Communal Groups Mobilize Against ‘Delegitimizers’ of Jewish State: Forward
Targets See New Push as Effort To Discredit Legitimate Criticism
By Nathan Guttman
Published March 31, 2010,
Organizer: CODEPINK’s Nancy Kricorian says she does not aim to delegitimize Israel.
The term, used to describe a broad spectrum of anti-Israel protests, has become a major rallying point for the American Jewish community and is the up-and-coming cause for Jewish organizations.
In particular, supporters of this emerging advocacy effort point to the campaign to boycott, divest from and sanction — BDS — Israel as a primary marker distinguishing “delegitimizers” from genuine critics. It’s a campaign that has gained traction on the left in recent years. And in the past few months, pro-Israel advocates have begun to mobilize against what they perceive to be efforts to delegitimize Israel as a Jewish state, whether via BDS or other means.
“The delegitimization and BDS movement is nationally coordinated, and it requires a national response,” said William Daroff, the Jewish Federations of North America’s vice president for public policy. “We need to move forward as a community to counter this cancerous growth.”
But while supporters of Israel see the fight against delegitimization of the Jewish state as a new frontier in the pro-Israel battle, critics believe that the term is used mostly to discredit opposition to Israeli policies.
“To be frank, the ‘de-legitimization’ issue is a fraud,” historian Tony Judt, director of New York University’s Remarque Institute, wrote in an e-mail to the Forward. Judt, a harsh critic of Israel, said: “I know no one in the professional world of political commentary, however angry about Israel’s behavior, who thinks that the country has no right to exist…. ‘De-legitimization’ is just another way to invoke antisemitism as a silencer, but sounds better because [it’s] less exploitative of emotional pain.”
Judt has written that he believes Israel’s settlement policies have made a binational one-state outcome to the Israel-Palestinian conflict all but inevitable — a stand that has led Israel advocates to label Judt himself a delegitimizer.
In the past year, JFNA and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs adopted resolutions calling for communitywide action against delegitimization. And the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s executive director, Howard Kohr, outlined a plan to fight Israel’s delegitimization by demanding the state’s admission into international bodies, such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
A March 10 meeting in New York marked the most significant attempt yet to formulate a communitywide response to this perception of delegitimization. Israeli officials and participants from major Jewish organizations and federations discussed the possibility of creating and funding a mechanism to track and respond to what they see as delegitimization efforts.
As a first order of business, participants raised the need to educate the Jewish community about the issue.
“Members of our community need to be knowledgeable and need to be able to answer to these allegations,” said Martin Raffel, JCPA’s senior vice president. “There is no one-size-fits-all solution. We will have to have tailored responses for each constituency.”
But seeking a response to delegitimization requires a clear definition of the problem. An in-depth study released in March by the Reut Institute, a Tel Aviv-based think tank, identifies delegitimization as an organized movement and goes to great lengths to define the elusive term in a way that draws a line between what authors of the 92-page report see as legitimate criticism of Israel and forms of protest that fall under the delegitimization category.
“We are asking people to go into the nuances. We need to keep in mind that not everyone is an Israel hater, but not everything is Israel’s fault,” said Gidi Grinstein, Reut’s founder and president.
The think tank’s paper defines delegitimization as criticism that “exhibits blatant double standards, singles out Israel, denies its right to exist as the embodiment of the self-determination right of the Jewish people, or demonizes the state.”
But, as Grinstein pointed out, identifying Israel’s delegitimizers can be tricky, since most do not see themselves as denying Israel’s right to exist.
“The effectiveness of Israel’s de-legitimizers, who represent a relatively marginal political and societal force in Europe and North America, stems from their ability to engage and mobilize others by blurring the lines with Israel’s critics,” the Reut paper states.
Would the students who disrupted the February 9 speech of Israeli ambassador Michael Oren at University of California, Irvine be delegitimizers? For most activists in the Jewish community, the answer is clear.
“They definitely are,” said Michael Kotzin, executive vice president of Chicago’s Jewish federation. “Instead of asking [Oren] about Israel’s policy, they are denying him the right to speak.”
Kotzin said that many of those pursuing the delegitimization agenda are naive and are exploited by activists who deny Israel’s right to exist.
According to Israel supporters dealing with the issue, the key is focusing not on the protesters’ actions but on their intentions, even if they do not acknowledge these intentions publicly.
“You need to dig under the surface and see what drives them,” Grinstein said. “Most of the students who protested Oren’s speech don’t understand the subtleties and believe they are not engaged in delegitimization, but those organizing them are.”
Nancy Kricorian of CODEPINK, a women’s anti-war group, might be seen as such an organizer. Kricorian coordinates CODEPINK’s boycott campaign against Ahava cosmetic products because the products are manufactured on a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank. But she rejected the thought that she was seeking to delegitimize the state. “This is only a way of changing the subject,” said Kricorian. “All we want is [for] Israel to respect human rights and international law. I don’t see how that delegitimizes Israel.”
At the same time, the broad-based coalition of Palestinian civil society groups that launched the BDS movement in 2005 declares that one of its goals is to promote the right of Palestinian refugees to return to the homes they lost — sometimes through mass expulsion — during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. A 1948 United Nations Security Council Resolution endorsed this right, but Israel rejects it on the grounds that the flood of returnees would spell the end of Israel as a Jewish state.
Reut and advocates for Israel argue that singling out Israel and demanding that it adhere to higher human rights standards than its adversaries is another form of delegitimization.
Yet, a higher standard for Israel is something that Judt, for one, unapologetically upholds. “People will say, ‘Why are we picking on Israel? What about Libya, Yemen? Burma? China?’” he writes in the March 25 issue of the London Review of Books. “Fine. [But] Israel describes itself as a democracy, and so it should be compared with democracies, not with dictatorships.”
As a country in “a difficult relationship” with its neighbors, Israel should be allowed a “certain margin of behavior,” Judt acknowledged in his email. But Israel’s relative strength compared to other regional nations gives it “even less excuse for criminality, law-breaking or violence than they do,” he said.
Amos Guiora, a law professor and former Israeli army senior military counsel, objected that Israel is judged by double standards even when compared with other Western democracies. Guiora, noted that attacks by German and American forces in Afghanistan that caused heavy civilian deaths received less censure from the international community.
“By what standard does Israel want to be judged?” Guiora asked. His reply was, “By a standard in which you judge countries that are in a very, very special situation.”
Those seeking to distinguish legitimate criticism of Israel from delegitimization cite another criterion: the labeling of Israeli policies as “apartheid.”
Yet, in recent years mainstream Israeli leaders have used the word to describe the danger the country faces if it does not resolve its conflict with Palestinians.
Recently, Ehud Barak, Israel’s defense minister and Labor Party leader, said bluntly, “If millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.”
Grinstein warned that fighting delegitimization must not devolve into hasbara, or public relations. The struggle, he said, is both about confronting those who question Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and making sure Israel pursues a path of seeking peace and an end to the occupation.
The Reut document states, “Clearly, an Israeli and Palestinian comprehensive Permanent Status Agreement that establishes a Palestinian state and brings about an ‘end of conflict’… would weaken the grounds of Israel’s de-legitimization.”
EDITOR: No More Rockets? Oy Vey…
Terrible news, this! If indeed there will be no rockets, it will be even more difficult to justify the next attack… but, not to worry, they will find seven different ways to do so. They always do.
Report: Islamic Jihad to stop rocket fire on Israel: Haaretz
Islamic Jihad on Sunday announced that it would cease firing rockets into Israel, Channel 10 news reported.
An Islamic Jihad spokesman, Daoud Shihab, made the announcement in an interview on Islamic Jihad radio, during which he reportedly said the militant group, “stopped the rocket fire into Israel for internal Palestinian purposes – first and foremost to help end the siege on the Gaza Strip.”
According to the Channel 10 report, Shihab went on to say that Islamic Jihad does not intend to reverse this decision, but clarified that “if Israel once again attacks Gaza, no one will be able to prevent the resistance operatives from responding to the attacks.”
An anonymous Islamic Jihad official later denied the attacks would stop, according to Israel Radio.
A senior Egyptian official involved in brokering past truces between Gaza militant groups and Israel said in a statement that the Egyptians had on Sunday stepped up diplomatic pressure on both parties to reduce tensions in the coastal strip.
“Egypt has conducted extensive calls at the highest level with both Israel and the Palestinian factions to contain the escalating tension in the Gaza Strip in order to prevent a deterioration of the situation,” the official said.
Meanwhile, Hamas spokesman Ayman Taha on Friday told the BBC that Hamas is working to curb rocket attacks against Israel by Gaza militants.
“The government in Gaza is in charge of the situation, and it does know clearly who launches rockets,” Taha told the BBC. “It is working hard to deter any faction from acting individually.”
Earlier this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshal to stop militants in the Gaza Strip from firing rockets against Israel.
Lavrov made his request in a telephone conversation, which, according to Russian news agencies, covered a variety of issues regarding the Middle East.
The Russian foreign minister told Meshal that the recent increase in rocket fire was unacceptable.
Meshal responded by reiterating Hamas’ declared stance that it was not interested in an escalation of tensions with Israel and would continue to try to maintain calm in the area.
However, days later, on Saturday, Meshal said that all options against Israel remain open, including war, according to Channel 10 news.
“We will do everything to obtain the rights stolen from us, including confrontation with the enemy,” said.
EDITOR: The great apologists rides again
Jacobson, a hopeless case of apologism for Israel, is again speaking of the terrible antisemitism, which he has been hoping and pining for for some time now, and at last he seems to capture it in his gun-sight… When calling Israel arrogant and speaking of war crimes is supposedly antisemitic, then surely we should all sop speaking and writing altogether, and if possible, stop thinking. For some people, no amount of Israeli brutalities will ever make the slightest difference.
Howard Jacobson: Peace becomes possible now that Israel is being treated like a grown-up: The Independent
Anti-Zionism of the sort that peppers letters pages has much to answer for
Taking the long view, it’s been a good few weeks for Israel. It won’t look that way, of course, to those who view the country from an extreme position – whether zealots unwilling to believe Israel can ever do a thing wrong, or zealots unwilling to believe it can ever do a thing right.
Nothing will assuage the passions of these fevered men, or deflect them from their mutual fascination; they are locked in a lewd embrace, each needing the heat of the other’s body to keep his own alive. But to the rational and the fair, it’s been a few weeks full of promise.
Call nothing certain, but Obama’s strict line with Netanyahu over the resumption of building in Ramat Shlomo appears to have woken the latter to an awareness, if not yet the practice, of realpolitik – realpolitik, paradoxically, being an acceptance that a concessionary spirit as often as not trumps principle.
The argument has been advanced that the houses in Ramat Shlomo are not to be confused with settlements on disputed land, that they are the completion of a project that has been going on for years without complaint, and in a part of Jerusalem not covered by the settlement freeze – a municipal not an international matter, in other words, a bit like the holes in the roads of Boris Johnson’s rubbish-dump London. To which the answer, since this is a family newspaper in which we ought not to resort to swearing, is “Tough!”
Where peace is the prize – and it can’t be a good few weeks for any party in which peace is not brought a little closer – such topographical niceties are not only brutally irrelevant, they are counterproductive. Never mind the rights and wrongs of it, in politics you must sometimes swallow your conviction of rectitude, just as in human relations you must sometimes accept that what looks right to you looks wrong to someone else.
Fanatical and uninformed anti-Zionism of the sort that peppers the letters pages of serious newspapers has much to answer for morally and intellectually, but the most serious charge against it is that while it satisfies the self-righteousness of its propounders, it does little to help those it calls victims, and still less to persuade those it calls oppressors.
Weary of the one-sidedness of international condemnation, successive Israeli administrations have turned away and pursued their own course, confident at least that America will go on winking at the obduracy into which it has been backed. With every misattribution of motive, with every lazy libel, that obduracy has grown stronger. As an observer one can feel it hardening one’s own heart. Malign misrepresentation leaves no room for subtle dialogue. Thus, many who would have been critical of the occupation in their own terms – which does not mean seeing it as Hamas or Ahmadinejad see it – are deflected from the real conversation and must expend their energies confuting the prejudices of scoundrels.
The recent Biden/Netanyahu spat has broken the enchantment. Never mind that the poorly taught and easily led will go on twittering about apartheid and genocide even if Israel pulls down every house it has ever built and moves its population on to Dizengoff Beach tomorrow – the argument now is between grown-ups. This is how you talk to friends. This is how you treat enemies. To gain A you must forfeit B, no matter that you think you have the paperwork to prove it’s yours. He who would win a bit in the long run must lose a bit in the long run too.
It’s far better for Israel to be in an argument with a specific country over a specific issue than to have its actual, never mind its spiritual existence, forever undermined by ideologues hunting in packs with misquotations in their pockets. So I see the expulsion of an Israeli diplomat by our Foreign Secretary as more good news.
This, too, has been couched in the language of sanctimony, the inviolability of British passports blah blah, the crime of targeted assassinations, but that’s an allowable hypocrisy. A state must say one thing while its citizens believe another. We all love targeted assassinations in our hearts, so long as it’s the right target and it isn’t our passport that’s been purloined to do it – a sophisticated parley with our consciences which we don’t require our government to reflect. From a newspaper, though, we expect a tone which at least acknowledges that we face both ways in matters such as these. So I was surprised to see a Guardian editorial reading like a 19th-century Foreign Office reprimand to a recalcitrant colony that had forgotten it was of the wrong caste and colour to be getting uppity.
“Both events in London and Washington,” the editorial said, “are the marks of an arrogant nation that has overreached itself.”
Let’s leave aside what’s arrogant and what’s not. What we call arrogance is almost always a cover for fear. And Netanyahu struts like a man whose fears run deep. But how can the rift with the American and British administrations reflect in any way on Israel as a “nation”? Did Mrs Thatcher’s taking back the Falklands make us an arrogant “nation”? Does our being in Afghanistan say anything about us as a “nation” at all? Some of us are pleased we’re there, some aren’t, and some don’t give a damn either way. We are not, as a nation, of one mind or heart in very much, if anything, we do. To imply otherwise would be to charge us with a collective flaw, and we all know what the word is for doing that.
It’s precisely because they are free of slurs of this sort, without unsavoury ethnic or socio-religious overtones, that Washington and London’s arguments with Israel are to be welcomed. They address political differences. Obama and Miliband have squared up to a country not a “nation”, they have taken issue with decisions made by the government of Israel, and not that unvariegated figment of disordered imaginations, “the Israeli people”, and thus they have liberated the entire debate from the question of what Balfour intended, whether the Holocaust has been exploited, who is and who is not a Zionist, etc, etc. And give or take the odd misguided editorial, letters from the usual suspects, and the on-line vituperation that clings like a spider web to the coat-tails of other people’s articles, such has been the liberated spirit of public commentary ever since Biden kept Netanyahu waiting for dinner.
Allowing that tomorrow is a terrifying place, we can take some hope from this. An Israel treated like other countries, held accountable for its political, not its supposed aetiological or genetic failings, is a country from which much might be expected, including peace.
EDITOR: Israel spills the Beans…
Israel’s ambassador tells the US public the very thing thery would rather not listen to: Israel has never changed its policy of the settlements and on dispossessing the Palestinians (neither does it plan to do so now…) and the US has always known this, and has actively supported it. What can Obama say to this? He cannot deny it. If he really wishes to change this policy, now is the time to say so, and DO SO. otherwise, he will go down in history as the Pied Piper of the Middle East collapse.
Israel envoy to the U.S.: Bilateral ties are ‘great’: Haaretz
Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, on Sunday described the ties between Israel and the U.S. as ‘great.’
In an interview with CNN, reporter Cindy Crowley said “I literally need a one-word answer. The state of U.S.- Israeli relations is…”
“Great,” Oren replied.
The envoy also said that conditions for renewing peace talks with the Palestinians are as good as they have been in some time, and that Israel is prepared to make difficult decisions in order to achieve peace.
“There has been 16 years of negotiations with the Palestinians, including two cases where Israeli prime ministers put complete peace plans on the table, including Jerusalem,” Oren said. “And throughout that entire period of peace-making, Israel’s policy on Jerusalem remained unchanged.
“We feel that now we should proceed directly to peace negotiations without a change in policy,” he added. “We understand that Jerusalem will be one of the core issues discussed in those peace negotiations, but the main issue is to get the peace negotiations started. We are waiting for the Palestinians to join us at the table. So far, they have not done so.”
He also addressed the dispute between Israel and the U.S. over construction in East Jerusalem, saying that “any Jew or Arab has the right to build legally in Jerusalem, as in any other city in the country.”
“That’s our policy,” Oren said. “The policy is not going to change.?
However, Oren added, “But we understand – we understand that Jerusalem is sensitive.”
Oren last month was reported to have said that Israel-U.S. relations were at a 35-year low because of the row that developed over the East Jerusalem construction.
Israel announced the plan to build 1,600 more homes for Jews in East Jerusalem during a visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden aimed at ushering in indirect peace negotiations with the Palestinians.
EDITOR: What next? US and the EU have gone to sleep again, after a nervous burst of theatrical energy
So the bad paly in Jerusalem is over, as is the sequel in Washington, and all the hard words and promises of undying love are said and done, and Easter is here, and Israel and Palestine will again be forgotten, or more accurately, forcibly suppressed in the West until the next explosion.
Not so in Arabia, where this issue never goes away, always seething below the surface of Arab and national policics, and nowhere more than in Egypt; here is one analysis we should at least try to listen to.
Total war next: Al Ahram Weekly
Depending on how Netanyahu responds to a Palestinian resistance operation that killed two Israeli soldiers, Gaza could soon see a return to all-out war, writes Saleh Al-Naami
With quick steps and without a sound Gamal, 19, returned at 6am Saturday to his home in the seafront village of Al-Zwaida in the centre of Gaza after another night of surveillance of the eastern front at Al-Maghazi Refugee Camp. The camp is located opposite his village to the east, near the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel. Like thousands of other members of Ezzeddin Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, Gamal helps protect the eastern border into Gaza, spending his nights monitoring and relaying any movement by the Israeli army.
There are several surveillance shifts around the clock. On Friday, a group of Al-Qassam lookouts spotted an Israeli special operations unit inside the border east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza. A firefight ensued, resulting in the death of the Israeli unit’s leader, whose rank was major, another soldier and the wounding of four others. Although several Palestinian factions claimed responsibility for the operation, observers of Palestinian affairs agree that Hamas was the perpetrator.
This was the first operation by Palestinian resistance fighters since the end of the war on Gaza, taking place deep in the heart of Gaza, not inside Israel or on the border. It also came in the wake of a rising demand to respond to Israel’s settlement and Judaisation policies in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Most recently, Israel’s prime minister decided to add the Hebron and Bilal mosques to the list of Jewish heritage sites; some believe this is grounds for a third Palestinian Intifada. At the same time, the incident came shortly after a key Hamas figure, Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, was assassinated in Dubai by the Israeli Mossad, followed by vows of revenge on the part of the Palestinian resistance movement.
Salah Al-Bardawil, a leading Hamas member, said that the operation east of Khan Younis proves that despite efforts to undermine Hamas, especially accusations that it has abandoned resistance methods, the group is the most capable among the Palestinian factions of hurting the occupation by utilising military and human resources in creative ways. “There are signs that thousands of Hamas supporters headed to martyr Al-Mabhouh’s home to inform his family that the operation was to avenge his death,” Al-Bardawil told Al-Ahram Weekly. “Hamas promised it would respond to his murder, and this is it.”
The Hamas leader believes that the operation was a “strong blow to a clique within Fatah that repeatedly claimed that Hamas was acting like Fatah in the West Bank by repressing and stifling resistance.” Al-Bardawil continued that, “the leaders of this clique are now embarrassed and annoyed, and not a single one of them has made any statements after the operation proved the falseness of all their claims.”
In the wake of the incident, the pressing question in Gaza now is whether it marks a qualitative change regarding conditions in Gaza, and would it end the unspoken truce that has prevailed thus far? Roni Daniel, military correspondent for Israeli Channel 2, reported that while Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak supports a military response to the operation, Barak insists this should not escalate into a full- fledged war on the scale of the last Israeli war on Gaza. Daniel added that sources close to Barak stated that, “as long as Hamas does not launch missiles and makes do with explosives, then [Israel’s] response will remain limited to specific targets in Gaza.”
Meanwhile, a number of army generals have called for continuing the policy of targeting leaders and activists of resistance groups for assassination. This would shore up Israel’s deterrence power, which has diminished lately, according to the military brass. The Hebrew website of Maariv newspaper quoted Zvika Fogel, artillery commander in Israel’s Southern Command, as saying that the calm that prevailed after the last war enabled Hamas to become stronger, which resulted in the latest incident.
“Israel’s response is well known to Palestinian groups: attacking weapons depots and tunnels in Rafah,” Fogel told Maariv. “But these methods no longer deter these organisations.” He said that the army must change its policy in dealing with the escalation on the part of the Palestinian groups, namely that vital targets should now be carefully chosen and precise assassinations should be carried out against group leaders. Fogel asserted that this had been a successful policy in the past and helped deter Palestinian resistance. “These leaders should be on the run and go underground, and not be given the opportunity to move or operate,” he added.
Meanwhile, Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz threatened that Gaza could be reoccupied and the rule of Hamas there brought to an end. “Israel cannot concede to Hamas being armed with long-range missiles,” Steinitz told Israel Radio. “Israel may have to reoccupy Gaza and end Hamas’s control there if it has no other choice.”
Noteworthy is the fact that the Israel opposition also supports the idea of responding to the incident. Former minister of internal security Avi Dichter, a leading member of the opposition Kadima Party, believes that the main dilemma facing Israel is Gaza, not Jerusalem. “The strategic predicament is how to destroy the terrorist infrastructure that Hamas is building in Gaza with assistance from Iran,” Dichter opined. If the Palestinian Authority is incapable of putting an end to it with the help of Arab states, then Israel must do it by itself, he said.
Many observers in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel believe that Israel is certain to respond to Friday’s skirmish, and is currently debating timing. Amos Harel, political commentator at Haaretz newspaper, argued that the operation was the first real security challenge for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu since coming to power one year ago. Like other rightwing leaders, Netanyahu claims that he is the most capable in dealing with security challenges.
Harel explained that Israel’s response would be dictated by a number of factors that Tel Aviv cannot ignore. While Netanyahu is eager to respond, he fears that a large-scale military operation would end the relative calm in settlements in southern Israel. The prime minister has claimed that this truce is clear evidence that the last war succeeded in achieving its goals. Harel noted that Friday’s confrontation came at a time when relations between Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama are at crisis point, in light of Israel’s continued settlement building. Netanyahu realises that a new war on Gaza requires Washington’s support and international cover, which is not available for the time being.
Israeli observers also assert that Netanyahu believes the most vital issue that must be addressed during his tenure is Iran’s nuclear capability, and that time, effort and relations should not be wasted on any other matter. Meanwhile, there are the implications of the Goldstone Report and the accompanying drop in Israel’s stature on the world stage. However, other observers argue that political and strategic reasoning is not the only factor influencing Israel’s conduct under Netanyahu. He is routinely trying to appease extremists in his governmental coalition, even at the expense of Israel’s interests, as witnessed in the recent debacle with the US.
In all events, it appears that Gaza may soon witness a severe escalation. Any response by Tel Aviv to the last resistance operation could compel Palestinian fighters to start launching new missiles into Israel, which could result in all-out war.
EDITOR: Peres the indestructible
The man who is the last living and active politician of the Israeli state, and responsible more than any other for its brutalities and its military actions for some six decades, never tires of playing the ‘Man of Peace’ role, while always acting as the ram against Palestine, and against any other Arab country throughout the long period he had been in power, though never elected to government throughout his career. It never stopped him, though.
Peres: Israel should ‘pay any price’ for Gilad Shalit: Haaretz
President Shimon Peres said Sunday that Israel should pay any price for the release of abducted Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit, Army Radio reported.
“We must continue to act and do everything we can, pay any price, for Gilad’s release,” Peres told Army Radio following his meeting with Shas’ Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.
Peres said that Israel was still waiting to hear Hamas’ response to the most recent offer to secure an exchange deal for the release of the abducted IDF soldier.
Shalit was abducted by Gaza militants in a cross-border raid in June 2006, and has been held in captivity since then. Hamas wants some 1,400 prisoners released from Israeli jails in return for handing over the soldier, including some responsible for deadly terror attacks in Israel.
Last week, Fatah strongman Mohammed Dahlan said negotiations for Shalit’s release have been derailed due to internal disagreements between Hamas leaders.
In January this year, a senior Hamas official warned that despite unprecedented progress in the negotiations with the German mediator, the Islamist movement was unlikely to accept Israel’s latest offer for Shalit.
The President also met with Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar, during which he referred to the recent decision to relocate the emergency room at Ashkelon’s main hospital due to the finding of a graveyard beneath the site which stirred a bout of criticism regarding the health ministry’s decision.
Some critics accused Netanyahu of acquiescing to pressure from the ultra-Orthodox community, which was adamant about not building over the graveyard. The cost of moving the building site of the ER room is estimated at NIS 160 million.
“It is unfortunate that the issue was solved only after media sensation, and not because of common sense,” Peres said.
Cabbing for Israel: Al Ahram Weekly
There appears no end to the moral depravity of Western politicians when it comes to cheerleading for the racist-colonial entity of Israel, writes Stuart Littlewood* in London
There can be few sights more pathetic than ex-ministers and chums of Tony Blair offering to use their government contacts to help influence policy on behalf of business clients.
“I’m like a cab for hire,” said Stephen Byers when secretly filmed by a Channel 4 TV Dispatches programme. Byers could be “hailed” for £3,000 to £5,000 per day.
And so a new expression was born in the sleazy world of Westminster: “political cabbing”.
The latest revelations come only a few months after another Channel 4 Dispatches report, by Peter Oborne, showed how large numbers of MPs were “stooging” — or “cabbing” — for Israel. Mr Oborne reported that a majority of Conservative MPs and half the shadow cabinet are signed-up “Friends of Israel”, and millions of pounds sterling flow into the bank accounts of MPs and parties although only a fraction of these “contributions” are visibly accounted for.
Sir Richard Dalton, a former British diplomat who served as consul-general in Jerusalem, observed: “I don’t believe, and I don’t think anybody else believes, these contributions come with no strings attached.”
Mr Oborne showed how Labour and Conservative “Friends of Israel” take dozens of MPs on free trips to Israel, where they are guests of the Israeli government. Few, if any, declare this interest when speaking in parliament. He also showed how one of the Conservative Party’s big donors has vested interests in illegal settlement development in the West Bank and in Bicom, an Israeli public affairs outfit, and how the party’s leadership is subject to foreign pressure.
What harm does “cabbing” for Israel do? Large numbers of MPs (and many parliamentary candidates) are exposed to the Israel lobby’s influence, and its message is carried through into parliamentary work causing great damage to our parliamentary democracy, harm to Britain’s reputation throughout the world and risk to our security because a just solution in the Holy Land is prevented by such partisanship.
The majority of Conservative MPs and MEPs are Friends of Israel members. The lobby also claims a very large number of Labour MPs and ministers. Membership is said to be a necessary step to high office.
The Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel (LDFI) website brazenly states that its first aim is to maximise support for the state of Israel within the party and parliament and develop and maintain a broad-based LDFI membership inside and outside of parliament. Conservatives Friends of Israel have a “Fast Track” group for parliamentary candidates fighting target marginal seats. Senior Conservatives try to justify their support for the foreign military power by insisting that Israel is “a force for good in the world” and “in the battle for the values that we stand for, for democracy against theocracy, for democratic liberal values against repression, Israel’s enemies are our enemies and this is a battle in which we all stand together.”
This partisanship undermines a number of the principles on which our standards in public life are founded. One of these requires holders of public office not to place themselves under any financial or other obligation to outside individuals or organisations that might seek to influence them in the performance of their official duties. Nowhere is this disregard for principle more dramatically demonstrated than in the appointment of Israel flag-wavers to the chairmanship of our most important security bodies — the Intelligence and Security Committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Defence Committee.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown told Labour Friends of Israel that they were “one of the great influences on the whole of the Labour movement… I will continue to do what I can both to defend Israel and to protect the security of Israel’s borders… I count myself not only a friend of Israel but someone who wants to support the future of Israel… we will do everything that we can to work with Israel.”
Conservative opposition leader David Cameron has said: “The belief I have in Israel is indestructible — and you need to know that if I become prime minister, Israel has a friend who will never turn his back on Israel.”
Both leaders are patrons of the Jewish National Fund, an organisation with a sinister purpose.
Lobbying will be the “next political scandal”, says Cameron blissfully unaware of the irony of his remark.
When Tzipi Livni, leader of Israel’s main opposition party, Kadima, and foreign minister during the murderous blitzkrieg on Gaza civilians more than a year ago, recently cancelled a visit to Britain after an arrest warrant was issued against her by a British court, Israel complained that, “we have to put an end to this absurdity, which is harming the excellent bilateral relations between Israel and Britain.”
Brown responded by insisting that Livni was welcome and promising to change the law that allows British courts to issue warrants for war crimes suspects. Foreign Secretary David Miliband reinforced this by saying the British government was determined that arrest threats against visitors of Livni’s stature would not happen again. “Israel is a strategic partner and a close friend of the United Kingdom. We are determined to protect and develop these ties,” he said. “Israeli leaders — like leaders from other countries — must be able to visit and have a proper dialogue with the British government.”
Livni is not even a serving minister. And far from apologising for the slaughter of Gazans a year ago, this odious individual declared: “I would make the same decisions all over again.” For decent people she is beyond the pale and unwelcome.
Nevertheless the UK attorney-general has told the world that the UK government intends to protect high-ranking Israeli officials from arrest in the UK. Speaking at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Baroness Scotland said Israeli leaders should not face arrest for war crimes under the law of universal jurisdiction. “The government is looking urgently at ways in which the UK system might be changed to avoid this situation arising again. Israel’s leaders should always be able to travel freely to the UK.”
Why? There can be no hiding place for those accused of genocide, crimes against humanity, extra-judicial assassination, war crimes, torture and forced disappearances. States that are party to the Geneva Conventions — some 194 of them, including Israel — are obliged to seek out and either prosecute or extradite those suspected of having committed “grave breaches” of the conventions and “bring such persons, regardless of their nationality, before its own courts. It may also, if it prefers, and in accordance with the provisions of its own legislation, hand such persons over for trial to another High Contracting Party concerned, provided such High Contracting Party has made out a prima facie case.”
The Geneva Conventions are treaties, solemnly entered into, that contain universal rules limiting the barbarity of war. “Grave breaches” means wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, the causing of great suffering or serious injury to body or health, and other serious violations of the laws of war. Israel is well practised in all of these.
Brown and Miliband, “cabbing” like fury, are happy to dismantle our obligations under international law in order to save their unsavoury friends and allow Israel’s worst thugs to walk the streets of our capital.
“Cabbing” for Israel even extends to making light of the theft by Mossad agents of the passport ID of several British citizens in a mission to assassinate a Hamas operative in Dubai. It was not the first time this sort of thing has happened. Miliband announced the expulsion of an unnamed individual on the Israeli Embassy staff. This feeble slap on the wrist was not nearly enough to wipe the smirk off Ambassador Prosor’s face.
MP George Galloway called for a more robust response — the closing of the embassy. “Every British citizen travelling in the Middle East has been endangered by the actions of Mossad operating from the Israeli Embassy in London. Protecting British citizens abroad demands nothing less than closing that centre of espionage at home.”
That’s more like it.
Miliband’s and Brown’s friends are not my friends — or anyone else’s as far as I can see. The idea that Israel and the gangsters who run it have any value to us as strategic partners is a figment of their tiny imagination. George Washington’s warning of years ago seems all the more appropriate today: “The nation which indulges towards another habitual fondness is in some degree a slave… a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils.”
Who, if they had any integrity, would “cab” for a regime that thieves, murders, assassinates, carries out ethnic cleansing and shows utter contempt for international law, human rights, UN resolutions and the normal codes of human conduct? Who would “cab” for a regime that, by using overwhelming military might, has systematically impoverished its neighbours and resorted to starvation tactics to make them submit?
Who, if they had a shred of honour, would “cab” for a regime whose leaders are wanted for war crimes?
Be warned, you parliamentary candidates, when you come a-knocking for my vote. The first question will be “Are you cabbing for Israel?”
IDF investigating death of diabetic Palestinian delayed at checkpoint: Haaretz
The IDF is investigating the circumstances of the death on Saturday of a 63-year-old Palestinian man who had been delayed earlier at the Al-Hamra checkpoint in the northern Jordan Valley, Army Radio reported.
Mohammad Damen Abed Al-Karim E’lieyat, a diabetic with high blood pressure, made several attempts to pass through the checkpoint but was held up by Israeli authorities because he held French citizenship, according to the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency.
E’lieyat, who suffered from diabetes and high blood pressure, was allowed to pass after several hours, but later died in a taxi. Palestinian medical officials said he died of a heart attack and dehydration.
On Sunday morning, MK Ahmed Tibi (United Arab List-Ta’al) said Defense Minister Ehud Brak was responsible for E’lieyat’s death and expressed hope that French President Nicolas Sarkozy would become involved in the matter.
ibi: Barak responsible for Palestinian death at checkpoint: Ma’an News
Bethlehem – Ma’an/Agencies – Palestinian Knesset Member Ahmad Tibi said Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak bears responsibility for the death of a diabetic at a West Bank checkpoint, Israeli media reported.
“Ehud Barak is personally responsible for his cruel death. The orders at roadblocks require the humiliation and oppression of a civil population, and the person who issued the order is responsible for the death of a Palestinian-French civilian,” said Tibi according to the Israeli daily Yedioth Aharonoth.
Mohammad Damen Abed Al-Karim E’lieyat, 62, from the village of Dir Abu Da’eef in Jenin, was en route to the Jordan Valley but was barred from transit for several hours at the Al-Hamra checkpoint in Tubas. E’lieyat, diabetic with high blood pressure, died of a severe heart attack shortly after being allowed to cross.
E’lieyat made several attempts to cross but was turned back by Israeli authorities who said that he was unable to pass because he held French citizenship.
An Israeli military spokesman told Ma’an that a complaint was filed with the Jericho DCO following the death.
Regime change: AL Ahram Weekly
Barack Obama doesn’t want to impose a peace deal. He wants to create an Israeli government that can negotiate one, writes Graham Usher in New York
The Middle East peace process is in thrall to Israel’s decision to build 1,600 Jewish homes in the Ramat Shlomo settlement in occupied East Jerusalem. On 28 March the Arab League, meeting in Sirte, Libya, tied its backing for future negotiations to Tel Aviv “stopping all settlements in occupied Palestinian territories, including Jerusalem”.
The day before, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the same, burying for now any chance of American mediated “proximity” talks between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
The crisis has endured not because of Jewish settlement construction in Arab East Jerusalem, which, as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu says, has been the constant policy of every Israeli government since 1967. It has endured because of a hardening American stance to that policy and an Israeli government that insists upon it.
Last year United States President Barack Obama tempered his demand for a complete settlement freeze throughout the occupied territories in deference to Netanyahu. The Israeli prime minister said such a sweeping policy change would wreck his coalition and could fracture the army in the West Bank.
Obama is now making the same demand in full knowledge that it will tear Netanyahu’s coalition apart. That is the aim. The US president clearly no longer sees Netanyahu as part of the solution but as part of the problem.
The change was registered most tangibly when the two men met in Washington last week like “thieves in the night”, in the phrase of one Israeli commentator. The president was fresh from his success of getting his signature health reform bill through Congress, a victory that overnight changed his profile from a leader on the ropes to a fighter who can win.
Netanyahu was still basking in the rapture of his reception by 7,500 delegates at the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). He had dismissed American demands to rescind the Ramat Shlomo decision with a wave of the hand. “Jerusalem is not a settlement,” he said. “It is our capital.”
It was a battle of wills, in which, this time, the American president did not back down. At the meeting he told Netanyahu Israel’s various offers to get negotiations restarted were “insufficient”. Instead, he laid down a choice to the Israeli leader: engage seriously in negotiations with a view to ending the conflict, which is an American national interest, or maintain your current ultra-nationalist and messianic coalition, which is not.
Israeli sources say Obama then made several demands of Netanyahu. In East Jerusalem he wanted the Israeli leader to reverse the Ramat Shlomo decision; end all new settlement construction; refrain from demolishing Palestinian homes; and allow Palestinian “commercial interest” offices to be opened.
Obama also reaffirmed the Palestinian position that any proximity talks had to include substantive issues like settlements and borders and not mere “procedures”.
Finally, he wanted the Israeli army to redeploy to positions held before the outbreak of the Intifada Al-Aqsa in September 2000: in effect restoring the Palestinian Authority to full security control in the eight main West Bank Palestinian cities.
Netanyahu was said to be “excessively concerned and upset” by these ultimatums. It’s easy to see why. He knows he can barely meet one of them and keep his coalition intact.
Obama knows it too. Simultaneous with raising the heat on Netanyahu, his administration has been urging Tzipi Livni, head of Israel’s main opposition Kadima Party, to consider joining the government. It has also asked the coalition Labour Party to draw a line between itself and nationalist and religious parties opposed to a peace agreement with the Palestinians.
The aim is to forge a new centrist coalition out of the ruins of a rightist one. With such a government, Obama believes he can revert to what had been his grand plan for Middle East peace: a resumption of Israeli- Palestinian negotiations from the point they left off under the premiership of Kadima’s Ehud Olmert.
Combined with a settlement freeze and PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s plan to build national institutions, Obama believes an agreement can be reached within 24 months. On the bases of understandings agreed during a decade of negotiations Abbas has said a deal can be reached in six.
But it is improbable any deal can be negotiated with an Israeli government that has Netanyahu at the head. It’s not just because he thinks the PA is incapable of governance. It is because he knows a real Palestinian state would pose a mortal threat to his desire to colonise what remains of Arab East Jerusalem and keep large swathes of the West Bank. After his meeting with Obama, he also knows he is in the fight of his political life.
In 1998-99 then-US president Bill Clinton — in a quiet pincer movement with Israel’s Labour Party opposition and the Yasser Arafat-led PA — so out-flanked the first Netanyahu coalition that it fell apart under its own contradictions. Obama wants to play the same trick twice.
Ambassador Oren: Israel protects US troops: Y Net
Envoy to Washington tells CNN intel, equipment Israel gives to US helps in its war against terror
Israel’s Ambassador to Washington Michael Oren said Sunday that the relations between the US and Israel were protecting the lives of American soldiers serving abroad, as Israel supplies Washington with intelligence and equipment necessary for their wellbeing.
Oren was responding to a statement to Congress made by the commander of the US Central Command, General David Patraeus, who spoke about the Arab nations’ response to the close ties between the two countries.
Speaking in an interview with CNN, Oren said that if Israel did not exist, extremists in the region would join Al-Qaeda in its anti-American sentiment. “The US is much safer thanks to Israeli-American cooperation,” he said.
The ambassador said Israel supplies the US with intelligence and equipment its troops use to fight terrorists.
He defined the countries’ relationship as “excellent”. Oren also accused the Palestinians of being unwilling to enter into negotiations and added that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did something no prime minister had done before him by freezing construction in all settlements for ten months.
Oren said Israel was waiting for the Palestinians to respond to this gesture, and that Israel was committed to discussing with them the core issues at stake.
The ambassador claimed that peace initiatives were more likely to succeed while Arab nations continued to view Iran as the central threat in the region, rather than Israel.
Regarding the dispute over Jewish construction in east Jerusalem, Oren said that Israel had always seen the city as its capital, and that “any Jew or Arab has the right to build legally in Jerusalem, as in any other city in the country”.
He added that Netanyahu was not always aware of every home approved for construction in the city. “He’s not the mayor, he has a country to run,” Oren said.
EDITOR: What Does Israel Want?
Well, it is much less mysterious than Gideon Levy believes… Israel wants, and has always wanted, to continue controlling and settling the OPT, and to remove as many Palestinians from there as the opportunities allow, and if possible, to ‘cleanse’ the whole country of its indigenous population. What is not clear about that? Everything they have done over the last 60 odd years points in that direction.
Palestinian aspirations are clear, but what does Israel want?: Haaretz
By Gideon Levy
Does anybody know what Benjamin Netanyahu wants? Has anybody ever understood what his predecessors wanted? Where are they headed? And where are they leading us? One after another, Israeli politicians have been asked these questions, only to reply with the standard rejoinders: “You don’t expect me to answer this question” or “Let’s leave this for the negotiations.” Vague answers, obfuscations, evasive and noncommittal cliches – promises, promises. There was one clear, unequivocal answer – none. There is no other country whose citizens, friends and enemies have not the slightest clue about which direction it is facing. For our enemies not to know is understandable, but don’t we deserve to know more? Don’t we at least deserve to know the ultimate goal?
While the Arabs have always declared their aspirations – and did so with clarity, precision, sharpness and at times extremism, the Israelis have donned masks. While the goals of warring parties in international conflicts are known to all, and while everyone knows what the Palestinians are after in the Middle East – the ’67 lines, a state, a solution to the refugee problem, the right of return – nobody knows what the Israelis want. Do they wish to annex the territories? Come on. Do they want to evacuate them? Not now. If not now, when? It remains unclear. How much of the territories? Nobody knows.
A few days ago, journalists broached the question of a construction freeze in Jerusalem to a few ministers. Almost all of them refused to give a response. Why should they? This is nothing less than a scandal. A minister who is not ready to state his position on an issue is derelict in his duties. When a prime minister refrains from doing so, it is 10 times as grave. While Swedish law obligates the publication of every letter sent from the office of a minister, we cannot even extract a response from our top officials over critical issues.
The blame, as usual in these instances, is shared by us all. Through the years we have implicitly agreed that our leaders would guide us on the basis of fraud, or at the very least distortion. The mantra of there’s-no-need-to-say-it-aloud has become a matter of consensus, almost an axiom.
The conventional thinking whereby striving for peace is likened to market bartering and late-night horse-trading, as if it were verboten to clearly specify a final price, has become official policy. What might work for the illusory world of advertising and marketing, or the avarice of the consumer culture, has become a philosophical cornerstone in this country. Vagueness is the message. Perhaps this country has no goal, or a way to get to a goal, and the vagueness is meant to obfuscate this disgrace.
Is the prime minister of Israel ready to withdraw from the Golan Heights in exchange for peace with Syria? Yes or no? Don’t we deserve to know? Which parts of the West Bank, if any, is he ready to evacuate? And what, for heaven’s sake, does our defense minister want? What are his policy goals? Does anybody know? And why is it that if we were to know the answer, this would weaken our position and not strengthen it? Is vagueness tantamount to strength? Is trickery a modus operandi?
Our amateur merchants, as is their wont, will never reveal their opinions. No wonder their wholesale marketing strategy has proved to be a resounding failure. Israel’s global standing is at an all-time low due to, among other things, ambiguity and a loss of direction. Even the all-knowing president of the United States has no idea what his ally wants. Now at least he is trying to get an answer by saying, “Tell me what it is you people want.” It is doubtful whether he will get the answer he is looking for.
Forty-three years after the start of the occupation, no one, either here in Israel or anywhere in the world, knows what we really want and in which direction we are heading. Thus, we have not only become the only country in the world without clearly defined borders, we are also the only country without clearly defined national goals.
In William Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” Shylock forces Antonio to agree to a loan on highly unfavorable terms. Yet the Jew provides us with one of the most memorable monologues ever written: “If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” The monologue given by the merchants of Jerusalem, on the other hand, is far more wretched. “If they give, then they’ll receive,” or something like that.