1050 Days to the Israeli Blockade of Gaza:

Somebody tell O’Bummer!

Help to stop the next war! Support Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions of the Israeli regime

Support Palestinian universities – spread the BDS campaign – it is what people under the Israeli jackboot ask you to do

Any army fighting against children, has already lost!

Israeli War Criminals – to the International Criminal Court, NOW!

Make Zionism History!

One year since the Gaza Carnage by Israel’s murderers! We shall

not forget!

Demand the destruction of Israeli WMDs NOW!

EDITOR: Killing, stealing and lying – the perfect combination

Apart from all the other violent crimes committed against Palestine and Palestinians in the last six decades, Israel has also fought against the Palestinian economy without respite. Until the 90’s, it was not even allowed to operate a bank in the OPT, and since then Israel has been delaying or canceling many of the payments due to the PNA, making life impossible for all Palestinians. The added offence is the fact that much of this funding comes from donors, intending it for Palestine, and then it ends in Israeli hands. Does this way of fighting a weak and disenfranchised people remind you of anything else in recent history? No prizes for the right answer. This the way that money destined for Palestine has been financing the occupation for decades. It may be international piracy, but it is not even commented upon in the democratic, liberal western world, so keen on ‘peace’.

Israel seizing hundreds of millions of shekels meant for Palestinian services: Haaretz

For the past 15 years, Israel has been channeling hundreds of millions of shekels it had collected in the West Bank into its state coffers. The move is considered illegal, since international law prohibits an occupying power from appropriating the fruit of economic activity in an occupied territory.

Following protests by military lawyers, the deputy attorney general has ruled that the practice should be stopped and ordered an inquiry into whether the Civil Administration in the West Bank should be compensated retroactively.
“Following staff work by an interministerial team composed of representatives of the Finance Ministry, Justice Ministry and Civil Administration, it has been agreed that the … said fees will be entered into the Civil Administration’s budget. The technical aspects of the affair will be sorted out in the coming weeks.”

The funds in question are collected by the Civil Administration, overwhelmingly from Israelis. They include fees and levies for various activities such as royalties from quarries and levies on public auctions. The sums are estimated in the hundreds of millions of shekels, sometimes reaching as much as NIS 80 million a year.
Until the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, the funds were transferred to the Civil Administration to be used for operational expenses as well as for infrastructure and welfare services for Palestinians in the territories. The Oslo Accords dictated the closing down of the administration, the funds in question were reclassified as income to the Israel Lands Administration and were redirected to state coffers.

The Civil Administration, however, continued to operate in Area C of the West Bank, working on infrastructure, planning and construction. The funds are still channeled to the state, although international law prohibits an occupying power from appropriating the fruit of economic activity in an occupied territory. Funds collected in American-occupied areas of Iraq, for example, are channeled to the United States, and, except for 5 percent that goes to Kuwait, are returned for direct investment in Iraq.

Budget ramifications
Recently, a lawyer at the Military Advocate General’s Office said the transfer of such funds to the state was improper. Because the issue is complex and has budget ramifications far beyond the military, the authorities entrusted the inquiry to Deputy Attorney General Malchiel Blas.
He ruled that the direct transfer of the funds to the state budget should cease. A team that includes officials from the treasury, Justice Ministry and Civil Administration is now examining the implications of Blas’ decision.

At the team’s meetings, the Civil Administration has requested that the money again be directly channeled to its coffers. The Finance Ministry, by contrast, proposed that a fund be set up for the money, which would be divided among various ministries investing in the territories, such the transportation, agriculture and industry, trade and labor ministries.
Another question facing the team is whether the Civil Administration should be compensated for the funds it lost to the state. The Finance Ministry is strongly opposed, and claims that in the past 15 years the state has invested in the West Bank, apart from the settlements, more than double the amount it has collected. The government will make the final decision.

“This income was registered as part of state income, and the Finance Ministry budgeted all the activities of the Civil Administration and the military in the area out of the state budget,” the Justice Ministry said in a statement.
“Recently … it turned out that the issue should be arranged in a way that would make it obvious that the income should be registered as part of the Civil Administration’s budget, as authorized by the Knesset.”
The Finance Ministry said: “It should be noted the question of whether the funds are registered as state income or Civil Administration income is a technical question, because at the end of the day the State of Israel invests in the area amounts considerably larger than the fees it collects.

Israelis must integrate to survive: The Guardian CiF

The increase in ultra-Orthodox Jews and Arabs is a social timebomb that threatens the Jewish state’s long-term survival
If you’re interested in Israel’s future, all you need to know is one statistic: among Israeli kids in their first year at primary school, about half are Arabs or ultra-Orthodox Jews. And their portion is expanding. Looking forward, a very different Israeli society is emerging, with its Jewish secular core shrinking. Alas, as this scenario matures the country is going to face growing difficulties in defending itself and sustaining its economy.

Israeli Arabs and ultra-Orthodox Jews are exempt from military service, and are under-represented in the workforce. As their relative weight in society keeps growing, Israel risks security and economic implosion, since fewer and fewer soldiers and employees will protect and provide for an expanding population of welfare recipients. The Jewish state’s long-term survival depends on reversing the trend of non-participation among its Arab and ultra-Orthodox citizens.

The country’s leaders are aware of the social timebomb on their hands. General Gabi Ashkenazi, the IDF chief of staff, warned that given the demographic trends, “within a decade or two, only few will be drafted”. The finance minister, Yuval Steinitz, argued that tradition and fear lead Arab women and ultra-Orthodox men to stay at home or study the Torah, respectively. “We must expand employment in these populations,” he said. A senior government economist puts it more bluntly: “We carry an elephant on our backs, and it’s getting heavier. We have perhaps 15 years to deal with this problem, or the elephant will bury us under its weight.”

Throughout its 61-year history, Israel went through several phases of social change fuelled by successive waves of Jewish immigration – Holocaust survivors, Sephardic Jews from Arab and Muslim countries, a million immigrants from the former Soviet Union, tens of thousands from Ethiopia. But the pool of new immigrants has dried, and the current change is purely domestic, stemming from the high birthrates of Muslim Arabs and ultra-Orthodox Jews.

Israel’s founding father, David Ben-Gurion, designed a melting-pot society that brought Jews from many diasporas and turned them into Hebrew-speaking Israelis. Ben-Gurion promoted an ideology of “statehood”, putting national symbols and organs – and the IDF in particular – above tradition and religion. But he left out the non-Zionist groups: the Arabs, suspected of disloyalty and spared of conscription, and the ultra-Orthodox, who sought to preserve their peculiar way of life through educational autonomy and draft exemption.

Over time, both groups’ weight and influence have grown. The ultra-Orthodox lobbied successfully for child-support incentives and for exemption from teaching “core curriculum” – math and English – in religious schools. The Arab community has demanded more equality, but unlike their ultra-Orthodox counterparts, Arab parties have never been part of the governing coalition.

But special treatment comes with a price. At the personal level, freedom from military service extends your youth, but also bars opportunity. In Israel, the military serves as the basis of networking. Our Oxford and Cambridge are the elite army and air force units. (Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his key political ally, defence minister Ehud Barak, served together in the special forces.) An Arab or ultra-Orthodox seeking a job, even with an academic degree, stays out of the club and often faces prejudice and discrimination in the workplace.

At the national level, the growing influence of previously marginal groups fuels social tension and calls for oppression, especially during quiet periods in the external Arab-Israeli conflict. Israel’s third-largest political party, Israel Beitenu – led by the foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman – campaigned for imposing loyalty oaths as precondition for citizenship, aiming at Israeli Arabs. Lieberman had previously suggested transferring Arab-populated parts of Israel to a future Palestinian state.

Anti-Orthodox activists seek to curb their adversaries’ birthrate through cutting child support incentives. It works: a recent Bank of Israel study found that expanding child-support incentives in the 1990s influenced a higher birthrate among Arab and ultra-Orthodox families. Subsequent cuts when Netanyahu was finance minister have reduced it. The anti-Orthodox also demand to impose the “core curriculum” in all state-funded schools, arguing that ignorance of math and English sentences you to unemployment, or to low-level jobs.

Netanyahu agrees. Speaking at a recent business conference, he called to teach math, English, and even Chinese in all Israeli schools, in order to prepare kids for the modern job market. “We should tap the great talents among the ultra-Orthodox and minorities (Arabs), who are currently not partners in our knowledge industry,” he said. How? The key is education and get-a-job incentives, Netanyahu told me recently. “I already gave them sticks” – welfare cuts – “and now it’s time for carrots,” he said.

But Netayahu’s politics interfere with his economics. The ultra-Orthodox parties are his loyal coalition partners. Their price for making him a second-time prime minister was more child-support incentives. Netanyahu rightly wants them to study the “core curriculum”, but he would not risk his job by confronting them. And the Arab community would not trust a right-wing government where its nemesis, Lieberman, is a key player.

What can be done? Coercing the Arabs and ultra-Orthodox into military service and employment is not going to work. It will only increase social tension. Recognising it, Israeli politicians, economists, and public policy experts are confused. They have little to offer beyond small steps to encourage integration and workforce participation, noting the difference between Arabs – who want to work, but find it hard to land jobs – and the ultra-Orthodox, whose cultural norms prefer Torah study to employment.

There are encouraging signs, however, driven by economic necessity. Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox at draft age volunteer to technical jobs in the military, which they view as a route for future careers. They receive Glatt Kosher food and serve in men-only units. And Arabic accents are heard more often in previously “Jewish” workplaces (noted examples are drugstores and call centres). In the recent Israeli Big Brother production, an Arab contestant has made it to the finals.

But Israel can’t wait until these humble beginnings develop into a wider social revolution. Saving the country from implosion demands a sea change in perceptions and elimination of inter-“tribal” hatred and prejudice. We at the mainstream must change our view of the growing minorities and treat them as the next frontier of economic opportunity and growth. If they prosper, we will all prosper. Therefore, we must change our habits too: recruit Arab and ultra-Orthodox employees; buy from minority businesses; and make personal acquaintances to overcome group stereotypes. Our leaders should transcend petty politics and focus on social integration as a key domestic goal. If we want Israel to survive and prosper, we have no other choice.

Mustafa Barghouthi: Israel knows apartheid has no future: Financial Times

By Mustafa Barghouthi, Financial Times – 5 April 2010
After decades of military rule over Palestinians and theft of our land, Israeli leaders are increasingly seeing the writing on the wall. They are at least acknowledging reality, if not yet grappling with the consequences.
In 2007, Ehud Olmert, then prime minister, declared: “If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished.” More recently, making a similar point, Ehud Barak, Israel’s defence minister, said “as long as between the Jordan and the sea there is only one political entity, named Israel, it will end up being either non-Jewish or non-democratic … If the Palestinians vote in elections, it is a bi-national state, and if they don’t, it is an apartheid state.”
But when do the “ifs” of Mr Olmert and Mr Barak no longer describe a possible future, but the current reality? Apartheid is here. There is one set of Israeli laws applied to Palestinians in the West Bank and another set applied to Jews in the West Bank. Israeli settlers live illegally in beautiful subsidised housing on stolen Palestinian land while we are relegated to smaller and smaller bantustans.
I believe, even today, in the importance of the two-state solution. But with every passing day I see what can only be described as Israel’s dogged determination to block such an outcome. The time has come to tell Washington that the viability of the two-state solution is being destroyed on Barack Obama’s watch. President Obama inherited this difficulty from his predecessor. But old problems have become Obama problems.
When Washington fails to act decisively towards this festering conflict, it is in fact acting decisively. Billions of American taxpayers’ dollars continue to flow to Israeli coffers. And American diplomatic capital is still spent to shield Israel from world censure.
I have good reason to believe the intentions of this administration are better than those of predecessors, but the timing for Palestinian freedom is never good, it seems. Presidents and congressional leaders will always face opposition to US calls for constraining Israeli growth in the West Bank and East Jerusalem – if not from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Zionist Organisation of America then from the John Hagees of the Christian right. George Mitchell, Mr Obama’s emissary, came to the region touting a full Israeli freeze on settlements. Israel refused and the US flinched. Following last week’s Aipac conference in Washington, the Americans may flinch a second time. A second cave-in on settlements will signal to Palestinians that the Obama administration is not serious about restraining Israel’s efforts to foil peace talks and the two-state solution.
Like Cassandra, responsible leaders in our region can only warn that allowing Israel to run roughshod over our rights will have dangerous consequences. Anticipating these dangers, colleagues and I have sought to marshal the power of non-violent direct action against Israel’s occupation and apartheid system to highlight the injustice of its actions and encourage Israelis and American Jews to see that we do not oppose them but the actions of the Israeli government. We have achieved some success, but it is insufficient.
We are now in the early stages of a campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions directed at this Israeli government for its refusal to abide by international law. Such action successfully overturned Jim Crow laws in the American South and apartheid in South Africa, and we are slowly applying it to Israeli occupation and apartheid. But until students seize on it with the same moral fervency as earlier generations did against Jim Crow and South African apartheid, we will achieve only marginal success.
That day of student engagement is coming. I have spoken on many American and European campuses and see change in the more diverse audiences I address today as opposed to 20 years ago. These young people, including many progressive Jewish activists, recognise that this is not a conflict between Arabs and Jews, but between universal conceptions of freedom and antiquated notions of racial supremacy and colonisation. These audiences are on the road to endorsing the BDS campaign because they are aware that their political leaders are, with rare exceptions, unwilling to challenge Israel’s subjugation of Palestinians.
American politicians may be the last to embrace our struggle – be it the urgency of a truly sovereign Palestinian state side by side with Israel or one state with equal rights for all – but the equation is shifting and their calculus will not always be towards knee-jerk support for Israel. Our moral case is too powerful.
The writer is secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative and a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council

Settlers push to evict two more East Jerusalem families: Haaretz

Settler groups are pushing to evict two more Palestinian families from their homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, part of a wider program to demolish Palestinian homes in the area to make way for 200 housing units designated solely for Jews.
Over the past six months, Sheikh Jarrah has become a focus of leftist protest and a flash point for clashes between Jews and Arabs claiming ownership of property there.
The settlers’ ownership claims are based on Ottoman-era documents that indicate the land on which the contested properties sit belonged to Jews a century ago. Following the Six-Day War in 1967, the properties’ original owners – the Sephardic Community Committee – granted Nahalat Shimon, an organization representing the settlers, power of attorney to administer the properties. A court-brokered arrangement classified the Palestinians living there as protected tenants. In at least one case, eviction orders were issued after the tenants did not pay their rent.

A series of judges accepted Nahalat Shimon’s eviction orders – each rejecting Palestinians’ requests to remain in homes they had acquired as refugees following the 1948 War of Independence.
The settlers have thus far evicted three Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarrah and inhabited the homes themselves, in effect creating a mini-settlement in the heart of the neighborhood. Violent altercations erupt nearly every day between the settlers and the former tenants, who erected a protest tent nearby after being evicted.
Now the settlers are attempting to remove two additional families living adjacent to a home already acquired by settler groups. In their demand, filed Tuesday with the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court, the settlers call for the Palestinians to “immediately clear the property… of all individuals and belongings.” The settlers accused the Palestinians of “regularly disturbing and/or bothering and/or threatening their neighbors” as further basis for their removal. Nahalat Shimon also reaffirmed its commitment to building additional housing units for Jews in Sheikh Jarrah.

“This scandalous request offers a glimpse into the settlers’ modus operandi,” Avner Inbar, a regular participant in protests against the building plan, said Tuesday. “First they place Kahanist thugs in the heart of a Palestinian neighborhood, who threaten and abuse residents, then they turn to the courts and ask to have the Palestinians removed from their homes on the pretext that they are disturbing their Jewish neighbors.
“While the eyes of the entire world are fixed on Jerusalem, the Netanyahu government continues to collaborate with a handful of fanatical settlers trying to raise tempers in the city in an effort to quash a peace agreement with the Palestinians,” he continued. “It’s the obligation of every peace-loving Israeli to join the protests against the settlements in Sheikh Jarrah.”

EDITOR: A Police State

In the only democracy in the Middle East, or maybe in the whole known universe, the citizens are not allowed to read in the press or hear on the other media, that two journalists who have uncovered the fact that the IOF was routinely breaking Israeli law, by assassinating Palestinians against the High Court ruling, are now hounded by the sate. One is to be tried next week, after three months of illegal house arrest, and the other one is hiding in London, so as not to be put on trial as a traitor. The real traitors are also the High Court judges, who have not yet intervened in this saga of lawlessness. A democracy indeed, with all the hallmarks of Idi Amin’s state machinery. Israelis can read about their state breaking its own laws, but only in English, on the web…

The case we’re forbidden to report on: Haaretz

By Ze’ev Segal
The president of the Israel Press Council, retired Supreme Court justice Dalia Dorner, has said in a radio interview that it is “regrettable” that a court gag order on a certain security case remains in force, even though the foreign news media has reported on it in detail. Along with the regret over the government’s stupidity in not quickly asking for the gag order to be lifted, the silence that the court has imposed on the Israeli media is ludicrous. It infringes on the right of the Israeli public to know, a right acknowledged in the Freedom of Information Law. It feeds the rumors that are floating around under judicial auspices, and it makes a mockery of Israeli democracy.
It has been made clear that this is a judicial ruling, handed down at the request of the State Prosecutor’s Office. Thus it counters criticism of the military censorship in the media of democratic countries, which have gleefully blamed the censor for this latest classified-unclassified tale.
Israel’s military censorship is subject to principles that restrict it, as laid down in a 1989 Supreme Court ruling. These limitations made the military censor a liberal institution that respects the freedom of publication and the public’s right to know.

These restrictions were recently endorsed by another Supreme Court ruling concerning the negotiations on a deal for the release of captured soldier Gilad Shalit. That ruling rejected a petition for declassifying the details of a prisoner-exchange deal after the court was persuaded that there were “clear security considerations” that justified the prevention of publication. In principle, Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch ruled that free discourse, even on the most sensitive security subjects, can be restricted only “if there is immediate certainty of actual damage to security.”
During the hearing, the Attorney General’s Office made it clear, with the agreement of the chief military censor, that censorship would not be imposed on items originating in foreign publications (the High Court of Justice’s decision 9446/09 of December 1, 2009). This should be taken into account.

This balancing formulation that honors the freedom of information even when security interests are at play should obligate all courts hearing gag-order applications for similar reasons. But astoundingly, many magistrate’s and district court judges, who are authorized to issue such orders, have for years ignored the basic principles set in the Supreme Court ruling. This is true in security cases – which particularly impress magistrate’s court judges – as well as gag orders in other areas.
The principle many of these judges hold to is not usually appealed to the Supreme Court. They believe it’s possible to bar the publication of the very fact of an investigation (not only the identity of those being investigated), and that it’s possible to ban the publication of the fact that a certain matter has been barred from publication.
The court orders are lifted after a time, generally too long a time, and the Supreme Court does not get the chance to express its opinion on many matters related to gag orders. Even though it has interpreted in principle that only in exceptional cases may the publication of the names of suspects be barred because of a fear that they will suffer “grave damage,” the lower courts carry on, with an itchy finger on the gag-order trigger.
For a number of years the Press Council has put together various proposals meant to ensure the media’s standing regarding gag orders. Recently, Dorner announced that there is a possibility that only senior judges will be empowered to issue gag orders, and only after hearing the position of the media, which the Supreme Court has defined as “the public’s emissary on the matter of information.”
In the current case, it’s doubtful that the media should wait for the judge who issued the gag order to cancel it, in view of the many reports in the foreign media and possible new circumstances. In exceptional cases, Israeli law permits petitions to the Supreme Court against decisions by lower courts.
The fact that the affair has been published abroad has created exceptional circumstances that justify publication of the details. It has also justified a decision in principle that would take into account the realities of the Internet age and the international media. This decision would obligate all courts.

Ex-Supreme Court justice slams gag order on Israeli media: Haaretz

Press Council President Dalia Dorner lashed out on Tuesday against a gag order barring the Israeli media from reporting on a legal case related to media and security, saying the Press Council may join the appeal against the order.
“If the entire world knows about it, issuing a gag order is baseless,” said Dorner, a former Supreme Court justice. “We are a democratic state and when the regime makes a decision that a citizen or a newspaper doesn’t like, there are ways to fight it.”

Despite the court-imposed gag order, Israeli blogs and Web sites, along with foreign media outlets not subject to Israeli law, have been discussing the affair in detail over the past several weeks.
Haaretz approached the court in an effort to have the gag order removed a month ago.
When asked what influence she though foreign publication should have on a gag order, Dorner was unequivocal.
“Gag orders impinge on the freedom of the press, and this is allowed if publication is highly likely to cause grave damage to state security. But if the whole world knows, this alone constitutes a reason to withdraw the injunction,” she said.

Dorner also said the Press Council will probably join an appeal against the gag order, which Channel 10 is preparing to submit on Wednesday. A preliminary request to cancel the order was rejected by the court.
“To the best of my knowledge, there are intentions to bring the affair and the gag order before the Supreme Court, and I have been asked to look into having the Press Council join the motion,” Dorner said. “The case is clear and just, and I believe that after we examine the issue we’ll join the appeal.”
Over the past few days, the Israeli media began publishing indirect information about the affair behind the gag order, including keywords that would help them find more information by searching the Web.

These publications prompted Dorner to attack the gag order during an interview with Army Radio yesterday.

“This is an extreme case and I certainly find it regrettable,” she said, before urging the media to use higher legal instances to have the gag order removed. “There are means to fight such orders, and they should be fought,” said Dorner. “As for the media publishing whatever it is allowed to publish, this is all very well and good, but the media can do more and go all the way to the Supreme Court.”
Dorner also said that the gag order persisting despite open discussions in global media outlets “seems ridiculous.”
“I suppose the court has good reasons, but it doesn’t mean the reasons are appropriate and right,” she said. “We can and we should fight them.”

Mya Guarnieri: Reporter’s Notebook – Publish and Be Detained: The Huffington Post

By Mya Guarnieri, The Huffington Post – 6 April 2010
Somewhere in Europe, Sonya Mousa is breathing a sigh of relief.
Or so I’m guessing. I’ve never met or spoken with Sonya Mousa. But, last week when I was wrapping up my coverage of the Anat Kam case – the Israeli journalist under secret house arrest since December over allegedly leaked military documents – and thinking about using a pseudonym, this was the first name that came to mind.
Issues around the state-imposed censorship rules, and the fact that other journalists involved in the case were now living abroad in secret exile made me at concerned about my safety.
I’d been monitoring Kam’s situation for quite some time. I watched blogs and tweets about it go up, only to be pulled down, for the past month. When the Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA) followed in blogger Richard Silverstein’s footsteps and broke the story in English, I contacted my editor; “It’s a risk,” I told her, “but let’s do it.”
There was a week before the article would run, so I had time to think about whether or not my name would be on it.
I asked the editor if we could go without an author, just in case; she said no. There is the option of a pseudonym, she added. I’ve written under several in the past, mostly to provide cover for interviewees who feared prosecution or social stigma.
I consulted with several lawyers. One told me that as a citizen of Israel I’d be breaking the gag-order and risk punishment. But, he added, as someone writing in English for a foreign publication it was unlikely that I would actually become a target.
Another advised me not to do the story at all. But if you’re going to, he said, use a pen name.
The third, an acquaintance, told me to keep as far away from the case as I could. After spending the evening researching it, he called me and repeated the warning. Forget about the pseudonym, he said. Just don’t do it.
On Thursday, I filed as Sonya Mousa. But I realized it wouldn’t be hard for authorities to figure out who had written the story if they wanted to. The pseudonym wouldn’t provide me much cover.
And, more importantly, what message would a pen name send? That I’d been cowed by a gag order that goes against what Israel supposedly stands for: democracy. I would be admitting that the state I live in doesn’t tolerate dissent.
I understand the need to keep details of a court case quiet. That’s a gag I can respect. But blacking out news of Kam’s arrest itself is a strike against free speech and freedom of the press. As Kam’s lawyer put it when I interviewed him, “these are the foundations of democracy.”
I have argued in the past that, because Israel was established on the dispossession and disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, there is no democracy here. But that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t fight for the glimmerings. I don’t want Israel to become a totalitarian state where people can disappear and no one speaks up.
Operation Cast Lead, the war against Gaza in 2008-9, was a clear tipping point for press freedom; reporters denied access to the warzone, press buildings bombed. A year later, the deportation of Ma’an News Agency editor Jared Malsin indicated that the current government is just as intolerant of dissent as the last one was. Israel plummeted in the most recent press rankings released by Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontieres- RSF), a NGO that advocates for journalists and freedom of the press. According to the latest report, Israel is in “free fall” due to “operation media crackdown“:
“Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s military offensive against the Gaza Strip, had an impact on the press. As regards its internal situation, Israel sank 47 places in the index to 93rd position. This nose-dive means it has lost its place at the head of the Middle Eastern countries, falling behind Kuwait (60th), United Arab Emirates (86th) and Lebanon (61st).”
RSF also stated, “Israel has begun to use the same methods internally as it does outside its own territory. Reporters Without Borders registered five arrests of journalists, some of them completely illegal, and three cases of imprisonment.”
And, ominously, “The military censorship applied to all the media is also posing a threat to journalists.”
But the blame doesn’t rest entirely on the shoulders do the state. Self-censorship is also a problem in Israel. A Yediot Ahronoth journalist compiled a lengthy expose that detailed Israeli military officers knowingly and willingly breaking the rules of engagement during operation Cast Lead. After the story was finished, it was shelved by the news agency – only to be published by a London-based paper, The Independent.
To keep my name off the story also seemed like an act of tacit consent, silence that says to the government, “It’s OK, I’ll take this, we’ll all take this, and you can do it again.” Little by little, this is how rights get chipped away.
On Friday, emboldened by both Donald MacIntryre’s reporting from Jerusalem, by Israeli blogger Idan Landau’s post, and the AP’s coverage, I was ready to take a stand. I wrote to my editor, “It’s important to me to put my byline on the story.”
If nothing happens to me, I reasoned, that means that free speech and freedom of the press isn’t entirely dead yet. That means there is room for dissent. That means there is still hope for Israel.

Obama weighs new peace plan for the Middle East: Washington Post

Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Despite recent turbulence in U.S. relations with Israel, President Obama is “seriously considering” proposing an American peace plan to resolve the Palestinian conflict, according to two top administration officials.

“Everyone knows the basic outlines of a peace deal,” said one of the senior officials, citing the agreement that was nearly reached at Camp David in 2000 and in subsequent negotiations. He said that an American plan, if launched, would build upon past progress on such issues as borders, the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem. The second senior official said that “90 percent of the map would look the same” as what has been agreed in previous bargaining.
The American peace plan would be linked with the issue of confronting Iran, which is Israel’s top priority, explained the second senior official. He described the issues as two halves of a single strategic problem: “We want to get the debate away from settlements and East Jerusalem and take it to a 30,000-feet level that can involve Jordan, Syria and other countries in the region,” as well as the Israelis and Palestinians.

“Incrementalism hasn’t worked,” continued the second official, explaining that the United States cannot allow the Palestinian problem to keep festering — providing fodder for Iran and other extremists. “As a global power with global responsibilities, we have to do something.” He said the plan would “take on the absolute requirements of Israeli security and the requirements of Palestinian sovereignty in a way that makes sense.”
The White House is considering detailed interagency talks to frame the strategy and form a political consensus for it. The second official likened the process to the review that produced Obama’s strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. He said the administration could formally launch the Middle East initiative by this fall.

White House interest in proposing a peace plan has been growing in recent months, but it accelerated after the blow-up that followed the March 9 Israeli announcement, during Vice President Biden’s visit, that Israel would build 1,600 housing units in East Jerusalem. U.S. officials began searching for bolder ways to address Israeli and Palestinian concerns, rather than continuing the same stale debates.

Obama’s attention was focused by a March 24 meeting at the White House with six former national security advisers. The group has been meeting privately every few months at the request of Gen. Jim Jones, who currently holds the job. In the session two weeks ago, the group had been talking about global issues for perhaps an hour when Obama walked in and asked what was on people’s minds.

Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser for presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, spoke up first, according to a senior administration official. He urged Obama to launch a peace initiative based on past areas of agreement; he was followed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser for Jimmy Carter, who described some of the strategic parameters of such a plan.

Support for a new approach was also said to have been expressed by Sandy Berger and Colin Powell, who served as national security advisers for presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, respectively. The consensus view was apparently shared by the other two attendees, Frank Carlucci and Robert C. McFarlane from the Reagan years.

Obama’s embrace of a peace plan would reverse the administration’s initial strategy, which was to try to coax concessions from the Israelis and Palestinians, with the United States offering “bridging proposals” later. This step-by-step process was favored by George Mitchell, the president’s special representative for the Middle East, who believed a similar approach had laid the groundwork for his breakthrough in Northern Ireland peace talks.

The fact that Obama is weighing the peace plan marks his growing confidence in Jones, who has been considering this approach for the past year. But the real strategist in chief is Obama himself. If he decides to launch a peace plan, it would mark a return to the ambitious themes the president sounded in his June 2009 speech in Cairo.

A political battle royal is likely to begin soon, with Israeli officials and their supporters in the United States protesting what they fear would be an American attempt to impose a settlement and arguing to focus instead on Iran. The White House rejoinder is expressed this way by one of the senior officials: “It’s not either Iran or the Middle East peace process. You have to do both.”