it is in their interest to return to the negotiating table,” Foxman said.
Clinton warns Israel over settlements: The Independent
By Andrew Quinn, Reuters
Saturday, 13 March 2010
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday his government sent a “deeply negative signal” by taking steps that undermined renewed Middle East peace talks.
Clinton telephoned Netanyahu and expressed frustration over Israel’s announcement on Tuesday of new settlement construction, a move that deeply embarrassed visiting US Vice President Joe Biden and imperiled US plans to launch indirect negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
During an interview in New York with CNN, Clinton said the developments did not put the US-Israeli relationship at risk, calling it “durable and strong.” But Clinton, using unusually harsh language, added, “The announcement of the settlements on the very day that the vice president was there was insulting.”
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Clinton told Netanyahu the announcement was a “deeply negative signal about Israel’s approach to the bilateral relationship … and had undermined trust and confidence in the peace process.”
“The secretary said she could not understand how this happened, particularly in light of the United States’ strong commitment to Israel’s security,” Crowley said.
“She made clear that the Israeli government needed to demonstrate not just through words but through specific actions that they are committed to this relationship and to the peace process,” he said.
The “quartet” of Middle East peace mediators – the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia – issued its own condemnation yesterday of the settlement plan and said it would assess the situation at a previously scheduled meeting in Moscow next week.
“The Quartet has agreed to closely monitor developments in Jerusalem and to keep under consideration additional steps that may be required to address the situation on the ground,” the group said in a statement, without providing further details.
Clinton, speaking in New York during talks with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, said the Moscow meeting would be an opportunity “to take stock of the progress that has been made in moving toward relaunching negotiations.”
Clinton’s rebuke of Netanyahu capped a week of tense exchanges between the United States and Israel, which announced it was building 1,600 settler homes in an area of the occupied West Bank it annexed to Jerusalem.
The announcement infuriated the West Bank-based Palestinian leadership, which threatened to pull out of US-brokered indirect “proximity” talks with Israel that Washington hoped would be the first step toward relaunching full peace negotiations after more than a year.
It also embarrassed Biden, who repeated calls for talks despite Palestinian demands that Israel first cancel the settlement project.
But in an interview with Reuters yesterday aboard his plane, Air Force Two, Biden sounded upbeat about the prospects of launching indirect peace talks mediated by the United States despite tensions over Israel’s announcement.
Asked whether he believed Netanyahu was “sincere” about negotiating peace with the Palestinians, he said, “Yes, I do.”
Crowley said US Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell and Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman had made numerous calls to regional leaders, including Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and underscored commitment to the plans for the indirect talks.
Mitchell is due to return to the region next week and US officials hope the indirect talks might begin then.
Israel has so far balked at Palestinian demands that the indirect phase include talk of “final status issues” including the delineation of borders, the fate of Jewish settlements on the West Bank and the status of Jerusalem.
The Obama administration wants indirect talks to cover issues of “consequence” but has yet to spell out publicly what that would entail.
Palestinians have called the settlement announcement a deliberate attempt by Netanyahu to sabotage peace talks in which he could come under pressure to trade land for a deal.
Netanyahu has said he did not know the announcement was coming and castigated his interior minister, while noting that nothing would actually be built in the area for years.
But his relationship with the Obama administration was already under heavy strain, and Clinton made clear that Washington would hold him responsible.
“Well, I don’t have any reason to believe he knew about it, but he is the prime minister. It’s like the president or the secretary of state; when you have certain responsibilities, ultimately, you are responsible,” Clinton told CNN.
Letter to the Guardian
Yet again Israel shows complete contempt not only for international law but for its closest ally and most staunch supporter (Biden condemns Israel for new homes plan just hours after US pledges support, 10 March). And no wonder. They know that Joe Biden’s condemnation of still more settlement expansion, in the most sensitive part of the occupied territories, will not be followed up by action of any kind. What a contrast with the reaction of western governments to the results of the Palestinians’ democratic elections, four years ago: immediate, swingeing sanctions that are still in force. Until it is made clear that illegal actions have negative consequences, no progress can be made towards peace in the region.
Hilary Wise
Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Jerusalem and West Bank tense after day of turmoil: Haaretz
At least 12 arrested and 15 injured as leftists and Palestinians clash with security forces.
An uneasy calm returned to Jerusalem on Friday evening after a day of turmoil that saw Palestinians and leftwing protestors clash with security forces across the city.
In East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrakh neighborhood police arrested eight leftwing activists demonstrating against Jewish construction there.
The detentions sparked fury among protesters, some of whom told Haaretz that the arrests were unlawful. Police has discriminated against the 100-odd leftists who took part in the march, at the same time allowing a rightwing counter-demonstration to continue unimpeded, they claimed.
Palestinian sources, meanwhile, reported that at least 15 Palestinians were injured in demonstrations in the West Bank villages of Bil’in, Na’alim and Dir Nizam, according to an Army Radio report.
Earlier in the day, four Palestinians were detained on suspicion of throwing stones and two officers were slightly injured in clashes in Jerusalem’s old city, a police spokesman said. At least one protester was treated by medics.
Israel had on Friday barred Palestinians from crossing from the West Bank into Israel and Jerusalem, and barred men under 50 from al-Aqsa mosque, the flashpoint holy site in the walled Old City.
As hundreds of youths streamed away from noon prayers at a mosque in the district of Ras al-Amud, men hurled stones at a car carrying Orthodox Jewish children. One rock smashed a side window, but there were no obvious injuries, Reuters reported.
Israel’s closure of the West bank, which authorities say is aimed at preventing a repeat of violent clashes last week in which dozens were injured, is set to last until Sunday.
In the Gaza Strip Islamists rallied supporters to protest at Israel’s policies in Jerusalem: “We will redeem al-Aqsa mosque with our souls and our blood,” the crowd chanted.
As demonstrators burned U.S. and Israeli flags, Khalil al-Hayya, a leader of the Hamas movement which rules Gaza, urged Hamas’s rival, West Bank-based Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, to reverse his decision to engage in “proximity talks” with Israel through U.S. mediators after a hiatus of 15 months.
“These direct and indirect negotiations provide a cover to the Zionist aggression against our people and our lands,” Hayya told the crowd. “Our angry people now are calling on the Palestinian negotiator to back off from these negotiations which encourage more settlements and the Judaisation of Jerusalem.”
Clinton: Israeli move insulting: Ynet
Secretary of state tells Netanyahu announcement of plan to build more Jewish homes in east Jerusalem ‘contradicts spirit of Biden’s Mideast trip, undermines confidence in peace process’. Quartet also condemns Israel’s decision
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday delivered a stinging rebuke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his government’s announcement this week of new Jewish housing in east Jerusalem.
In an interview with CNN Clinton said the move was “insulting” to the US. “We have to make clear to our Israeli friends and partner that the two-state solution which we support, which the prime minister himself said he supports, requires confidence-building measures on both sides,” she said.
“The announcement of the settlements the very day that the vice president was there was insulting.” However Clinton stressed that US-Israeli relations were not at risk over the mishap.
Earlier Friday Clinton spoke to Netanyahu by phone to express US frustration with Tuesday’s announcement that cast a pall over a visit to Israel by Vice President Joe Biden. A State Department spokesman said the Israeli move has endangered indirect peace talks with the Palestinians that the Obama administration had announced just a day earlier.
Clinton told Netanyahu that Israel’s plan to build 1,600 new homes in east Jerusalem’s Ramat Shlomo neighborhood was “a deeply negative signal about Israel’s approach to the bilateral relationship and counter to the spirit of the vice president’s trip,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told a news briefing.
The harsh criticism of America’s closest Mideast ally and questions about its commitment to the US-Israeli relationship followed equally blunt condemnation of the housing announcement from the White House and Biden himself.
It also comes ahead of a trip to the region by US Mideast peace envoy George Mitchell and a meeting in Moscow next week of senior officials from the Quartet of Mideast peacemakers.
The Israeli announcement took the US by surprise and enraged Palestinians and Arab states, jeopardizing indirect peace talks Mitchell is to mediate
“The secretary said she could not understand how this happened, particularly in light of the United States’ strong commitment to Israel’s security and she made clear that the Israeli government needed to demonstrate not just through words but through specific actions that they are committed to this relationship and to the peace process,” he said.
Crowley stressed that the United States strongly objected to both the content and timing of the announcement and said Clinton had “reinforced that this action had undermined trust and confidence in the peace process and in America’s interests.”
The Mideast Quartet, which consists of the US, Russia, the European Union, and the UN also condemned Israel’s decision to permit new construction in east Jerusalem and called on all parties concerned to support the early resumption of dialogue.
The Quartet called on Israel and the Palestinians to refrain from taking any one-sided measures in an attempt to determine the results of the negotiations in advance. It said any such actions would not be recognized by the international community.
‘Iran requires resolution with teeth’
During her interview with CNN Clinton also spoke about about the Iranian nuclear issue. “I think that the process that we’re engaged in right now at the United Nations is to narrow the differences and to arrive at a resolution that can be adopted by the Security Council that will have teeth, that will set forth consequences for Iran’s violations of regulations that they agreed to under the Nonproliferation Treaty, ignoring the International Atomic Energy Agency as well as resolutions by the United Nations,” she said.
Clinton added that the Security Council members had been united until recently on the matter of sanctions.
“Now, some of the members, both the permanent and the non-permanent members, believe that they can, through their efforts, persuade Iran to take action that Iran so far has shown no inclination to take,” she said.
“We respect their commitment to diplomacy and negotiation, but we think the time has come for the international community to express itself that unilateral actions on the diplomacy track or unilateral actions that could lead to an arms race in the Middle East, that could lead to conflict in the Middle East, are not a very good outcome.”
Robert Fisk’s World: Try this reading list if you want to understand the Middle East: The Independent
The greatest problem of writing historically is that the story has not ended
Saturday, 13 March 2010
If you want to understand al-Qa’ida, try this for size:
“The desert dweller could not take credit for his belief … He arrived at this intense condensation of himself in God by shutting his eyes to the world, and to all the complex possibilities latent in him which only contact with wealth and temptations could bring forth. He attained a sure trust and a powerful trust, but of how narrow a field! His sterile experience robbed him of compassion and perverted his human kindness to the image of the waste in which he hid… There followed a delight in pain, a cruelty which was more to him than goods … He found luxury in abnegation, renunciation, self-restraint. He made nakedness of the mind as sensuous as nakedness of the body. He saved his own soul, perhaps, and without danger, but in a hard selfishness.”
That is from T E Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom – and what a cracker! I always think of this passage when I watch Bin Laden’s videotapes. The narrow field. The abnegation. The cruelty. I don’t necessarily agree with Lawrence, but with passages like this, I find myself reflecting on his words with ever deeper intensity.
I say this because several times a year, I’m asked by Independent readers for a recommended “reading list” of Middle East books in the English language. It’s a tough one. The greatest problem of writing historically about the Middle East is that the story has not ended. The war goes on. And both “sides” – actually, there are rather a lot of sides – produce conflicting narratives. Yet I don’t go along with the idea that you can produce a balance sheet of books. Here’s the Israeli version. Here’s the Arab version. Here’s the madcap American version etc. The Middle East is about injustice. So who tells the story best?
When it comes to the Arab-Israeli dispute, the two incomparably finest books must be George Antonius’s The Arab Awakening, and The Gun and the Olive Branch by my colleague and friend David Hirst. Antonius was writing in 1938, when Hitler had already been in power for five years – but 10 years before the dispossession of the Palestinians – when he stated: “The treatment meted out to Jews in Germany and other European countries is a disgrace to its authors and to modern civilisation; but posterity will not exonerate any country that fails to bear its proper share of the sacrifices needed to alleviate Jewish suffering and distress. To place the brunt of the burden upon Arab Palestine is a miserable evasion of the duty that lies upon the whole of the civilised world. It is also morally outrageous. No code of morals can justify the persecution of one people in an attempt to relieve the persecution of another. The cure for the eviction of Jews from Germany is not to be sought in the eviction of the Arabs from their homeland …”
So here was the first truly eloquent warning of what was to come, and Hirst completed the narrative of Antonius’s all too accurate predictions, the first author, I believe, to counter the trashy novel Exodus with which Leon Uris graced the Jewish state – much to Ben Gurion’s delight, though he should have known better – by deconstructing “terrorism” without romanticising the Palestinian refugees and their “resistance” movements. In this same context, one must remember the work of Israel’s “new historians”, who created a complementary narrative. Benny Morris was the most prominent Israeli researcher to prove that it was indeed Israel’s intention to evict the Palestinians from their homes in their tens of thousands in 1948 – the fact that Morris has since gone completely batty by claiming the Israelis didn’t ethnically cleanse enough of them does not detract from his seminal work.
F R Leavis allegedly once began a sentence with the words: “As any fit reader of poetry will know …” So I suppose we have to say that “any fit reader” of the Middle East must read Edward Said. One of his best books, by the way, is about music, although orientalism will always be on the set-book list. He did for the Middle East narrative philosophically – and historically – what Antonius did politically. I am not disparaging Said’s political work when I say this, although doubts do creep upon me from time to time as critical scholars re-examine his work. I’m not talking of the loony condemnation by Al Dershowitz and his gang. But at least one of his supporters fears that Said did not take account of the vast “orientalist” literature of Italy, Germany and Russia.
The Soviet Union, of course, always had a problem with the Prophet, because Mohamed was a bourgeois merchant. At least Jesus was a worker’s son, although just how much Stakhanovite endeavour his father Joseph actually performed we are not told. But I must say the fact that Joseph and Mary had to travel all the way to Jerusalem to be taxed is truly Ottoman in its bureaucracy. And that no hotel could find room for a pregnant woman has a special Middle Eastern flavour – but now I’m becoming an “orientalist”.
And so to that brilliant Lebanese journalist and thinker, the late Samir Kassir – very late, for he was assassinated almost five years ago and the last I saw of him was the blood beside his blown-up car – whose monumental history of Beirut in English (I admit it, I am writing the preface) comes out this year. Everything you ever wanted to know about Beirut – and a lot, I fear, that you didn’t want to know — is here. He records how 100 years ago, a young Christian capo di capo – one Costa Paoli – had a habit of kissing the faces of newly murdered Lebanese Christians before they were buried. He was a well-dressed man – “a rose in his lapel and a perfumed handkerchief in his breast pocket”, according to the scholar Edward Atiyah – and he was a qabaday, a gangster; who took his revenge on Muslims. In those days, there were militias and armed groups to support Christian and Muslim communities and there was sometimes street fighting. Just as my colleague David McKittrick discovered that 19th-century Belfast’s first street riots occurred at exactly the same locations as the battles of the 1970s, so Beirut’s 19th-century militia conflicts took place at the very spot where the Lebanese 1975 war would break out.
Kassir is the first author whose only human being is a city, in whose beautiful and gruesome history little men turned on their torture wheels. I never knew that the Hizbollah suburb of Ouzai took its name from the revered ancient divine Imam Ouzai; or that the Syrian Social Nationalist Party – a boring, pan-Arab society – was inspired to create its red, white and black banner (it enclosed crossed pens) from the Nazis; or that the present-day all-purpose Arab obscenity sharmut or sharmuta – meaning whore – was a derivation of the far gentler French word charmante. Lawrence and other authors, please note.
Robert Fisk is the author of The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East
Don’t Let them Kidnap Mazin Qumsiyeh
In the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour (next to Bethlehem) settlers and the Israeli Defense Force are defying Obama’s call for a settlement freeze and are preparing seized land (Ush Ghrab) for a new Jewish-only settlement. Settlers have defaced a children’s playground by drawing Jewish stars all over the facility. People of the Beit Sahour have held peaceful demonstrations to try to prevent the settlement.
One of the leaders of the popular committee in Beit Sahour doing work on this land grab is Dr. Mazin Qumisiyeh an officer of our Middle East Crisis Committee and formerly on the faculty of Yale and Duke universities. He left for a speaking tour of the U.S. on Feb. 28, but on March 2nd the streets around his Beit Sahour home was blockaded by the army at 1:30 in the morning. Army officers told his family that he must report to them. Fears are that he may be abducted by the army on his return to the West Bank The Israelis have a procedure called Administrative Detention, months of prison without charges or trial under grueling interrorgations and miserable conditions. We can prevent his arrest if there’s a MASSIVE publicty campaign about Ush Ghrab and plans to abduct Mazin Qumsiyeh, letters to the media, Congress, etc. etc.. Watch this space for further information. WE HAVE TO GET THIS CAMPAIGN IN FULL GEAR WITHIN A WEEK.
Mazin Qumsiyeh has been blogging for some years now, and since then has become a target for the IOF as he is active daily against the brutality and lawlessness which have become the hallmarks of this illegal military occupation.Help to keep im free by supporting this campaign and spreading it!
Jonathan Cook: The Decline of Israel and the Prospects for Peace: IOA
New Left Project interview with Jonathan Cook – 10 March 2010
In a wide ranging interview journalist Jonathan Cook describes the increasingly repressive nature of Israeli society and the prospects for a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict
What did you make of Ehud Barak’s recent comparison of Israel to South Africa?
We should be extremely wary of ascribing a leftwing agenda to senior Israeli politicians who make use of the word “apartheid” in the Israeli-Palestinian context. Barak was not claiming that Israel is an apartheid state when he addressed the high-powered delegates at the Herzliya conference last month; he was warning the Netanyahu government that its approach to the two-state solution was endangering Israel’s legitimacy in the eyes of the world that would eventually lead to it being called an apartheid state. He was politicking. His goal was to intimidate Netanyahu into signing up to his, and the Israeli centre’s, long-standing agenda of “unilateral separation”: statehood imposed on the Palestinians as a series of bantustans (be sure, the irony is entirely lost on Barak and others). Barak knows that Netanyahu currently has no intention of creating any kind of Palestinian state, even a bogus one, despite his commitments to the US.
The last senior Israeli politician to talk of “apartheid” was Ehud Olmert, and it is worth remembering why he used the term. It was back in November 2003, when he was deputy prime minister and desperately trying to scare his boss, Ariel Sharon, into reversing his long-standing support for the settlements and adopt instead the disengagement plan for Gaza. Olmert’s thinking was that by severing Gaza from the Greater Israel project – by pretending the occupation had ended there – Israel could buy a few more years before it faced a Palestinian majority and the danger of being compared to apartheid South Africa. It worked and Sharon became the improbable “man of peace” for which he is today remembered. (Strangely, Olmert, like Barak, defined apartheid in purely mathematical terms: Israeli rule over the Palestinians would only qualify as apartheid at the moment Jews became a numerical minority.)
Barak is playing a similar game with Netanyahu, this time trying to pressure him to separate from the main populated areas of the West Bank. It is not surprising the task has fallen to the Labor leader. The two other chief exponents of unilateral separation are out of the way: Olmert is standing trial and Tzipi Livni is in the wilderness of opposition. Barak is hoping to apply pressure from inside the government. Barak is eminently qualified for the job. He took on the mantel of the Oslo process after Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination and then tried to engineer the final separation implicit in Oslo at Camp David in 2000 – on extremely advantageous terms for Israel.
Can he succeed in changing Netanyahu’s mind? It seems unlikely.
Avi Shlaim recently described Tony Blair as ‘Gaza’s Great Betrayer’. What do you make of Tony Blair’s role as Middle East peace envoy?
Blair is a glorified salesman, selling the same snakeoil to different customers.
First, he is here to provide a façade of Western concern about mending the Middle East. He suggests that the West is committed to action even as it fails to intervene and the situation of the Palestinians generally, and those in Gaza in particular, deteriorates rapidly. He sells us the continuing dispossession of the Palestinians in a bottle labelled “peace”.
He is also here as a sort of European proconsul to advise the Americans on how to repackage their policies. The US has become aware that it has lost all credibility with the rest of the world on this issue. Blair’s job is to redesign the bottle labelled “US honest broker” so that we will be prepared to buy the product again.
His next task is to try to wheedle out of Israel any minor concession he can secure on behalf of the Palestinians and persuade Tel Aviv to cooperate in selling an empty bottle labelled “hope” as a breakthrough in the peace process.
And finally, he is here to create the impression that his chief task is to defend the interests of the Palestinians. To this end, he collects the three bottles, puts them in some pretty wrapping paper and writes on the label “Palestinian state”.
For his labours he is being handsomely rewarded, especially by Israel.
You have described how Israel is becoming increasingly repressive regarding its own Arab population. In what ways?
Let’s be clear: Israel has always been “repressive” of its Palestinian minority. Its first two decades were marked by a very harsh military government for the Palestinian population inside Israel. Thousands of Bedouin, for example, were expelled from their homes in the Negev several years after Israel’s establishment and forced into the Sinai. Israel’s past should not be glorified.
What I have argued is that the direction taken by Israeli policy since the Oslo process began has been increasingly dangerous for the Palestinian minority. Before Oslo, Israel was chiefly interested in containing and controlling the minority. After Oslo, it has been trying to engineer a situation in which it can claim to no longer be responsible for the Palestinians inside Israel with formal citizenship.
This is intimately tied to Israel’s more general policy of “unilateral separation” from the Palestinians under occupation: in Gaza, through the disengagement; in the West Bank, through the building of the wall. Israel’s chief concern is that – post-separation, were Palestinian citizens to remain inside the Jewish state – they would have far greater legitimacy in demanding the same rights as Jews. Israelis regard that as an existential threat to their state: Palestinian citizens could use their power, for example, to demand a right of return for their relatives and thereby create a Palestinian majority. The problem for Israel is that Palestinian citizens can expose the sham of Israel’s claims to being a democratic state.
So as part of its policy of separation, Israel has been thinking about how to get rid of the Palestinian minority, or at the very least how to disenfranchise it in a way that appears democratic. It is a long game that I describe in detail in my book Blood and Religion.
Policymakers are considering different approaches, from physically expelling Israel’s Palestinian citizens to the bantustans in the territories to stripping them incrementally of their remaining citizenship rights, in the hope that they will choose to leave. At the moment we are seeing the latter policy being pursued, but there are plenty of people in the government who want the former policy implemented when the political climate is right.
Due to the length of this important inteview, please read the whole piece on the link above
Harvard students condemn center’s defense of fellow’s racist statements: The Electronic Intifada
Abdelnasser A. Rashid, Johnny F. Bowman, Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, The Electronic Intifada, 12 March 2010
The following open letter, a version of which was published as an op-ed by The Harvard Crimson on 12 March 2010, was issued by a student coalition that formed at Harvard University after The Electronic Intifada reported on the pro-genocide statements made by Martin Kramer, a fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University:
We address this open letter to Beth Simmons (Director, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs), Jeffry Frieden and James Robinson (Acting Directors, WCIA) and Drew Faust (President, Harvard University).
We write as gravely concerned students and student group leaders representing over 16 groups throughout Harvard University. (An updated list of our entire constituency can be viewed online (http://www.harvardagainstracism.com/).)
We are disturbed by the racist and inhumane comments of Martin Kramer, Visiting Scholar at the National Security Studies Program at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. We have become even more alarmed that rather than taking a dissociating or even strictly neutral stance against such extremist and hateful statements, the Weatherhead Center issued a defensive response.
At the Herzliya Conference in Israel last month, Mr. Kramer, who in his own words provides advice on “US policy options in the Middle East,” advocated measures to diminish Palestinian birth rates as a means of population control. Mr. Kramer stated that Israel’s siege on Gaza, which prohibits the entry of crucial humanitarian supplies, helps “break Gaza’s runaway population growth and there is some evidence that they have.” He suggests that this phenomenon “may begin to crack the culture of martyrdom, which demands a constant supply of superfluous young men.” Mr. Kramer’s public call to halt food, medicine and humanitarian aid — which he calls “pro-natal subsidies” — would read as a cruel joke if it did not so egregiously violate the most basic norms of human decency. Such statements have been echoed by people in power and have even been directed at Israel’s Palestinian citizens: at the same conference in 2003, Israel’s current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Palestinian citizens of Israel a “demographic threat.”
Harvard professor Stephen M. Walt commented, “What if a prominent academic at Harvard declared that the United States had to make food scarcer for Hispanics so that they would have fewer children? Or what if someone at a prominent think tank noted that black Americans have higher crime rates than some other groups, and therefore it made good sense to put an end to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and other welfare programs, because that would discourage African-Americans from reproducing and thus constitute an effective anti-crime program?”
Had Mr. Kramer’s comments been directed at any other marginalized or minority groups — leaving aside the enormous challenge faced by Palestinians living in the impoverished enclosure of Gaza — we believe that the Weatherhead Center would not have hesitated to classify them as racist and hateful. It has described Mr. Kramer’s proclamations as “controversial,” an alarming position since less than a century ago similar remarks were made against African Americans and Jews. The characterization of his statements as merely “controversial” is offensive and dismisses their deeply racist nature.
Since the Weatherhead Center provides Mr. Kramer with a legitimizing and prominent public platform, we wonder whether it views any policy call as ethically disgraceful. We are troubled that the Center has presented little to no diversity of viewpoints on the Israel-Palestine conflict. The only notable statements on the conflict emerging from the Center are Mr. Kramer’s.
However, we believe that the Weatherhead Center has an opportunity to rectify the damage caused by Mr. Kramer’s repugnant statements and redeem its esteem with the student body. First, we ask that the Weatherhead Center not renew Mr. Kramer’s fellowship or affiliation with the NSSP. Second, we call on the Center to establish a committee of faculty and students to recommend the adoption of a set of vetting practices for incoming fellows that uphold a set of principles unified on non-racism, in concert with Harvard University’s own commitment to non-discriminatory practices and diversity of viewpoints. We are concerned that the defense of Mr. Kramer’s statement reflects a violation of basic principles to which the Weatherhead Center and Harvard University claim to adhere. The above measures are an effective way for the Center and the University to make amends.
Johnny F. Bowman ’11 is president of the Undergraduate Council. Maryam Monalisa Gharavi is a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature. Abdelnasser A. Rashid ’11 is president of the Harvard Islamic Society and board member of the Palestine Solidarity Committee.
Signatories to the statement include: Alliance for Justice in the Middle East (Graduate School of Arts & Sciences), Asian American Association, Association of Black Harvard Women, Dharma, GSAS Capoeira Angola, Harvard College Human Rights Advocates, Harvard Islamic Society, Harvard Longwood Muslims (Harvard Medical School), Human Rights PIC at Harvard Kennedy School – Leadership Team, Justice For Palestine (Harvard Law School), Latino Men’s Collective, Middle East Law Students Association (HLS), Palestine Caucus (HKS), Palestine Solidarity Committee, Society of Arab Students and the W. E. B. Du Bois Graduate Society.
‘People are laughing at you’: U.K. expert on Israel’s PR effort: Haaretz
By Raphael Ahren
Conventional marketing wisdom has it that even bad news is good news, as long as people talk about you. But Jonathan Gabay, a leading London-based marketing and branding expert, disagrees, at least when it comes to Israeli hasbara, or public diplomacy.
He is extremely critical of the new campaign recently launched by Israel’s Information and Diaspora Ministry, which seeks to motivate Israelis traveling abroad to speak up on behalf of Israel. Dubbed Masbirim Israel, or Explaining Israel, the campaign advises citizens on how to discourse politely and provided a list of Israel’s achievements to be highlighted in conversations.
“People are laughing at you,” Gabay, 48, fumed as he was looking at some articles in British newspapers making fun of Masbirim. “Who is advising you on your brand? This is not good, this is pretty bad.”
Media outlets all over the globe reported about Masbirim, many deriding the campaign. “Apparently your pamphlet says people should first listen and then talk, make eye contact, used relaxed body language – I mean, really?” said Gabay, who teaches at a major marketing school, regularly appears on British TV channels and has written 15 books about branding. “This is very serious. We live in a world of cynicism. This is producing the worst kind of [public] diplomacy,” he stressed.
“What upsets me is that when I come here I actually think that Israel is the most democratic country in the whole of the Middle East,” continued Gabay, who visited Israel this week to consult several hi-tech companies. “But this doesn’t come across in your PR. Because you guys put out marketing campaigns which talk about Israel being a peace-loving state that developed the cherry tomato and won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1998. As fascinating as it is that you developed the cherry tomato, do you honestly think that’s going to change people’s perceptions?”
Information and Diaspora Minister Yuli Edelstein rejects Gabay’s criticism. He contests the campaign is succeeding, having stirred public discussion and brought 150,000 Israelis to visit its Web site to date. The campaign not only features information about supermodel Bar Refaeli and other such lighter items but also about the country’s successes in high tech and medical research. It also suggests answers to tough questions about Israel’s policy’s vis-a-vis the Palestinians, he added.
“The mission of four million Israelis traveling abroad every year is not to try to get in the United Nations and explain that in the 32nd paragraph of the Goldstone report there is a mistake,” Edelstein told Anglo File. “The main task is to paint Israel with a human face, to talk about their personal lives, their hobbies and achievements and the achievements of the country that allowed them to be successful.”
For Gabay, this is “too fluffy.” Rather, such a campaign should work according to his basic branding model, for which he draws the interior of an egg. The values – the white – draw their strength from its core idea, the yoke. Masbirim, Gabay contests, focuses too much on Israel’s values – such as tourism, culture and science. “What is Israel about? It’s not just about Bar Refaeli, as beautiful as she is,” he said. “Without the central bit, all this stuff is fluff and doesn’t mean anything.”
Gabay proposes Israel to be more straightforward about the one issue people connect with the brand Israel – the conflict with the Palestinians. Instead of merely reacting to accusations of oppression or war crimes, Jerusalem should actively and confidently – but not arrogantly – explain why it’s acting the way it does, Gabay suggests. “Treat people intelligently and they will respond. Treat people as if you’re selling soap powder and people won’t believe you. That’s the bottom line.”
Capital Anglos mobilize against practice of spitting at Christians: Haaretz
By Raphael Ahren
Shocked by growing reports about Ultra-Orthodox Jews spitting at Christians in Jerusalem’s Old City, a group of Anglo residents is now mobilizing against this ugly practice. Although such incidents reportedly have decreased since a council of Haredi rabbis issued an official condemnation in January in response to the public outcry, Christian and Jewish activists agree the problem is unlikely to disappear anytime soon.
“I felt I had to protest,” said Andrea Katz, 57, who is planning several events within Jerusalem’s liberal Orthodox Yedidya congregation to show solidarity with the Christian community and educate the English-speaking Jewish public about their Christian neighbors. “I don’t think that all of a sudden the Haredi world is going to say: Oh my Gosh, we did so wrong, let’s stop this. But somehow I had to do something; I just couldn’t sit around and do nothing.”
For years, there have been incidents of Haredi youths spitting at Christian clergymen in the Old City and near the Mea She’arim neighborhood, according to several Jewish and Christian residents of Jerusalem. One cleric said told a European news site that the spitting was “almost a daily experience.”
In late 2009 such incidents started to mount, provoking a growing number of complaints and increasing press coverage. The Haredi Community Tribunal of Justice subsequently published a statement condemning such acts, calling them a “desecration of God’s name.” Christian leaders met in January with Foreign Ministry staff and representatives of the Jerusalem municipality and the Haredi community to tackle the problem.
Over the last two months the number of spitting incidents declined somewhat, according to Archbishop Aris Shirvanian, of Jerusalem’s Armenian Patriarchate, who says that in the 12 years he has lived in Jerusalem has been spat on about 50 times. “It’s good to see the reduction of this phenomenon, but to eradicate it completely may take time. I don’t think it will be stopped in a fortnight or so,” he told Anglo File. He praised the Baka-based Yedidya community for its efforts to raise awareness but added the events planned failed to reach the perpetrators within the Haredi community. “It’s a good step forward, but more has to be done.”
Yedidya, which was founded in 1980 by a group of British and American immigrants, currently plans three events. The first, a lecture, is scheduled for March 15 and will take place in the synagogue. Besides Katz and Shirvanian, the panelists include the director of the Jerusalem Center for Jewish-Christian Relations, Daniel Rossing; the head of the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel, Rabbi Dr. Ron Kronish; religion professor Yiska Harani; Fr. Athanasius Makora, of the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land; and Dr. Debbie Weissman, who heads the International Council of Christians and Jews.
The shul also plans to organize visits to Jerusalem’s Christian communities. “The majority of congregants – even if we’re from abroad – is certainly ignorant of the Eastern and Orthodox churches that are here,” Katz said. “In order for people to sympathize they have to know whom they are sympathizing with.”
Around Easter, Katz is hoping to create what she calls a “human corridor.” Marching with the Armenian community while they carry a Cross would be inappropriate for an Orthodox congregation, the Buffalo, New York, native explained. Rather, she’d like her community to “simply stand, to make a corridor – no words, no speeches – so that they [the Armenian clerics] can walk from [the Church of] St. James to [the Church of] the Holy Sepulchre. Nothing big, just to show there are people who care and don’t find this kind of behavior acceptable.”
Katz said she felt the need to become active when she hosted a group of officials from the U.S.-based Jewish Council for Public Affairs. They wanted to learn more about the phenomenon of Jews spitting at Christians – something she had never heard of. “They were from an organization abroad, and they knew about something that was going on that I found horrifying and I didn’t know about. I live in this city since 1974, and I had no idea.”
Wondering what could bring religious people to commit such ugly acts, Katz surmised that some Jews might not have learned yet what it means to be the majority in a country.
“It’s still very new for us,” she said. “We’re taking our experiences from the Diaspora and acting and reacting in way that would befit a powerless minority. Now that we do have power simply because Jews are ‘in control,’ we are not protecting the minorities and allowing the Christian or the Muslim minority to practice freely what they want to practice…. We haven’t got our heads around the fact that our job is now to protect them.”
Kronish, of the Interreligious Coordinating Council, said the spitting is rooted in “penned-up anger” about the long history of Christian anti-Semitism. “The Haredim give their children a distorted education, which is conducive to such behavior,” he said. Despite the recent decline in spitting incidents, he asserts the “underlying fear and ignorance is still there” and can only be combated if people learn about the other.
“People fear the unknown,” he explains. “The unknown is the Christians and the reasons we’re doing this educational event with Yedidya is because people felt: Gee, we really don’t know who these Christians are over there in the Old City. We don’t know anything about them – we live here in Baka, they live over there behind those walls. It’s time for us to know more about them.”