Boycotting the boycotters: Haaretz
While the international boycott against apartheid South Africa is credited with leading to the regime’s downfall, here it is considered irrelevant and unworthy of comparison.
By Gideon Levy
Most people here are appalled at the notion that anybody beyond Israel’s borders would think to boycott their country, products or universities. Boycotts, after all, are viewed in Israel as illegitimate. Anyone who calls for such a step is perceived as an anti-Semite and Israel-hater who is undermining the state’s very right to exist. In Israel itself, those who call for a boycott are branded as traitors and heretics. The notion that a boycott, limited as it may be, is likely to convince Israel to change its ways – and for its own benefit – is not tolerated here.
Even an obvious, logical step – like the Palestinian Authority’s boycott of products made in the settlements – is viewed by hypocritical Israeli eyes as provocative. Moreover, while the international boycott against apartheid South Africa is credited with leading to the regime’s downfall, here it is considered irrelevant and unworthy of comparison.
It would be possible to identify with these intolerant reactions were it not for the fact that Israel itself is one of the world’s prolific boycotters. Not only does it boycott, it preaches to others, at times even forces others, to follow in tow. Israel has imposed a cultural, academic, political, economic and military boycott on the territories. At the same time, almost no one here utters a dissenting word questioning the legitimacy of these boycotts. Yet the thought of boycotting the boycotter? Now that’s inconceivable.
The most brutal, naked boycott is, of course, the siege on Gaza and the boycott of Hamas. At Israel’s behest, nearly all Western countries signed onto the boycott with inexplicable alacrity. This is not just a siege that has left Gaza in a state of shortage for three years. Nor is it just a complete (and foolish ) boycott of Hamas, save for the discussions over abducted soldier Gilad Shalit. It’s a series of cultural, academic, humanitarian and economic boycotts. Israel threatens nearly every diplomat who seeks to enter Gaza to see firsthand the unbearable sights.
In addition, Israel bars entry to anyone who wishes to lend humanitarian aid. We should note that the boycott isn’t just against Hamas, but against all Gaza, everyone who lives there. The convoy of ships that will soon sail from Europe to try to break the siege will carry thousands of tons of construction material, prefab houses and medicine. Israel has announced that it plans to stop the vessels. A boycott is a boycott.
Doctors, professors, artists, jurists, intellectuals, economists, engineers – none of them are permitted to enter Gaza. This is a complete boycott that bears the tag “Made in Israel.” Those who speak about immoral and ineffective boycotts do so without batting an eye when it comes to Gaza.
Israel is also urging the world to boycott Iran. But it’s not just Gaza and Iran that are at issue here, because entry into Israel and the West Bank is being affected by the recent frenzy of boycotts. Anyone who is suspected of supporting the Palestinians or expressing concern for their lot is boycotted and expelled. This group includes a clown who came to organize a conference; a peace activist who was due to appear at a symposium; and scientists, artists and intellectuals who arouse suspicions that they back the Palestinian cause. This is a cultural and academic boycott on all counts, the type of boycott that we reject when it is used against us.
Yet the anti-boycott country’s list of boycotted parties does not end there. Even a Jewish-American organization like J Street, which defines itself as pro-Israel, has felt the long arm of the Israeli boycott. It is permissible to boycott J Street because it champions peace, but we can’t tolerate a boycott of products made in settlements that were built on usurped land. Denying a visiting professor entry into Gaza for an appearance at a university does not qualify as a boycott, but cutting off ties with Israeli institutions that provide fast-track degree programs for army officers and interrogators in the Shin Bet security service – people who are often viewed around the world as complicit in war crimes – is viewed as verboten.
Yes, an Israeli who lives in Israel will have a hard time preaching to others about the virtues of a boycott when that person does not boycott his or her own country or university. But it is his right to believe that a boycott could compel his government to end the occupation. As long as the Israelis don’t pay any price, there won’t be a change.
This is a legitimate, moral position. It is no less legitimate or moral than those who claim that a boycott is an immoral, ineffective tool while exercising that same option against others. So you oppose a boycott against Israel? Then let’s first do away with all the boycotts we have imposed ourselves.
EDITOR: Denied Entry into Israel?
Chomsky was denied entry into the Occupied Territories by the IOF at the bridge. It is a pity that Haaretz cannot tell the difference between Israel and the OPT, where the meeting Chomsky was invited to took place. It is alsoa pity that Chomsky is still a supporter of Israel and an opponent of the One-State solution. Maybe this experience may change his mind?
Noam Chomsky denied entry into Israel: Haaretz
Left-wing American linguist, who was scheduled to speak at Bir Zeit University, given no reason by Israeli inspectors at Allenby Bridge.
Left-wing American linguist Professor Noam Chomsky was denied entry into Israel on Sunday, for reasons that were not immediately clear.
Chomsky, who was scheduled to deliver a lecture at Bir Zeit University near Jerusalem, told the Right to Enter activist group by telephone that inspectors had stamped the words “denied entry” onto his passport when he tried to cross from Jordan over Allenby Bridge.
When he asked an Israeli inspector why he had not received permission, he was told that an explanation would be sent in writing to the American embassy.
Chomsky arrived at the Allenby Bridge at around 1:30 in the afternoon and was taken for questioning, before being released back to Amman at 4:30 P.M.
Chomsky is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is considered among the foremost academics in the world. He identifies with the radical left and is often critical of both Israeli and American policies.
Court rejects Anat Kamm’s plea to ‘get some air’: Haaretz
Former soldier facing spying charges for leaking army documents sought to ease terms of her house arrest.
A Tel Aviv court on Sunday rejected a plea by Anat Kamm, a former soldier arrested for leaking secret military documents to the press, to ease the terms of her house arrest.
Kamm had sought permission to leave the house for up to two hours each day to “get some fresh air”.
But a judge ruled that the order for house arrest was not subject to appeal, as Kamm’s circumstances had not altered since her detention.
In mid-April a court ruled to toughen the terms of Kamm’s arrest, ordering her to remain under supervision of one of four nominated family members at all times.
In late April police raided Kamm’s rented apartment in Tel Aviv after unauthorized family members visited her there.
Kamm faces trial on espionage charges after giving Uri Blau, a Haaretz correspondent, classifeid miltary papers detailing an allegedly illegal assassinations policy operated by the IDF against Palestinian militants.
Robert Fisk: Dubai police hunt Briton over murder of Hamas official: The Independent
Exclusive: IoS shown evidence that suspect in Mabhouh killing had genuine British passport
Within 48 hours of becoming Foreign Secretary, William Hague faces a political crisis over the Middle East. The emirate of Dubai has named a British citizen as a 19th suspect of the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, the Hamas official murdered in the emirate four months ago, apparently by a group that included holders of forged British passports. According to a source in the United Arab Emirates, the suspect arrived in Dubai under his own name and carrying a genuine British passport.
The document, the details of which are known by The Independent on Sunday but which we have decided not to publish, shows that he holds a real British passport dated 24 October 2007, valid for 11 years, and was born in 1948. It is believed that his father was a Jewish Palestinian who migrated to the UK just after the Second World War. Dubai police have informed Interpol of the name and passport number of the suspect. The man is believed to be hiding in Western Europe.
According to Dubai sources, the British man was identified parking a rental car close to the hotel where Mr Mabhouh was murdered and can be seen parking his car on a videotape that is in the possession of UEA authorities; a copy of the tape has been given to the British police. According to the UEA, the suspect has recently visited both Canada and France.
Mr Mabhouh was smothered to death in his hotel room and the Emirates have named 33 suspects. Investigations revealed that up to 12 of them had used forged British passports. Other suspects used similar counterfeit or stolen Irish, Australian, French and German passports.
Those involved are widely believed to be members of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service. British, Irish and French governments have asked Israeli ambassadors to explain the use of their national passports in the killing.
The involvement of a genuine British suspect will not improve diplomatic relations between London and Tel Aviv. The former foreign secretary David Miliband condemned the counterfeiting of British passports as “intolerable” and demanded reassurances from Israel that it would not be repeated. Britain also ordered an Israeli diplomat to leave the UK in March after an investigation by the Serious and Organised Crime Agency showed that there were “compelling reasons” why Israel was believed to be behind the misuse of the passports. The inquiry determined that the documents were cloned when British citizens passed through airports on their way into Israel, with officials taking them away for “checks” that lasted around 20 minutes. Britain’s decision was attacked by angry Israeli MPs who described it as the action of “anti-semitic dogs”.
The diplomat asked to leave the UK was understood to be an intelligence officer who was known to the UK authorities and worked as official liaison with Britain’s MI6. There was no suggestion the officer was personally involved in the passports affair.
Israel has never admitted any role in February’s Dubai assassination of Mr Mabhouh, who was described as a key figure in smuggling Iranian weapons into the Gaza Strip on behalf of Hamas. It has abstained from signing any material that might be construed as a confession.
EDITOR: How many Mossad Agents Does It Take To Murder One Palestinian?
Answer: At least 33, but the number is rising… Say, this is not very efficient, is it?
Son of Jewish Briton named as latest suspect in Dubai murder: Haaretz
Dubai police have now identified 33 people suspected of killing Hamas operative, most of them named through forged passports.
The latest suspect in the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh is a British citizen with a valid passport, according to the Independent, unlike many of the others who were found to have entered the United Arab Emirates using forged identies.
According to the Independent, the 62-year-old suspect is the son a Jew who lived in Palestine until the outbreak of World War II, when he moved to Britain.
The Dubai police have transferred the suspect’s name and passport information to the Interpol agency, said the Independent. The suspect, who is believed to be hiding now in western Africa, was identified by surveillance as having parked a car outside the hotel where Mabhouh was killed.
Dubai police have so far identified another 32 suspects in the murder. Five were identified just a little more than a week ago, as having traveled to the U.A.E with Australian, British and French passports
The Dubai authorities have described al-Mabhouh’s assassination as a mix of clockwork precision and spy novel flare. They have accused Israel’s Mossad spy agency of being behind the killing of al-Mabhouh.
The Dubai police previously released names of 27 suspects who traveled to Dubai on fake identities and forged European and Australian passports. The police also compiled a detailed flow chart-style diagram on the suspects’ alleged roles in the slaying.
At least 15 of the suspected killers share names with Israeli citizens, further fueling suspicions the Mossad was behind the hit. Israel has maintained a policy of ambiguity on the killing, neither confirming nor denying involvement.
EDITOR: The real face of Israeli academia
Uriel Reichman has long pretended to be a liberal, while supporting right wing policies and issues. It is good to se him exposed here, calling the main human rights orgaisation in Israel a ‘fifth column’. Spoken like a Nazi. Those are the people who fight against the BDS, and against Palestine as well as against human rights.
Students: IDC head called B’Tselem a ‘fifth column’: Haaretz
B’Tselem: We welcome the statement made by Professor Reichman, which indicates that although he doesn’t support the organization, he supports the organization’s right to make its positions known.
By Asaf Shtull-Trauring
The president of the Interdisciplinary Center, Uriel Reichman, described the human rights watchdog B’Tselem as a “fifth column” and said that inviting its representatives to speak at the college was “disgraceful,” students who spoke to the president told Haaretz. Reichman denies ever making the statements.
On April 15, the private college based in Herzliya held a “Democracy Day,” during which they invited 40 organizations to set up stalls near the campus cafeteria. However, only the groups B’Tselem, the Movement for Quality Government, Im Tirtzu and the National Left responded.
During the event, one student apparently approached Reichman to protest the presence of B’Tselem on campus. Another student, who witnessed the conversation, said Reichman responded by saying he hadn’t been consulted about inviting B’Tselem, that he found it disgraceful and that the organization was a fifth column.
“Some of the students were angry and protested the presence of B’Tselem at the IDC,” Omri Akunis, one of the event organizers, told Haaretz. He added that he did not think the college would allow the organization to participate in the event next year.
Reichman told Haaretz that he never made the comments. “It’s nonsense,” he said. “B’Tselem was invited to the campus. A student approached me to say he thought that they shouldn’t be there, that they’re a hostile element, a fifth column and so on. I told him that you can’t drive out someone who was invited.
“The same student then sent a letter, which the deputy president for student affairs replied to,” Reichman continued. “She explained to him that the group had been invited by students, but that we do not identify with the organization. In other words, she wrote that the fact the organization was invited by students does not mean we endorse it. I’m not a supporter or admirer of B’Tselem, but I certainly told that young man that we’re not going to kick out any organization we have invited. We’re not going to gag anyone.”
The college spokesman told Haaretz that “Reichman is working under the assumption that his students are truthful, and he doesn’t recall ever making such a statement. He does not agree with B’Tselem’s methods, but he nevertheless maintains and will continue to maintain full pluralism and freedom of speech.”
B’Tselem issued the followed comment on the matter: “We welcome the statement made by Professor Reichman, which indicates that although he doesn’t support the organization, he supports the organization’s right to make its positions known. Defending the right to express an opinion even when one doesn’t agree with it is the very essence of freedom of speech. B’Tselem will continue stating its positions and encouraging public discussion in Israel of human rights in the Occupied Territories.”
IOA editor Moshe Neeman: Response to University of California President Yudof: IOA
Dear President Yudof,
Today, the Nakba Day – “day of the catastrophe” – designated by Palestinians to commemorate the loss of their country, in 1948, to the newly-created State of Israel, I am replying to your mass email to the Berkeley Divestment protest (below).
I am an American Jew and a former Israeli who was born after the Holocaust and the creation of Israel. Throughout my childhood, the most memorable question posed by my parents, my grandmother, and an entire generation whose relatives perished in the Holocaust was “What did other nations, including the US, do when our families were taken to ‘the Ovens?’”
For the past 43 years, Israel has been occupying Palestinian and other Arab lands conquered in 1967. Since then, and especially in the past 20 years, a campaign of ethnic cleansing has been vigorously underway, one which at times borders on genocide.
Notwithstanding the sophisticated propaganda effort carried out by Israel and its international allies, a careful examination of actions taken daily by Israel (“facts on the ground”) and their consequences, which are clearly identifiable and readily measurable, shows that Israel is methodically replacing the Palestinian population of Palestine with a Jewish population. This is not new. Looking back in time, one sees a pattern, and direct connection between this and the 1948 period called the Nakba.
This is most clearly evident throughout the West Bank, where Jewish settlements and the settler population have increased dramatically. Every day presents a new opportunity for Jewish settlers to encroach just a bit further into populated Palestinian areas, “a dunam here and a dunam there,” as the old (pre-1948) Zionist expression goes – referring to quarter-acre size parcels of land acquired by Jews bit by bit, by all sorts of ways. At the same time, Palestinians are still pushed out of lands in the Negev and elsewhere within pre-1967 Israel, whenever “appropriate circumstances” present themselves – as has been the case since before 1948.
To advance this goal, Israel has sought every possible opportunity to remove Palestinians from lands owned and cultivated by them for centuries by applying numerous forms of pressure to “encourage” people to go elsewhere. In addition to establishing and expanding settlements, tolerating unauthorized settlements and illegal acts of settlers (e.g., the uprooting of olive trees), other actions range from the sweeping prohibition on even the most elementary agricultural watering infrastructure improvements (e.g. the construction of a cistern or a local field-watering canal on a single property), replacement of public infrastructure (including projects previously destroyed by Israel), to the severe clampdown on personal movement – all designed to shut off the local economy and make life very difficult to the local population. Add to this the routine closing of universities and other national institutions, deportations of West Bank residents to Gaza, denial of re-entry to students returning from foreign study, and much, much more.
On a separate level, but very much in parallel, Israel has been trying to crush all popular, entirely nonviolent, resistance to its occupation and domination: for several years now in Bil’in and Ni’lin and, more recently, in Sheikh Jarrah – Jerusalem, coupled with mid-night raids on the homes of resistance leaders, their arrest and jailing without a fair trial, and you get a sense of the nature the Israeli occupation.
Add to that the recent arrest of Palestinian leasers who are Israeli citizens, for “violations of contact with foreign agent and espionage,” and you get a glimpse at the complex relations between Israelis and Palestinians that are colored with domination and racism and act to support the same concept: We, Israelis, are here as of right; you, Palestinians, are here only if we tolerate your presence and permit it.
The trend is clear: reducing the Palestinian population by attrition, bit by bit, by a slew of measures that go into effect when circumstances are “favorable.”
Israel’s attack on Gaza (Dec 2008 – Jan 2009) was the peak of cruelty, where the most densely populated territory on earth was bombarded from the air and ground as though it were a war-front. In reality, as has been made entirely known by now, no fire was returned from the other side. Thus, the very victims of the 1948 Nakba, one and a half million Palestinians who are among the weakest and most neglected people on earth, imprisoned in the Gaza Strip for over six decades and now under Israeli-American-Egyptian siege, were punished yet again. And for what exactly? For having elected a government which the US and Israel disapproved of.
As established by numerous UN resolutions, by the Goldstone Report, and documented by international organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Oxfam, Israel’s own B’Tselem, and many Palestinian and other organizations, all these Israeli actions contravene international laws and conventions specifically designed to protect civilian populations.
Information on these wide ranging and on-going Israeli human rights violations is readily available on line, including on the Israeli Occupation Archive, a project in which I am involved, and was presented in the recent Divestment hearings at Berkeley.
Thus, in a carefully calculated manner, the Israeli actions mentioned above serve to assure that no independent Palestinian entity, let alone an “independent Palestinian State, alongside Israel,” to cite current and past official US government positions, can or will come into existence.
Yet, for decades now, all these actions have taken place with full US government support and financing – official US policy declarations and propaganda notwithstanding – and with the participation of numerous US companies that supply material and technologies to this “enterprise,” and profit greatly from it. These include Caterpillar whose equipment is used by Israel to destroy Palestinian homes; Lockheed Martin, manufacturer of the most sophisticated implements of destruction, such as Israel’s F-16 and future F-35 attack jets; Intel and numerous other developers of computerized control systems, and others still. All this is subsidized by US tax payers, like you and I, whose money the United States government – Democratic and Republican administrations alike – has been transferring to these and similar corporations for decades now.
President Yudof, in case you didn’t quite get it by now, Israel is intent on removing as much of the Palestinian population and weakening those remaining to the point of nothingness: “Politicide,” to cite the late Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling, which falls short of an outright genocide – not always by much, as demonstrated so very clearly in Gaza.
Palestinian suffering under Israeli occupation need not equate to the Holocaust. However, no genocide starts at six million, nor does it happen overnight. For decades now, Israel has been slowly eliminating the Palestinians, nationally, politically and, at times, physically.
Divestment is the most non-violent response to the horrific violence that is the Israeli occupation, and that results directly from it. Yet, remarkably, you find Divestment, rather than the Occupation, to be unacceptable and against which you advise “caution.”
Back to my late Jewish grandmother, whose entire family perished in Europe. She simply could not understand how the rest of the world did not act to stop the Holocaust, while it was happening, before it was too late.
You and your esteemed University of California leaders should go back to your oak-paneled conference rooms and ponder the following question: Would you have also rejected Divestment from, say, US companies manufacturing the Zyklon-B gas used by the Nazis to exterminate our relatives? I’m sure you know the correct answer to this question.
The next question is How much more suffering do you require the Palestinians to bear under Israeli occupation before you consider theirs a just and worthy cause for a Divestment action? Just how much more should Israel be allowed to inflict upon the Palestinians before American university presidents will decide that a moral line has been crossed, one that warrants a mild and measured reaction?
Sincerely,
Moshe Neeman
Editor, Israeli Occupation Archive
www.israeli-occupation.org/
EDITOR: How Wrong Can You Be?
Apparently, very wrong, as thousands of ‘leftists’ prove in Israel. It seems they have not read much about Zionism, if one is to take their claims seriously. From Herzl onwards, the goal was to ‘cleanse’ Palestine of its Arab population. Please read the Herzl Diaries before you go out on hot day spouting hot air, Zionism is, was and will be colonial, and first step towards change is for those ‘leftists’ to admit this fact. How else will anything ever change? With friends like these, who needs enemies?
Israeli leftists: Zionism and Judaism are not in line with settlements: Haaretz
Thousands of left-wing protesters rallied in Jerusalem to call for immediate dismantlement of West Bank settlements, including in East Jerusalem.
Zion Square in Jerusalem stood empty on Saturday night. The plaza, normally symbolic of the protest of the extreme right, was to be the site of planned protest by a group of left-wing organizations including Peace Now, the Geneva Initiative and the National Left. But two weeks ago, Channel 24’s new glass-walled studio opened in the concourse, and the demonstration was moved to a nearby site adjoining the Russian Compound.
The protest took place under the umbrella of the National Left, founded by lawyer Eldad Yaniv and playwright Shmuel Hasfari. Israeli flags flew, the speakers proclaimed their Zionism and the event wound up with the singing of the national anthem, ‘Hatikva.” The protesters – 1,000 of them according to police and 2,000 according to the organizers – called for the immediate dismantlement of West Bank settlements, including in East Jerusalem.
“We want to get out of the West Bank because we are Zionists,” said Gadi Taub, one of the speakers. The Right isn’t the nationalist camp, it’s a bi-nationalist camp. The center of our Zionism isn’t land but human liberty.”
Nino Abashidze, a journalist, said: “The time has come to choose: A state without settlements, or settlement without a state.”
Mousi Raz, a former Knesset member, described the gathering as “the biggest left-wing protest in West Jerusalem in the last decade”. Later, from the podium, Raz offered praise for demonstrators arrested on Friday in Sheikh Jarrah, a disputed neighborhood beyond the Green Line in the eastern half of the city, being held only meters away in the Russian Compound police station.
Yariv Oppenheimer, general secretary of Peace Now, said: “Any rational Israeli leader understands that evacuating the settlements is not Obama’s problem, or Hillary Clinton’s, but a matter of the Israeli national interest. It is the only way for Israel to pull itself out of international isolation.”
Tzvia Greenfield, our Haredi Knesset member (Meretz), swept the crowd when she said, “Zionism cannot be subordination and land theft. Zionsim cannot be control over the weak. Judaism is not theft and conquering the weak. That is not Zionism. That is not Jewish.”
Attorney Yaniv concluded the rally by saying, “We do not hate, we are crying over our beloved Israel.” He added, “We must end the occupation with an agreement or without one, with a partner or without one, and establish a society here that sets an example.”
Members of Israel’s right wing rushed to call the protest a resounding failure. A spokesman for the Yesha settlement council said, “The failure of the ‘National Left’ protest, with the angry handful of protesters who arrived at the square – despite a performance by singer Achinoam Nini and free beer – proves once again that most of the nation understands that settlers are Zionists overall. The failure reverberates even more after more than 10,000 people participated in celebrations on Wednesday marking the reunification of Jerusalem.”
MK Michael Ben-Ari (National Union) also derided the left, especially Peace Now’s Oppenheimer.
“The anti-Zionist left cloaks itself in the Israeli flag in order to cover its nakedness,” said Ben-Ari, “but the public won’t forget that Oppenheimer and his friends in recent months attended protests in which they denigrated the Israeli flag and waved flags of the PLO.”
Israeli settler shot dead Palestinian teenager, police say: The Guardian
Palestinian police believe boy, 16, died when man stopped car and opened fire on group throwing stones along highway
There has been an increase in tensions between Israeli settlers (pictured in Maale Migron, near Ramallah) and Palestinians in the West Bank. Photograph: Dan Bality/AP
A teenage Palestinian boy has been shot dead in the occupied West Bank and Palestinians said he was probably killed by an Israeli settler.
The body of Aysar Yasser al-Zaben, 16, was found before dawn today in a field near al-Mazra’a al-Sharqiya, a district of Ramallah. He had been shot in the back and was found lying face down.
Reports said a group of Palestinians were throwing stones at passing cars belonging to Israeli settlers on the main West Bank highway, route 60. Palestinian police said they believed the boy was shot when one settler stopped his car and opened fire on the Palestinians, although some accounts said the dead child was not one of the group of stone throwers. The area is close to the Jewish settlements of Shiloh and Ofra.
Israeli police confirmed the child’s death and said an investigation had been opened. A police spokesman told the Associated Press that there had been reports of stone-throwing and gunshots in the area yesterday.
Dumar al-Zaben, a cousin of the dead child, said villagers had heard gunshots and went searching for the boy when he did not come home that night. “We searched for him with flashlights,” Zaben told the Israeli news website Ynet. “We knew that he had been working on his family’s agricultural field, and we found him there under an olive tree – lying on his stomach, with a bullet wound in his back.”
In recent months there has been an increase in tensions between settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank as the international community, led by the US, has tried to rein in Israel’s settlement construction. Nearly 500,000 settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, even though settlement on occupied land is against international law.
Last month a mosque in a Palestinian village near Nablus was vandalised, apparently by settlers. Earlier two settlers from Yitzhar, a rightwing settlement in the area, were injured by rocks thrown by Palestinians. In March two Palestinian teenagers were shot dead by Israeli troops in the village of Iraq Burin, also near Nablus, after a demonstration against a nearby settlement.
This month Israeli and Palestinian leaders finally began a new round of indirect “proximity” talks, mediated by the US special envoy, George Mitchell. The Palestinians eventually agreed to take part after Israel last year announced a temporary, partial settlement freeze on the West Bank and then gave private commitments to US officials that major settlement building in east Jerusalem would also be halted.
Israeli Writer Michal Peleg Calls Out Her Government for Arrest of Dr. Omar Said: The Only Democracy?
May 14th, 2010, by Michal Peleg
Dr. Omar Said from Kafr Kana, Israel, was arrested on April 24, at a border crossing between Israel and Jordan, and is held since in prison for investigation, without trial.
Dr. Said is a pharmacologist, an expert of academic and international fame in the medical use of herbs. He specializes in innovations in traditional Middle East medicine based on local flora. His research requires frequent travels to collect herbs native to the region including, naturally, Jordan. In 2007 he was also among the organizers of an international academic convention on Traditional Arabic and Islamic medicine in Amman. Naturally, again, he travels on a regular basis to Europe, especially to Denmark and France, either in the interests of the laboratory and pharmacologist firm, in which he is a partner, or to give lectures and participate in academic conventions. But then – naturally, one should add once again – Dr. Said meets a lot of people on his travels; many of those are Arabs; some are even citizens of countries hostile to Israel.
Here, finally, we arrive at the unnatural conclusion of Dr. Said’s natural activity. He is accused – but not formally, not under any specific indictment –of meeting with “Enemy Agents”, by the Israeli secret services.
Now, among the many Arab scholars and friends Dr. Said is in contact with abroad, or among their numerous family and friends, there would be – of necessity – members of various political parties; perhaps even military men, and, who knows? even adherents to radical groups. On this vague basis: meeting people, who in their turn meet other people – each and every one of us would be found guilty ad hoc.
Yet there’s a very specific reason for Dr. Said’s arrest. He is, and has been since youth, a political activist struggling for Palestinian rights. His studies in Israel’s renowned Institute of Technology, up to the completion of his PhD, were prolonged way beyond their natural course, for he was held during months and years in administrative detention, that is: without trial. He was never tried nor ever indicted for any violent action, solicitation to such, or any another clause within the vast “security” arsenal of Israeli law. Dr. Omar Said was detained, and is now again detained, because of his political opinions, and moreover, because he insists on his right to express them.
So far, in Israel – “the only democracy in the Middle East”, remember – detention of academics who have opinions and insist on expressing them has been limited to Arabs. Jewish academics are free to indulge their political whims and continue to travel abroad and meet people, even Arab people. So far.
I believe it is essential to demand the immediate release of Dr. Omar Said until he is served a bill of indictment, or else that the state supplies sufficient grounds for belief that he is dangerous to the state and to society, as is the norm in a proper democratic society. A democracy, that is, not exclusively restricted to Jews.
Michal Peleg is an Israeli writer whose latest publication was Nadir, in Am Oved, a novel. She lives in Tel Aviv.
Yisrael Beiteinu unveils latest drive to link civic rights with ‘loyalty’: Haaretz
Proposed law would grant land cut-price higher education and employment assistance to demobilized soldiers.
Avigdor Lieberman’s right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party will on Sunday make a renewed push to link ‘loyalty’ to the state with civic rights by putting a new citizenship law before the Knesset.
A ministerial committee will rule on whether the party’s proposal to offer rewards to citizens who complete national service will be put to a vote in the legislature.
If passed, the law will grant aid to Israelis who have served in the military or done other forms of national service, including land grants, cut-price higher education and employment assistance.
The bill is one of five being proposed by Yisrael Beiteinu, which campaigned under the slogan ‘no loyalty, no citizenship’, for the upcoming parliamentary session. The first, which demanded that prisoners convicted on terrorism charges be stripped of the vote, was rejected by ministers last week.
David Rotem MK, one of the Yisrael Beiteinu lawmakers who drafted the bill, said: “The aim of the law is to give recognition to citizens’ military and national service, and to show respect to those who contribute the best years of their lives to these sacred causes.”
He added: “It needs to be said loudly and clearly: Those who serve should be placed above those who exploit – and we will continue to work to give them help and advantages as they return to civilian life.”
Yisrael Beiteinu MKs on Saturday voiced confidence that the party’s partners in the government coalition would back the bill to become law, despite tensions between the ruling factions.
Last week the party abstained from a no-confidence vote against the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in protest at the administration’s alleged failure to back legislation agreed on in post-election coalition deals.
EDITOR: The IOF Saves Israel Again…
This daily murder outine, a little boy, an old man, a pregnant woman, are the stuff of the occupation, not its execesses. This happens every day, and is the rule rather than its exception. For all those war criomes, Israel and its brutal citizens will one day stand accused in the court of world opinion.
Report: IDF soldiers kill elderly Palestinian near Gaza border: Haaretz
Palestinian sources said IDF soldiers fatally shot 75-year-old man and wounded another man, 22, near the border with Gaza.
Palestinian emergency services and witnesses said Israel Defense Forces soldiers killed one Palestinian and wounded another near the border with Gaza, Israel Radio reported on Saturday.
Medical officials in Gaza said the man, who was 75 and whose body was only discovered on Saturday when it became light, had been shot several times.
They added that his family had reported he had been missing for two days.
The army spokesman said troops had spotted the man during darkness hours in an area that the military designated a combat zone that is off limits because of many attacks attempted by Palestinian militants on border patrols.
The wounded man, a 22-year-old Palestinian, was hospitalized for treatment.
The latest incidents came as Palestinians and Israeli Arabs commemorated the Nakba, (catastrophe in Arabic), with thousands of Palestinians marching in Gaza to mark 62 years of displacement.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven out during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation.
In Saturday’s rally, Palestinians attempted to overcome their current internal divisions, at least briefly, by protesting together.
Gaza’s Hamas rulers marched alongside their bitter rivals Fatah. They waved Palestinian flags and carried a giant key that is symbolic of their hoped-for return.
Some five million Palestinian refugees and their descendants are scattered through the Mideast.
EDITOR: A Message for Obama
Just to make things utterly clear, the Israeli Minter of the Interior is guaranteing that no one can be confused about Obama’s great ‘success’ in ‘freezing’ building in East Jerusalem, thus puncturing the US peace talks baloon.
Interior Minister: Israel will never freeze construction in Jerusalem: Haaretz
Yishai tells Shas daily that he has clarified this stance to the U.S., and plans to expedite construction in the capital.
Interior Minister Eli Yishai declared Thursday that Israel had not agreed to freeze construction in East Jerusalem, adding that American demands to do so would never be met.
“There is not and never has been a freeze on construction in Jerusalem, nor will there ever be,” said Yishai, whose approval of a 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem during U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s visit in March sparked tension in U.S.-Israeli ties.
Yishai, who heads the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, told his faction’s newspaper that the issue would not be raised during upcoming visits by senior American officials.
The Interior Minister said that he intended to expedite procedures for planning and construction across Israel, but particularly in Jerusalem. Residents of the capital were suffering a serious housing crisis, Yishai told the newspaper, forcing many to leave the city
“We will build everywhere in the capital of the Jewish nation’s everlasting homeland, and I have clarified this to our American counterparts and friends,” said Yishai.
He added that he had instructed the Jerusalem Building and Planning Council to convene after several delayed sessions to discuss renewing construction in the Arab area of Shoafat.
Yishai’s comments came just a day after the U.S. State Department warned both Palestinians and Israelis to avoid taking inflammatory actions in Jerusalem.
“As we have said, if either side takes significant actions during the proximity talks that we judge would seriously undermine trust, we will respond to hold them accountable and ensure that negotiations continue,” said a State Department representative.
The State Department further emphasized the U.S. stance on Jerusalem and expressed faith in the success of the indirect negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel.
“Our policy on Jerusalem remains unchanged. The status of Jerusalem is an issue that should be resolved in permanent status negotiations between the parties. This underlines the importance of making progress in the proximity talks to enable the parties to move to direct negotiations that will resolve this and other issues once and for all,” said the U.S. official.
World’s largest head-dress marks Nakba: YNet
Lebanese activists lay out 6,552-meter chain of scarves to mark Palestinian day of mourning
Lebanese and Palestinian activists on Saturday marked the “catastrophe” of Israel’s creation by setting a record for the world’s largest keffiyeh, or Arab head-dress.
The 6,552-meter chain of scarves was laid out on the grounds of the Sport City Stadium in Beirut to mark what Arabs call the Nakba, or a day of mourning for Israel’s establishment in 1948.
The feat, overseen by a Guinness World Records official, breaks a previous entry of a 2,932-meter scarf set in Spain in August 2009.
More than 100 volunteers placed the giant scarf to form the number 194, signifying the 1948 United Nations Resolution that grants Palestinians the right to return to their homes in Israeli-occupied land.
“A group of independent Palestinian and foreign activists got together to reach that record,” said Jamal Kurdi, a member of the Campaign 194 group that organised the record-breaking event.
“On the anniversary of the Naqba we want to affirm that Resolution 194… calling for the return of Palestinians to their land must be implemented,” he said.
A sign next to the giant keffiyeh, which was made with more than 6,500 scarves stitched together, read: “194. We will return.”
Some 4,000 people marched in Gaza City on Saturday to mark the Naqba, in response to a joint appeal by Hamas and Fatah. In the West Bank, sirens wailed as residents marked a minute’s silence.
More than 760,000 Palestinians, estimated today to number 4.7 million with their descendants, were pushed into exile or driven out of their homes in the conflict that followed Israel’s creation 62 years ago.
May has been a month of Guinness records for Lebanon, which has been locked in a food fight with Israel over the origin of some of the Middle East’s most popular dishes.
Last weekend, chefs in Lebanon fired a 10-ton hummus broadside, breaking a previous Israeli record, followed by another entry for more than a half-ton of falafels.
EDITOR: They learnt nothing and forgot nothing
The Palestinian Arabs in Israel will be forced to study about the Holocaust, for which they are obviously responsible, while Israeli Jews will continue to deny the Nakba, for which they bear no responsibility… The lying and denial continues. It is an upside-down reality.
Arabs will be obligated to study Holocaust: Ynet
Week after state comptroller uncovers insufficient coverage of topic in sector, Ynet learns Holocaust will be subject on one of mandatory questions on history matriculation exam. Senior Education Ministry official: We discovered astonishing ignorance on topic in sector. Teachers will also visit Auschwitz
Starting next year, students in the Arab and Druze sector will be obligated to answer a mandatory question on the history matriculation exam regarding the Holocaust, Ynet learned. The Education Ministry will develop methods for teaching the subject for non-Jewish teachers.
As part of the program, a special delegation of teachers and school principals from the sector will visit Auschwitz and other extermination camps. In addition, the Education Ministry will instate a new position within the ministry to integrate Holocaust studies into civics and literature studies in the various sectors.
Arab Support
The mandatory question on the history matriculation exam was thus far for Jewish students only. For other sectors, the question was deemed optional, and the subject was often not included at all in the official study material.
The new move made by Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar is taking shape just a week after the state comptroller’s report, which addressed the matter, was published. State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss wrote that the weight given to the Holocaust on the test in the Arab sector is very low, and is often not even included.
The state comptroller also found that the Education Ministry has not formulated a comprehensive study plan for the sector, and failed to include sector representatives in discussions in the relevant committees.
Figures published at the end of last year by the Knesset Research and Information Center showed that 134,672 students throughout the country participated in Holocaust-related activities in 2008. Of these, just 1,595 were students from the Arab sector. There was even lower Arab participation in youth trips to Poland, with just 150 Arab students taking part.
According to Dr. Zvi Zameret, the chairman of the pedagogical secretariat in the Education Ministry, “There has never been a question on the Holocaust on the matriculation exam in the Arab sector. When I took this position, I announced unequivocally that I will insist that there will be. In my opinion, they accepted the matter with deep understanding that the events of WWII and the Holocaust are key studies.”
Zameret added that through various studies “we revealed astonishing ignorance among the Arab sector and graduates of Arab schools regarding the Holocaust. The subject is not properly addressed within the education system. Nearly no time was spent on it and the subject was taught without training teachers, who know close to nothing about the subject. From now on, we will train teachers to teach about the Holocaust.”
EDITOR: They Chose money over pronciples
It seems that Elton John, Joan Armatrading, Amitav Ghosh and Margaret Atwood all chose money over political principle. Of course, it is always possible that those ARE their political principles, and that they support Israeli Apartheid, which is even worse…
Armatrading: Oppose Apartheid Israel as you would have opposed Apartheid South Africa!: PACBI
Occupied Ramallah, 5 May 2010
The Palestinian Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) is deeply troubled to learn that you are scheduled to perform in Israel on June 4th and 5th, in violation of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Call, [1] which calls on people of conscience throughout the world to isolate Israel until it ends its colonial and apartheid oppression against the Palestinian people. We urge you, as a prominent artist known for your commitment to social justice, not to perform in apartheid Israel. [2]
We call on you, as an artist who has been involved in advocacy work on women issues and refugee rights and who has expressed admiration for Nelson Mandela’s struggle against the apartheid regime in South Africa, not to turn a blind eye to apartheid in Israel. In your tribute song to Nelson Mandela, “The Messenger,” you praised the way he “fought the demons of oppression” and “freed a nation.” We hope you shall not taint your reputation now by associating yourself with the same form of oppression in Israel. As a woman of colour we are sure that you understand what it means to be racialized, silenced, to have your rights systematically denied and violated at will. For over 60 years, the indigenous Arab population of Palestine have faced the most pernicious forms of racialized oppression; hundreds of thousands have been forced out of their homes and lands, while four million continue to live under a brutal military occupation in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and a life endangering siege in Gaza, while the world has silently stood by and watched. As the global BDS movement gains ground, and as prominent artists join our struggle, most recently progressive artist Gill Scott-Heron cancelled his performance in Israel, we call on you not to ignore the realities of Israel’s policies of ethnic cleansing, colonisation and violent subjugation of the Palestinian people.
You are scheduled to perform in an amphitheatre located in a park that was used in the 1940’s as a training camp by the Irgun, one of the Zionist paramilitary forces that perpetrated the violent ethnic cleansing campaigns of 1948,resulting in the forcibly displacement of the overwhelming majority of the indigenous Palestinian population from their homeland. Today these refugees, the largest outstanding refugee population in the world, are being denied the right to return to the homes from which they were expelled in 1948. At the same time anyone in the world who claims Jewish descent can take up citizenship in Israel. The Israeli state has institutionalised a system of laws, policies and practices that bestow rights and privileges exclusively onto Israeli Jews while depriving the indigenous Palestinian population of their basic rights. [3]
You will be performing in Israel almost a year and half after its bloody military onslaught against the occupied Gaza Strip during which it killed more than 1,440 Palestinians, of whom 431 were children, and injured another 5380. [4] Israel subjected the besieged population of Gaza to three weeks of unrelenting state terror in which it systematically targeted civilian areas through indiscriminate aerial bombardments and missile strikes. The UN Fact Finding Mission, led by Judge Richard Goldstone, described the attacks as deliberately “designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population” and called for investigations of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.[5]
In the West Bank, Palestinians are now confined to a system of bantustans and ghettos, their movement in and out of which is controlled by Israeli checkpoints and its closure system, and many villages are completely encircled by the apartheid Wall that cuts villagers off from their land, resources and markets. As an advocate of women rights, you should know that it is Palestinian women who particularly bear the brunt of these colonial and apartheid policies. Israel’s siege confines Palestinians to their localities, often denying pregnant women access to hospitals and healthcare services. As a result, many Palestinian women are forced to undergo the traumatic, humiliating and extremely risky experience of giving birth at checkpoints, often losing their newborns in the process, under the watchful eyes of apathetic occupation soldiers. Women also account for a large portion of the over 8000 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel during the current anti-colonial uprising. Palestinian women face sexual harassment, torture and abuse in prison, and like their male counterparts, they endure lengthy detentions in Israel’s colonial prison system on account of bravely struggling for freedom in their homeland.
If you still have any doubts as to the nature of Israel’s system of oppression then consider the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu who recently said “I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid.” [6] Nelson Mandela, who is also a firm supporter of our struggle, has famously said that justice for the Palestinian people “is the greatest moral issue of our age.”
As in the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, where international solidarity played a central role in bringing down apartheid, we believe that the growing global BDS movement is the most effective way to pressure Israel to comply with international law and recognise the Palestinian people’s inalienable rights. Prominent international artists, including Sting, Bono, Snoop Dog, Jean Luc Goddard, Joan Manuel Serrat and Santana have all heeded our call and cancelled performances in Israel.
You believed in the struggle for freedom in South Africa. We ask that you also support the struggle for freedom and justice in Palestine.
PACBI
www.PACBI.org
pacbi@pacbi.org
[1] http://bdsmovement.net/?q=node/52
[2] A recent academic study sponsored by the South African government accuses Israel’s regime over the Palestinians of constituting occupation, colonization and apartheid. See:
http://www.hsrc.ac.za/Document-3227.phtml
[3] For more on Israel’s regime of occupation, colonization and apartheid see this important BNC strategic position paper: http://bdsmovement.net/files/English-BNC_Position_Paper-Durban_Review.pdf
[4] http://www.ochaopt.org/gazacrisis/index.php?section=3
[5] “Report of the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict.” General Assembly, A/HRC/12/48, 25 September 2009. http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/12session/A-HRC-12-48.pdf
[6]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/desmond-tutu/divesting-from-injustice_b_534994.html