EDITOR: Happy Passover? For whom exactly?
Well, we all know Passover id supposed to be about freedom. Or so were are told. Now many Jews will sit tonight and sing lovely songs about freedom, end to slavery and suffering, and what not. Most of them will not for a moment think that it is not the Jews today who are in slavery, but the Palestinians; It is not the Jews who will go short on food, medicines, water, housing, gas, electricity, but again, the people of Gaza. It is not the Jews whose children will be taken by the soldiers to the many prisons, but again, the Palestinian children.
So, if there was some humane message in the Passover myth, it is lost on the very people who should know better, who should know that any nations which occupies, brutalizes and oppresses another nation, is not itself free. There no freedom to the occupied, or the occupier.
The plague of darkness has struck modern Israelites: Haaretz
By Akiva Eldar
One of the harshest of the 10 plagues has smitten the children of Israel this Passover, and they are stumbling about in pitch darkness, bumping blindly into anyone in their way as they head toward the edge of the precipice. Warm friends, cool friends, icy enemies: Jordan and Turkey, Brazil and Britain, Germany and Australia – it’s all the same.
And if that’s not enough, the myopic Jewish state also has gone and collided head-on with the ally that offers existential support. Israel has become an environmental hazard and its own greatest threat. For 43 years, Israel has been ruled by people who have refused to see reality. They speak of “united Jerusalem,” knowing that no other country has recognized the annexation of the eastern part of the city. They sent 300,000 people to settle land they know does not belong to them. As early as September 1967, Theodor Meron, then the legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry, said there was a categorical prohibition against civilian settlement in occupied territories, under the Fourth Geneva Convention. Meron – who would become the president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and is now a member of the Appeals Chamber for both that court and a similar one for Rwanda – wrote to prime minister Levi Eshkol in a top-secret memorandum: “I fear there is great sensitivity in the world today about the whole question of Jewish settlement in the occupied territories, and any legal arguments that we try to find will not remove the heavy international pressure, from friendly states as well.”
It is true that for many years, we have managed to grope our way through the dark and keep the pressure at bay. We did so with the assistance of our neighbors, who were afflicted with the same shortsightedness.
On Sunday, however, the Arab League marked the eighth anniversary of its peace proposals, which offer Israel normalization in exchange for an end to the occupation and an agreed solution to the refugee problem, in accordance with UN Resolution 194. But Israel behaves as if it had never heard of this historic initiative. For the last year, it was too busy realizing its dubious right to establish an illegal settlement in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, turning a blind eye to reality, has tried to persuade the world that what applies to Tel Aviv also applies to Sheikh Jarrah. He simply refuses to see that the world is sick of us. It’s easier for him to focus on his similarly nearsighted followers in AIPAC. Tonight they’ll all swear “Next year in rebuilt Jerusalem” – including the construction in Ramat Shlomo, of course.
Hillary Clinton is not Jewish, but it was she who had to remind the AIPAC Jews what demography will do to their favorite Jewish democracy in the Middle East. A few days earlier, she had come back from Moscow, where she took part in one of the Quartet’s most important meetings. Israeli politicians and media were too busy with the cold reception awaiting Netanyahu at the White House. They never gave any thought to the decision by the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations to turn Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s state-building plan from a unilateral initiative into an international project.
The Quartet declared that it was backing the plan, proposed in August 2009, to establish a Palestinian state within 24 months. This was an expression of the Palestinians’ serious commitment that the state have a just and proper government and be a responsible neighbor. This means Israel has less than a year and a half to come to an agreement with the Palestinians on the permanent borders, Jerusalem and the refugees. If the Palestinians stick to Fayyad’s path, in August 2011, the international community, led by the United States, can be expected to recognize the West Bank and East Jerusalem as an independent country occupied by a foreign power. Will Netanyahu still be trying to explain that Jerusalem isn’t a settlement?
For 43 years, the Israeli public – schoolchildren, TV viewers, Knesset members and Supreme Court judges – have been living in the darkness of the occupation, which some call liberation. The school system and its textbooks, the army and its maps, the language and the “heritage” have all been mobilized to help keep Israelis blind to the truth. Luckily, the Gentiles clearly see the connection between the menace of Iranian control spreading across the Middle East and the curse of Israeli control over Islamic holy places.
Monday night, when we read the Passover Haggadah, we should note the plague that follows darkness. That may open our eyes.
Barak: Hamas will pay for shaking equilibrium on Gaza border: Haaretz
Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Monday warned that Hamas that Israel would react harshly to any escalation along its border with the Gaza Strip.
“The enemy in the Gaza Strip has paid and will continue to pay a heavy price if it tries to shake the equilibrium along the border,” Barak said.
His comments as he visited troops from the Israel Defense Forces’ Golani Brigade who took part in an exchange of fire that killed two of their comrades at the border this weekend.
Likud minister Gilad Erdan Also called for Israel to react strongly to the incident.
“There must be a clear and decisive response, although at this stage there is not a need for a wide-ranging operation on the scale of Cast Lead,” Erdan told Israel radio on Monday, refering to Israel’s three-week offensive in Gaza last year, in which some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued his own warning on Sunday, saying Israel would retaliate against any attack on its citizens or soldiers and that Hamas would be made to be held accountable for actions.
The two deaths in Gaza clashes on Friday have increased concern in the IDF that Hamas is trying to alter the situation along the Gaza Strip border fence, possibly by targeting of Israeli patrols.
“Israel’s policy of retaliation is forceful and decisive,” Netanyahu said during the weekly government meeting in Jerusalem, asserting that Israel would “retaliate decisively against any attack on our citizens and soldiers.”
“This policy is well-known and will continue. Hamas and the other terror organizations need to know that they are the ones that are responsible for their own actions,” Netanyahu said.
UK tabloid: Israel “forged thousands of IDs”: Y Net
MI6 suspects that airline staff working for Mossad may have copied passports of Britons flying to Israel, News of the World reports, adding authorities also concerned about security searches carried out on British officials attending terrorism conference in country last September
The British secret intelligence service (MI6) suspects that airline staff working for the Israeli secret service Mossad may have copied thousands of British passports, some of which were used in the assassination of senior Hamas figure Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai, the News of the World tabloid reported Sunday.
According to the report, British authorities are also concerned about security searches carried out on British officials attending a terrorism conference in Israel last September.
MI6 believe that Britons flying to Israel have been targeted for months and their documents have been cloned, the newspaper said, adding that the Foreign Office held top level talks last week on whether to issue a warning against travelling with certain airlines.
The forging method was already revealed last week in a statement made by the British government to the parliament after the use of British citizens’ identities in the Dubai assassination was revealed. According to the statement, 12 passports used by the assassins were cloned in different airports while the British nationals were on their way to Israel. They were taken away for “examinations” which lasted 20 minutes each.
In addition to the investigation into the falsification of British passports, the United Kingdom authorities are also checking whether Israeli intelligence elements took advantage of a visit to Israel by British security officials in order to clone their passports.
British police sources said the officials had undergone strict security checks upon arriving in Israel.
“It was said to be routine but the searches did not apply to all nations,” a source told the newspaper. “There is now a real concern that some of these high-ranking officers and officials have also had documents cloned.”
The UK expressed its discontent after Dubai authorities revealed that British identities were used in the assassination and launched an investigation into the matter. One of the moves taken against Israel was the decision to expel an Israeli diplomat serving in the kingdom, which was said to be the Mossad representative in London.
It was also reported that Israel would not be allowed to replace its Mossad representative in London should it not provide Britain with a public assurance that UK citizens’ passports will never be used again for secret operations.
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told lawmakers last week that Israel’s actions had put British nationals at risk and showed a “profound disregard” for Britain’s sovereignty. He said the fact that Israel is a longtime ally with close business, personal and political ties to Britain “adds insult to injury” in this case.
Miliband noted that a thorough British investigation concluded that Israel was behind the forging of British passports used by the alleged assassins in Dubai.
Jerusalem City Government Muzzles a Tour: The Only Democracy?
March 29th, 2010, by Rebecca Kirzner
Sometimes it’s just too easy. I mean, really. Sometimes, the total idiocy of your political enemy just makes it so much easier to promote your ideas.
This week, the Jerusalem Municipality requested that Ir Amim, a Jerusalem-based non-profit organization, remove its study tours of East Jerusalem from the events listing on the municipality website.
Ir Amim is an Israeli non-profit organization which promotes a politically sustainable future for Jerusalem, and a Jerusalem which respects the welfare and dignity of all its residents – Israeli and Palestinian. Ir Amim’s tours of East Jerusalem are highly informative – showing the historical and political background of Jerusalem’s role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They allow the participant to better interpret and contextualize the almost constant stream of provocative events in Jerusalem which fill the national and international news almost daily.
Ir Amim was asked to remove their tours from the site because of political content. But…this is the same website that has events from right-wing political organizations such as Elad, who is responsible for the dangerous and provocative excavations in Silwan, and the Gush Katif Museum, though Ynet claims the Jeruslaem Municipal government is “‘unaware’ of the plan to open the museum and is in no way associated with it. “ Obviously, some right-winger thought he could pick and choose which organizations should be allowed to advertise in this public/government space. And equally obviously, when his request that Ir Amim removed their tours became public, it generated MUCH more publicity for the tours! Wouldn’t you want to know what the municipality doesn’t want you to see?
So, anyway, if you’re in the Jerusalem area, look up the next Ir Amim tour. You can find the information on their website or just wait, they’ll probably be back on the Municipality website pretty soon.
Helen Thomas On Her one Question for Obama: IOA
By Real News – 27 March 2010
Paul Jay interviews Helen Thomas
In part one of his interview with Helen Thomas, longest-serving member of the White House Press Corps, Paul Jay asks her about her first question for President Obama. The question, asking President Obama to name all the countries in the Middle-East that have nuclear weapons, was avoided by the President, who claimed to not want to “speculate”. Thomas claims that knowledge of Israeli nukes is very public in DC and Obama’s answer shows a lack of credibility. She explains the importance of this question for U.S. policy in the region. Finally, she confides that she has not been called on by the President since that day, but that if she does, she will ask him whether or not he has found any more information about nukes in the Middle-East since their last encounter.
Bio
Helen Thomas is an American news reporter, member of the White House Press Corps and author She was the first female officer of the National Press Club and the first female member and president of the White House Correspondents Association. Her latest book, co-authored with Craig Crawford is Listen Up, Mr President: Everything you Always Wanted Your President To Know and Do.
Transcript
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome back The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay at our studio in Washington, DC. Our special guest today is Helen Thomas. Helen Thomas has been a member of the White House press corps for over 58 years. She’s covered every president since John F. Kennedy. She was the first member of the—. […] She was the first female officer of the National Press Club, first female member and president of the White House Correspondents Association, and in 1975 she was the first female member and later became the president of the Gridiron Club. She’s written five books. Her latest, with co-author Craig Crawford, is Listen up, Mr. President: Everything You Always Wanted to Know Your President to Know and Do. […] Listen up, Mr. President: Everything You Always Wanted Your President to Know and Do. So you’ve been telling presidents what to do for, like, a long time.
HELEN THOMAS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS CORPS, HEARST NEWSPAPERS: They don’t take my advice.
JAY: Well, here’s an example. President Obama—. First of all, welcome.
THOMAS: Thank you.
JAY: Thanks for joining us. So President Obama had his inaugural Helen Thomas question at his first press conference. And here’s a little clip we’re going to play from the press conference. […] You asked the question. He avoids it, ducks. And then the microphone’s there, and you’re about to say, yeah, but what about an answer, and they take the mic away.
THOMAS: That’s correct.
JAY: So President Obama really never answered your question about nuclear weapons in the Middle East, and obviously you were asking—.
THOMAS: It would be pitiful if we took his answer truthfully, because he said, “I didn’t want to speculate.” Well, the president is not supposed to speculate as to who has nuclear arms or not. He’s supposed to know.
JAY: Well, obviously, we know he knows, and it’s—this is this great “we know, and he knows we know we know.”
THOMAS: I was testing his credibility.
JAY: So that’s the—it’s actually quite a profound question, because it goes to the whole US policy in the Middle East. Not only does the US have a kind of a double standard on nuclear weapons when it comes to Iran and such, but what do you make of Obama’s whole Middle East policy? Is there a break with Bush here or not?
THOMAS: Too one-sided in favor of Israel. Ignores all the horrors that have happened to Palestinians—their country’s taken away, thousands imprisoned for many, many years. We give them arms, we give the aid to Israel, as it continues to occupy and just treat the Palestinians like they’re newcomers—and these are Europeans who come there who have no ties to Israel, to Palestine.
JAY: When President Obama was elected and was first discussing foreign policy, there was a suggestion from him there would be a new approach to the Middle East. He made his speech in Cairo. He suggested—not suggested. He said that Israel should stop any settlement expansion. What’s happened since all of that?
THOMAS: He took the easy way out, which is to go along with Israel, which most countries do. They have the power, propaganda, and everything else to sell their point of view. Palestinians have no voice.
JAY: So in terms of understanding—what President Obama’s done is nothing new. This has been the White House approach for a long time.
THOMAS: Well, he was accused of being a Muslim, which is, you know, the worst thing that can happen to you, apparently. And I think he was afraid of that kind of tie.
JAY: But you’ve been covering the White House, as we said, for, like, 58 years. Is there—talk about the whole history of the US approach to Israel and the Palestinian conflict.
THOMAS: I think that we had—when Israel was created and they declared themselves in 1948, I mean, Truman went along. They knocked on his door at three o’clock in the morning. He did the unheard-of thing to get out and recognize the state of Israel—and while we were still debating the whole situation at the UN. Left our own representatives high and dry. Well, every president has been confronted with that. Eisenhower tried to be a little bit more evenhanded. Nixon sent a man, an envoy, to the Middle East as soon as he took office. It was former governor Bill Scranton. And he came back after a fact-finding trip for about one month. He told President Nixon we should be evenhanded in the Middle East. Zionists went out of their mind, saying, what do you mean evenhanded? It’s like I’m telling you, why don’t you try to be fair? That report has gathered that much dust [inaudible] but it never saw the real light of day. And every president has been confronted with this issue. And it is an issue. People have the right to defend their own country. Two thousand years.
JAY: Now, Jimmy Carter, in the last few years, has actually—he was, I guess, the first person at that level to actually acknowledge Israel has nuclear weapons. He visited Gaza, he’s talked to Hamas, and he’s been saying there should be negotiation.
THOMAS: Hamas won the election. But if you read the news stories, they will say, oh, the Hamas took over Gaza, without ever saying it won an election. And former President Bush said that we would observe democratic elections. As soon as the Hamas won in Gaza, they shut down all aid, closed the doors, and so forth.
JAY: But did Carter—in terms of his policy towards Israel and Palestine, was he any different than all the other American presidents? When Carter was in power?
THOMAS: Yes. He got the first accord in the Camp David Accords, and Begin promised him a lot of things, a letter that will acquiesce to concessions. Never got the letter.
JAY: So President Obama comes to power with what seems like intent to do something different. What are the forces at play here? ‘Cause we’re winding up, as far as—I mean, you’ve said, and it seems rather obvious, that it’s the same policies we’ve always seen.
THOMAS: That’s right. I think American politics, pro-Israel. If you take a vote in Congress, maybe you might get five people vote against any further aid to Israel as it continues its occupation. That’s about it. They control—they have fast power.
JAY: Who’s “they”?
THOMAS: The Zionists.
JAY: And Obama went to AIPAC, the main lobby organization of the kind of right wing of the pro-Israel lobby, when he was running for president, and he said to AIPAC more or less what they wanted to hear, with the exception maybe of the no expansion of settlements. So he’s actually following through on what he campaigned on. He’s never really suggested a different policy, has he?
THOMAS: No, not really. He’s following through, that’s true. I don’t think he’s ever made any real commitments to the Palestinians.
JAY: In terms of what you understand about the inner workings of the White House and how decisions are made, are there any forces behind the scenes at play here to try to put pressure on Israel to have a different kind of policy? Or have they kind of given up on it?
THOMAS: I think President Obama gave up totally, early on. I don’t think even tried. He realized he’s going up against a stone wall. Why take that on when he has so many other problems?
JAY: So do you think that’s it for his administration in terms of the policy towards the Middle East?
THOMAS: I think he’d just as soon forget it if he could. But more and more I think you can never escape the Middle East problem, as no modern president has been able to. At some point it’ll come back to him.
JAY: At the next press conference with President Obama, assuming he calls on you—I don’t know if he liked your first question very much.
THOMAS: I’m sure he didn’t.
JAY: What do you want to ask him?
THOMAS: I want to ask him if he ever found out whether anyone in the Middle East has nuclear weapons.
JAY: Well, we’ll see if you ever get a chance to ask that again.
THOMAS: I doubt it.
JAY: Thanks for joining us. And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network. This is the beginning of a series of interviews with Helen Thomas, but they’ll be kind of interspersed, not one right after the other. We’ll let you know when the next one is.
Binyamin Netanyahu’s efforts to heal rift marred as Barack Obama branded ‘disaster for Israel’: The Guardian
Both sides deny snubbing the other in settlement row as insiders launch outspoken press attack on US leader
Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu leaves the White House following his meeting with US President Barack Obama. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, tried to smooth over a breach in relations with the US today, speaking out against unnamed confidants who described Barack Obama as pro-Palestinian and Israel’s “greatest disaster”.
Netanyahu made his first public comments after a fraught visit to Washington last week, where he held a long but low-key meeting with Obama that ended with significant disagreement.
Israeli reports said the US was pressing Israel to freeze settlement construction in East Jerusalem and to extend a temporary, partial curb on West Bank settlement building. But so far Netanyahu has shown no sign that he will bow to pressure from Washington. One of his most senior cabinet ministers was reported today as saying the US demands were unacceptable and there would be no compromise.
The Yedioth Ahronoth, an Israeli newspaper, sparked the premier’s anger when it quoted unnamed Netanyahu confidants delivering extraordinary criticisms of the US administration. One said Obama and Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, had “adopted a patently Palestinian line”.
“We’re talking about something that is diseased and insane,” the confidant told the paper. “The situation is catastrophic. We have a problem with a very, very hostile administration. There’s never been anything like this before. This president wants to establish the Palestinian state and he wants to give them Jerusalem … You could say Obama is the greatest disaster for Israel, a strategic disaster.”
Netanyahu admitted to his cabinet this morning that after his meetings with Obama, although there were some agreements, “there are matters that we have yet to agree on”. But he singled out the comments in the Yedioth as “anonymous, unworthy remarks”. “Relations between Israel and the US are those between allies and friends and reflect long-standing tradition,” Netanyahu said.
In the US, there was a similar effort to ease the rift. David Axelrod, a senior Obama adviser, said the US had a “deep, abiding interest in Israel’s security”. Despite the low-key nature of the meeting with Netanyahu which ended without a joint statement or customary photographed handshake, Axelrod told CNN: “There was no snub intended. This was a working meeting among friends.”
Washington spent much of last year trying to persuade Netanyahu to halt all settlement construction as a prelude to restarting peace talks with the Palestinians for the first time since Israel’s war in Gaza. However, Netanyahu agreed only to a partial, 10-month curb of settlement building in the West Bank. That brought initial US praise, but the dispute erupted again earlier this month when Israeli officials approved 1,600 new settler homes in East Jerusalem during a visit by the US vice-president, Joe Biden. That scuppered a programme of indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinians that Washington had spent months arranging.
Israel claims sovereignty over East Jerusalem, which it captured in 1967, but that is not recognised by the international community. Britain, and many others, regard the east of the city as under military occupation, like the West Bank. Settlement on occupied land is illegal under international law.
The Yedioth Ahronoth also quoted one unnamed senior Israeli minister, from the forum of seven top ministers, as strongly rejecting the US demands. “Our decision on this matter is not to give in, not to compromise and not to accept their list of demands,” the minister said. “The document of demands that the Americans submitted to Netanyahu in the White House is unacceptable.”
Netanyahu met with his senior ministers today and will hold more meetings this week. Reports said some wanted to work with the US to resume peace talks, but other more rightwing ministers were against a halt to settlement building in Jerusalem or any discussion of the future of Jerusalem during indirect talks. The latter included Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister, Moshe Ya’alon, the vice-prime minister, Eli Yishai, the interior minister, and Benny Begin, a minister without portfolio.
Like other Israeli prime ministers before him, Netanyahu has to balance pressure from the US with pressure from within his rightwing coalition. Some Labour party ministers from within the coalition have now threatened to quit. They want two key rightwing parties to be forced out of government and replaced with Kadima, the centrist party led by Tzipi Livni which polled first in elections last year.
Israel fears Obama heading for imposed Mideast settlement: Haaretz
U.S. President Barack Obama’s demands during his meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last Tuesday point to an intention to impose a permanent settlement on Israel and the Palestinians in less than two years, political sources in Jerusalem say.
Israeli officials view the demands that Obama made at the White House as the tip of the iceberg under which lies a dramatic change in U.S. policy toward Israel.
Of 10 demands posed by Obama, four deal with Jerusalem: opening a Palestinian commercial interests office in East Jerusalem, an end to the razing of structures in Palestinian neighborhoods in the capital, stopping construction in Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, and not building the neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo.
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But another key demand – to discuss the dispute’s core issues during the indirect talks that are planned – is perceived in Jerusalem as problematic because it implies that direct negotiations would be bypassed. This would set up a framework through which the Americans would be able to impose a final settlement.
It is not just Obama’s demands that are perceived as problematic, but also the new modus operandi of American diplomacy. The fact that the White House and State Department have been in contact with Israel’s European allies, first and foremost Germany, is seen as part of an effort to isolate Israel and put enormous political pressure on it.
Israeli officials say that the Obama administration’s new policy contradicts commitments made by previous administrations, as well as a letter from George W. Bush in 2004 to the prime minister at the time, Ariel Sharon. According to this view, the new policy is also incongruous with the framework posed by Bill Clinton in 2000.
Senior Israeli sources say that as a result of the U.S. administration’s policies, the Palestinians will toughen their stance and seriously undermine the peace process’ chances of success.
Moreover, sources in Jerusalem say that the new American positions undermine the principle of credibility that has guided U.S. foreign policy since the end of World War II. Ignoring specific promises made to its Israeli ally would make other American allies lose trust in its commitments to them.
Israeli officials warn that if the United States shirks its past commitments, the willingness of the Israeli public to put its trust in future American guarantees will be undermined – as will the superpower’s regional and international standing.
Israel allows clothes, shoes into blockaded Gaza for first time: Haaretz
Israel will allow a shipment of clothes and shoes to be delivered to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip for the first time in its almost three-year-old tight blockade of the enclave, Palestinian officials said on Monday.
They said the first 10 truckloads would be arriving via the Israeli-controlled Gaza border point on Thursday.
Israel is under international pressure to relax its blockade, which the United Nations says punishes Gaza’s 1.5 million people over their leaders – the Islamist group Hamas, considered by Israel and others a terrorist organization.
Israel prohibits shipments of cement and steel to Gaza on the grounds that Hamas could use them for military purposes.
Its long list of controlled goods also includes items that critics say have no apparent military value, such as children’s crayons and books.
Gaza has been getting most of its consumer goods via tunnels from neighboring Egypt, operated by smugglers who add on hefty surcharges. Gaza merchants said 10 truckloads would not fill their stocks and demanded that Israel release goods long held in its sea ports.
Egypt is building an underground wall to block the tunnels, which have been frequently bombed by the Israeli air forces since Israel’s offensive against Hamas 14 months ago in which some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed.
Stuck between a wall and an occupation: The Electronic Intifafda
Nora Barrows-Friedman writing from Aida Refugee Camp, Bethlehem, Live from Palestine, 29 March 2010
When Bilal Jadou’s grandmother was sick last year, and in need of immediate medical care, the family called the Jerusalem emergency service and requested an ambulance — only to hear on the other end of the line that no Israeli ambulances would be permitted to reach the house without permission from the Israeli military. “Try the Bethlehem ambulance service,” the emergency dispatcher told Jadou. When he called the Bethlehem ambulance, they told him to have his grandmother meet them at the other side of the main Bethlehem-Jerusalem checkpoint because they weren’t allowed to cross. Jadou’s house is on the other side of the sprawling apartheid wall, separated from his community and the West Bank, and in a permanent state of oppressive bureaucratic and administrative limbo as nearby settlements are intended to spread onto his land.
The Electronic Intifada correspondent Nora Barrows-Friedman interviewed Jadou, 26 years old, about his situation. They spoke inside Aida refugee camp, in Bethlehem.
Nora Barrows-Friedman: Tell us about your situation and why this story is so important in the context of what’s happening here in the Bethlehem area, especially in Aida camp, which is right up against the wall, cutting the land of families here in half.
Bilal Jadou: My family is separated from each other. We used to live in the refugee camp here and in our other house that used to be within five minutes walking distance from here. Since the wall was built, we can’t communicate as a family. Some of us live in this house in Aida, and the others live in our other house on the other side of the wall.
I have six brothers and three sisters. Two of the brothers, including me, and one of our sisters, are allowed by Israel to live in the house on the other side of the wall. No one else is allowed to be there. Now it sometimes takes two hours to cross the checkpoint in Bethlehem to see our family in Aida camp. Other times, the Israelis close the checkpoint entirely and we can’t see each other at all.
NBF: How did the Israelis choose who was able to live in the house on the other side of the wall?
BJ: They said it was purely because of “security reasons,” and we still don’t know why some got permission and some didn’t. Also, we can’t add anything to the house; we can’t build onto the house. At any time, they can come and take my permission and say it’s for “security reasons.”
NBF: Do you have a special ID card now? Such as a Jerusalem residency card? How are you identified as someone who lives on the other side of the wall?
BJ: I still have a West Bank Palestinian ID, with a special permission slip for just the Tantur area [where the house is]. If Israeli police catch me anywhere else other than at my house, or if they catch me working inside Jerusalem, they will take my permission away. I can just be inside the house, and nothing more.
NBF: So, if you want to buy groceries, or go to the bank, or get gasoline for your car, or get to the hospital, what do you do?
BJ: We can’t do any of these things. I can’t even drive a car inside the area near the house. We’re not allowed. We can’t even take a taxi to the checkpoint. We have to walk. If we want to buy groceries, we can only buy them inside the Palestinian territories. But we are not allowed to bring anything from inside the Palestinian territories to my house. So the only way I can get food and supplies to my house is to have friends inside Jerusalem buy our groceries, or whatever we need, and bring them to us.
We have no services except water and electricity, which come from the Palestinian side of the wall. Israel won’t allow us to have anything else. It’s a way to push us to leave this area and go to the other side of the wall. This is the only reason they’re doing this to us.
My grandmother got sick and we called the Israeli ambulance. They told us to coordinate with the Israeli soldiers, who then refused to allow the ambulance to reach us. The Palestinian ambulance told us that since they couldn’t cross the checkpoint, we had to bring my grandmother to the checkpoint and they would take her to the hospital in Bethlehem. Since we couldn’t use a car to bring her to the checkpoint, we put her on a donkey and walked her over there. But before we reached the checkpoint, my grandmother died.
NBF: On the other side of the wall, there is a lot of land that was cultivated by families in Beit Jala and Aida camp until the wall was completed in 2004. And then you have Gilo and Har Gilo settlements, right next to your house on the other side. Talk more about this policy of taking land, using the wall to separate communities, and forcing Palestinians to stay inside these ghettos in the West Bank.
BJ: There is a lot of land near our house owned by Palestinians. But we’re the last family who are allowed to stay there. Just a few months ago, we tried to expand our house a little bit; we built a shed that was only two meters squared. The Israeli police came and told us that we had to stop building. If we want to fix the house, the police come. If we paint our house, the police ask us to remove the paint. But then you look across the street, and you see Gilo settlement with their cranes and bulldozers and construction teams building all the time, expanding all day long.
NBF: The police come often to check to see if you have put paint on the walls. But what about the treatment you receive by settlers?
BJ: The settlers attacked us once. They built a fence around our house and told us to leave. But we went to the court to prove that this was our house, with deeds and documents since the Ottoman period. The court gave us back our land and the permission to stay on our land. Most of the time, though, we get the most terrible treatment from the Israeli soldiers. They come and attack us. Once, they came and took all of our furniture from inside the house and threw it outside. They told us, “find another place to live!” They sometimes come at 2:00 in the morning, taking us outside of the house, and searching to make sure we haven’t built anything or fixed anything inside the house.
I was once told by a soldier, after he took my ID card one night, to go to the checkpoint to retrieve it. I got to the checkpoint, and the soldier called me on my mobile phone, telling me that he was outside of the house, and I should come back to get it. I went back to the house, and then he called and said that he was at the checkpoint. This went on until 6:00 in the morning. Sometimes they take my ID card to other checkpoints so I’m forced to travel a long distance to retrieve it. They’re trying to put a lot of pressure on us so that we leave the area and they can expand the settlement.
NBF: Tell me about your family’s history. We’re sitting inside your home in the refugee camp. Where was your family from, originally, before they were expelled in 1948?
BJ: Originally, we’re refugees from al-Malha. It’s just one kilometer away, five minutes away by car. Some of my family fled in 1948 and came here. Even part of the refugee camp is on al-Malha land, inside the West Bank borders. When the Israelis invaded and occupied the West Bank in 1967, some of the family decided to go back to the house in al-Malha, inside the so-called Israeli area. So now we’re separated into three parts — my family in Aida camp, my brothers and sisters inside the house on the other side of the wall, and the rest in al-Malha. We haven’t been together as a family — we haven’t all sat down to dinner together — for six years.
Sometimes, if something is happening inside the camp, like a wedding for a friend or neighbor, we have to leave our house at nine in the morning to be sure we’re at the wedding by three in the afternoon. We’re affected a lot by the separation.
NBF: It used to take you five minutes to get to the camp from the house before the wall was built.
BJ: Yes, five minutes, not more. Sometimes, if I walk quickly, it used to take three minutes. Now, it’s half an hour just to walk to the checkpoint. Then I spend sometimes two, three hours inside the checkpoint.
NBF: What do you think about the next generation of Palestinians who are facing similar situations? When you get married and have children, what do you want for them?
BJ: I hope everything changes. The situation is extremely difficult, and I hope that the new generation can live in peace without any conflicts. Actually, when you mentioned marriage, this is a very depressing issue for me. I tried to get married recently. But I can’t, because I’m living in this area. If I marry a girl from Bethlehem, I can’t live with her in Bethlehem because then I’d have to move to the city and lose my land and my house. If I want to marry a girl from Jerusalem, she’d refuse. I don’t have an Israeli ID and I can’t go anywhere inside Jerusalem. This is no way to make a family. So I’m stuck.
I think I’ll never get married, because I need to protect my house. Maybe there’ll be a solution soon, and things will change.
Nora Barrows-Friedman is the co-host and Senior Producer of Flashpoints, a daily investigative newsmagazine on Pacifica Radio. She is also a correspondent for Inter Press Service. She regularly reports from Palestine, where she also runs media workshops for youth in the Dheisheh refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.
EDITOR: McCarthyism against Jews?
The following piece is of interest, as it joins the growing number or authors writing about the phenomenon, and it is typical also in another, important way: It discusses this process of social dislocation as if it is a problem faced by Israeli Jews alone, with Palestinians more or less excluded from the debate. The word “Palestinian’ appears once in this article, and the victim under discussion is an influential Jew Naomi Chazan, who, far from being a victim, is in control of the New Israel Fund, with more than NIS100M budget annually. This is unfortunately typical of the Israeli Zionist ‘left’ – who, since the start of colonisation in Palestine, kept themselves to themselves, had their arguments with themselves, and only disagreed with other Zionists – with the Palestinians there was no real dialugue, and there still isn’t. When they need to negotiate over Palestine, they negotiate with the Americans…
If those are the good guys, then…
Israel is sliding toward McCarthyism and racism: Haaretz
By David Landau
“In every generation a man is to consider himself as if he personally experienced the Exodus from Egypt.” That is the central message of the Haggadah, of the seder night and indeed of Passover itself – the Festival of Freedom.
The message isn’t necessarily confined to the experience of the Hebrew slaves, who were delivered from bondage. The entire epic of the Exodus is meaningful. Our generation, in particular, the generation of renaissance and occupation, might do well to consider the narrative from the Egyptian perspective.
In other words, how does a society professing the noblest values toward the Other – “In the best of the land bring your father and your brothers to live,” Pharaoh urges Joseph (Genesis 47:6); “the foundations of freedom, justice and peace,” Israel’s Declaration of Independence proclaims – how does such a society come to adopt policies of discrimination, persecution and endless conflict? “Let’s double-cross them,” the new pharaoh, the one who “knew not Joseph,” says of his Jewish minority. “Or else they’ll grow demographically, and when war comes, they’ll side with the enemy …” Sound familiar?
How, then, does a society morph in this way? The answer seems to be, inadvertently. Since last Passover, over the first year of Benjamin Netanyahu’s prime ministership, Israel has slid almost inadvertently a long way down the slope that leads to McCarthyism and racism.
Inadvertently. That must be the explanation. Otherwise, how to explain the dismal fact that during this year a heinous travesty was perpetrated against Naomi Chazan – and the streets of our cities weren’t seething with mass demonstrations? Major crossroads around the country were adorned with a literally Sturmer-like cartoon portraying this hitherto respected and distinguished woman, until recently a deputy speaker of the Knesset, who heads a fund that pours millions of philanthropic dollars into educational and civil, social projects in Israel – and thousands of decent people were not out there shouting, ‘Fascism shall not pass!’ One needn’t like all of the organizations that Chazan’s New Israel Fund supports to be outraged and disgusted and frightened by the style of the campaign that was mounted against her. (Full disclosure: I’ve lectured on occasion for the New Israel Fund.)
What’s so depressing about the Chazan affair is not so much the crude brutishness of her adversaries as the limp impotence of the many people who tut-tutted – and did nothing. When this form of inadvertence descends on an enlightened society, it numbs and paralyzes. That, perhaps, is how to understand a recent academic discussion broadcast on Army Radio about the “Nakba Law.” A noted jurist explained that a bill submitted by a group of MKs, slapping a three-year jail term on anyone mourning the Nakba [“the catastrophe,” as the Palestinians see 1948 and after] on Independence Day was unlikely to get through the Knesset. Even if it did, she went on, it would probably be struck down by the High Court of Justice. The criminal code, she explained, was not the appropriate means to deal with “the problem.” However, she added, completely matter-of-fact, a bill cutting off state funding from any local authority marking the Nakba on Independence Day would probably get through. Its curtailment of freedom of speech could be deemed proportionate. (A bill in this vein has since passed its first reading.) Not a word of reservation from this jurist or her interviewer, who himself is an academic lawyer. No value judgment. Just dry academic analysis.
Without making any ghastly comparisons, listening to this radio program, one found oneself thinking that in other countries where the regime steadily transformed from democratic to non-democratic, there must have been liberal-minded, gently spoken academics who provided meticulous, legalistic analysis of malevolent laws enacted against minorities.
As history, both ancient and more recent, teaches us, there is another vital component in the inculcation of a whole society with xenophobia. It’s the big lie, repeated over and over until ordinary people inadvertently come to regard it as truth. “Go and worship your God,” Pharaoh pretended to Moses, time after time. His own people no doubt believed him.
In our own case, this past year, Netanyahu has incessantly repeated his mantra that he’s merely doing in Jerusalem “what all my predecessors have done for 43 years.” The purpose of this pretense is to erase from the public mind, at home and abroad, the fact that two of his predecessors negotiated with the Palestinians and the Americans over dividing the city. The purpose, too, is deliberately to blur the hugely significant difference between building in the Jewish neighborhoods that have been developed over decades and forcibly inserting Jewish settlers into all-Arab neighborhoods like Sheikh Jarrah. The purpose, basically, is to obliterate any chance of implementing the “Clinton parameters” – Jewish areas to Israel, Arab areas to Palestine, Holy Basin to God [or an international consortium representing Him] and thus reaching a fair compromise on Jerusalem.
The demonstrations taking place on Fridays at Sheikh Jarrah offer some smidgen of hope that not everyone has been duped and silenced. The Naomi Chazan front was abandoned. The “Nakba Law” front was lost without a fight. The battle line in Israel’s war of survival as a Jewish and democratic state now runs through the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem. There, alongside the few brave Israelis out demonstrating, the president of the United States has planted his pennant, too. Is that the line, at last, where Israel’s decline will be halted?