EDITOR: The memory of Juliano Mer-Khamis in Jenin
While abroad memorials are held in many cities for the courageous and innovative activist, the picture at the Jenin camp is more complex, with residents there being much more critical than supportive. One feels deep sadness about Juliano, who has given his life for this activity, like his mother before him, yet remained unrecognised as an important fighter for Palestinian rights, exactly where he acted and worked. It seems his work was a bridge too far for the inhabitatnts of the camp. His theatre was always demanding and uncompromising, and his critique of the PA, while shared by many in Palestine, was too much when coming from an outsider.
Juliano Mer-Khamis – a killing inspired by drama, not politics: The Guardian
Jenin residents claim public opinion turned on director for performing plays that went against Islamic conservative values
Conal Urquhart in Jenin
Juliano Mer-Khamis was shot dead earlier this month. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
He wanted to create an “art revolution” to help liberate the Palestinian people, but he only managed to alienate those he most wanted to inspire.
The murder earlier this month of Juliano Mer-Khamis was condemned all over the world but met with a grim silence by the residents of the Jenin refugee camp where he founded his Freedom Theatre. It has emerged that the residents of the camp had serious grievances against the actor-director that may have provided the excuses for an unknown gunman to kill him.
The 52-year-old, born of a Jewish mother and Palestinian father, attracted funding from the UN, Sweden and the UK for his theatre school and productions but many camp residents found his activities offensive.
His death and attitudes to the theatre highlight the conflict of interest between western donors, local elites and the populations they aim to aid; between liberal western values of freedom of expression and a more conservative, traditional world view.
A fatwa-style leaflet circulated in Jenin this week and seen by the Guardian, lists criticisms of Mer-Khamis and suggests that the final impetus for the murder was his plan to stage a controversial German play that explores teenage sexuality.
Mer-Khamis’s mother, Arna, started a drama workshop in Jenin to help children traumatised by the first intifada which began in 1987. In 2002, Mer-Khamis returned to Jenin after the Israeli army’s destruction of a large part of the refugee camp and the theatre his mother founded. He discovered that many of the children his mother had worked with had become gunmen and suicide bombers which he documented in his award-winning film, Arna’s Children.
But he decided that he wanted to continue his mother’s work and create a platform for Palestinian youth to stand up to authority through creativity rather than violence. The Freedom Theatre taught theatre and acting to students, including former gunmen, and staged plays such as Animal Farm and Alice in Wonderland which satirised Palestinian and Israeli authorities.
But while Mer-Khamis entertained thousands and inspired devotion among his disciples, his methods disturbed conservative groups in the refugee camp. The theatre was firebombed twice and Mer-Khamis often envisaged his death at the hands of “a crazy Palestinian gunman”.
A community leader said that Mer-Khamis was respected in the camp for highlighting damage inflicted by the Israeli army but his creation of a politically and social liberal theatre was more controversial.
Adnan al-Hindi, the chairman of the refugee camp’s “popular committee” said that Mer-Khamis had very different values and ideas from the residents, which caused disagreements.
The nature of the disputes varied. Local leaders were offended when David Milliband, the British foreign secretary, visited the theatre in 2009 without co-ordination with Palestinian officials. They were also offended by groups of theatre visitors touring the camp and by comments made by Mer-Khamis in interviews.
“He said that his message was to liberate citizens from the authority of their leaders and children from their parents. Then there was mixing of sexes and dancing. We tried to discuss it with him and persuade him that he was mistaken but to no avail. Public opinion turned against him,” said Hindi.
Inside the camp, rebuilt since its partial destruction in 2002, people were reluctant to speak about Mer-Khamis. A group of elderly women sitting by the roadside, gave their opinion: “God only knows what happened but the theatre was a shameful place.”
A butcher was more forthcoming. Standing in a small room with a portrait of Saddam Hussein and a sparsely stocked cold cabinet, he said he and others were offended by the theatre. “We are Muslims. We have traditions. We looked for our children and found them at the theatre dancing. If he came here to bring jobs that would be good but instead he comes here to corrupt our girls and make women of our boys,” he said.
The leaflet justifying the killing of Mer-Khamis also demands the closure of the theatre and other western organisations, including the British Kenyon Institute, under threat of “jihadi action”.
The leaflet attacks Mer-Khamis for his belief in co-existence between Israelis and Palestinians, “as if we could live with those who stole our land and killed our children”.
It goes on to attack his plays: “What kind of resistance [to occupation] is the play Animal Farm, which made the young men of Palestine bark like dogs and lick the ground in shame and the young women wear the costumes of pigs and roll around the ground in degeneracy?”
The leaflet describes Mer-Khamis as a Jew, a communist and an infidel. “He was not killed for a scene in a play. He was killed for the accumulation of his activities since he came here,” it says.
Mer-Khamis’s most recent project, Spring Awakening, is singled out for particular criticism. The play by Frank Wedekind was banned in Germany in 1891 for its portrayal of teenage sexuality. In recent years a musical adaptation won awards in London and New York.
The leaflet then refers to a telephone conversation between Mer-Khamis and the Arab-Israeli actor, Makram Khouri, in which Khouri advises his friend not to stage the play. According to theatre staff, very few people were aware of the conversation.
The leaflet then praises the man from Jenin refugee camp who carried out the killing. “He did not do it with a silencer, or in the dark but in broad daylight, face to face, and he made sure not to harm the woman and child who were in the car at the time,” the leaflet says.
Palestinian police say that their investigation into the murder continues.
Meanwhile, at the theatre staff remain determined to continue the work of Mer-Khamis despite a sense of paranoia that the killer had a connection to the theatre.
Rawand Arkavi, the theatre co-ordinator who is from Jenin, said: “We were cautious before but now we don’t care if they shoot all of us. We will keep the theatre going.”
Syria urged to end deadly repression: Al Jazeera English
Obama leads condemnation and accuses Damascus of seeking Iranian help as dozens reported killed in latest protests.
Barack Obama, the US president, has said Syria’s deadly crackdown on protesters “must come to an end now” and accused Damascus of seeking Iranian help to repress its people.
Some 75 protesters were killed on Friday, according to human rights group Amnesty International, in the bloodiest violence in a month of escalating protests against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s rule.
Local activists have released a list of 103 people who they say were killed in Friday’s crackdown.
“This outrageous use of violence to quell protests must come to an end now,” said Obama on Friday, dismissing as “not serious” Assad’s lifting of a decades-old emergency law in Syria this week and accused him of seeking help from Iran.
“Instead of listening to their own people, President Assad is blaming outsiders while seeking Iranian assistance in repressing Syria’s citizens through the same brutal tactics that have been used by his Iranian allies,” he said.
“We strongly oppose the Syrian government’s treatment of its citizens and we continue to oppose its continued destabilising behaviour more generally, including support for terrorism and terrorist groups,” said Obama.
Despite the criticism, Obama did not refer to any potential US consequences should Assad refuse to heed his demands.
UN demands ‘independent’ investigation
Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, meanwhile, has condemned the Syrian government’s killing of demonstrators, calling for an “independent, transparent and effective investigation into the killings”, his spokesman said on Friday.
“The secretary-general condemns the ongoing violence against peaceful demonstrators in Syria, which again has killed and injured many today, and calls for it to stop immediately,” Farhan Haq, Ban’s spokesman, said from the UN headquarters in New York.
Ban said that President Assad’s government must “respect international human rights, including the right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, as well as the freedom of the press”.
The UN secretary-general stressed that “only an inclusive dialogue and the effective implementation of reforms can address the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people and ensure social peace and order”.
European condemnation
Jerzy Buzek, the European Parliament chief on Friday also condemned the shooting deaths of protesters in Syria and called for the release of all prisoners of conscience.
“Today’s violent crackdown on peaceful demonstrations all over Syria is unacceptable. The bloodshed has to stop now: this is the government’s first and foremost responsibility,” he said in a statement.
“Any form of violence against peaceful demonstrators must stop: no more killing, no more torture, no more arbitrary arrests. An independent investigation into the deaths of protesters has to be carried out.”
France also urged Syrian authorities to halt their use of violence on anti-government protesters.
“We call on them once more to engage in an inclusive political dialogue without delay and to put into place reforms that respond to the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people,” said deputy spokeswoman Christine Fages, deputy spokeswoman for the foreign ministry.
She also called for the release of those arrested and for respecting basic rights, including media freedom and the right to hold peaceful demonstrations.
Peak of violence
At least 75 people were killed on Friday as security forces use live ammunition and tear gas to quell anti-government protests across the country, according to human rights group Amnesty International.
Friday’s death toll was one of the bloodiest in protests for democratic change – the first since emergency rule was imposed by the ruling Baath Party when it seized power in 1963.
Amnesty International called for an immediate end to the attacks on protesters and for an investigation into the deadly events.
“The Syrian authorities have again responded to peaceful calls for change with bullets and batons,” said Malcolm Smart, the London-based organisation’s director for the Middle East.
“They must immediately halt their attacks on peaceful protesters and instead allow Syrians to gather freely, as international law demands.”
Report: Turkey shows support for Palestinian efforts to seek UN recognition: Haaretz
Turkey’s Ambassador to the UN reportedly says the Palestinian Authority has proved they deserve to attain internationally recognized statehood, while the Turkish president says an Israeli-Palestinian deal is essential for peace in the region.
In a report published Saturday in the Turkish daily, Today’s Zaman, the Turkish Ambassador to the UN expressed his support for Palestinian statehood, urging the international community to follow suit.
“The time has come to show solidarity with the Palestinians and help them to live in peace and dignity,” said the Turkish Ambassador to the UN Ertuğrul Apakan during a UN Security Council debate on the Middle East on Thursday.
According to the report in Today’s Zaman, Apakan said that if the Palestinians prove they are ready to become a full UN member, instead of maintaining their current observer status, the international community should not “turn a blind eye to their just and legitimate appeal.”
“Through their state building efforts, the Palestinian Authority has proven to all the skeptics that they deserve to attain their decades-long target of internationally recognized statehood, even though they continue to suffer under occupation,” said Apakan, according to the report.
In a New York Times editorial Thursday, Turkish President Abdullah Gul spoke of the importance of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. He said that a “dignified and viable Palestine,” living side by side with Israel, would fortify Israel’s security.
According to the report, Gul said that the plight of the Palestinians has been a cause of unrest and conflict in the Middle East and a pretext for extremism in other parts of the world. “Israel cannot afford to be perceived as an apartheid island surrounded by an Arab sea of anger and hostility,” said the Turkish president.
He added that Turkey would benefit from a peaceful Middle East and is “therefore ready to use our full capacity to facilitate constructive negotiations.”
Israel’s relationship with Turkey, once a key Mideast ally, has severely deteriorated since the Gaza war of the winter of 2008-2009, after which Ankara had severely criticized Jerusalem for use of excessive force in a dense civilian population.
The ties between the once stanch allies continued to worsen following Israel’s raid on a Turkish Gaza aid flotilla in May of 2010, which resulted in the deaths of nine Turkish activists.
Turkey has repeatedly urged Israel to apologize for its boarding of the Gaza flotilla, demanding that it compensate the families of those injured and killed in the incident, demands that were rejected by Israel.
Recently, Turkish officials indicated they rejected a request from Israel to help stop activists sailing to Gaza on the first anniversary of an Israeli raid on a Turkish ship, saying flotilla plan was not Ankara’s concern.
The Free Gaza Movement, a pro-Palestinian activist umbrella group, has said that a flotilla expected in late May would comprise 15 ships with international passengers including Europeans and Americans.
Israel’s ambassador to Turkey, Gaby Levy, asked the Turkish government this month to help stop the activists, saying sending humanitarian aide to Gaza outside legal channels was a “provocation,” an Israeli diplomatic official told Reuters.
According to the report in Today’s Zaman, the Turkish ambassador the UN said, “It should also be borne in mind that the phenomenon of humanitarian convoys to Gaza cannot simply be explained away as unilateral provocations.”
Israel, Extraordinary Rendition and the Strange Case of Dirar Abu Sisi: Truthout
Thursday 21 April 2011
by: Richard Silverstein,
On a cold Ukrainian winter night in mid-February 2011, a Gaza civil engineer named Dirar Abu Sisi was lying in bed in a railroad sleeper car traveling to Kiev to visit his brother, Yousef, whom he hadn’t seen in 15 years.
Abu Sisi had come to Ukraine as a refugee applying for Ukrainian citizenship. While there, he was staying with his wife’s family, who are Ukrainian natives. Though he was the deputy chief of Gaza’s only power plant, he and his wife, Veronika, increasingly felt that Gaza was an unsafe place to raise their six children. During his stay, he had formally applied for citizenship so that he might resettle his family in Ukraine.
But something strange happened that night on the train. Just outside the village of Poltava, two policemen rousted Abu Sisi from bed and took him away, according to a witness in the bunk under Abu Sisi, who saw the entire incident unfold. This witness, Andrej Makarenko, who was recently discovered by the Ukrainian independent newspaper, Pravda (Russian), also noted that a conductor was present. The latter at first confirmed Makarenko’s story to the press, but later recanted, possibly under pressure from Ukrainian authorities. The Pravda reporter says the conductor has been given extended leave and has disappeared from his home.
Abu Sisi claimed in a prison interview with a Gaza human rights group that he was transferred to a private apartment in Kiev, where he was questioned by Israeli Mossad agents. He was then brought to the airport, placed on a plane and flown to Israel, making this a case of extraordinary rendition.
When Abu Sisi’s wife, who was in Gaza at the time, realized he had disappeared, she smuggled herself through a border tunnel to Egypt and made the same trip her husband had to Ukraine. Once there, she began a desperate search for him together with Yousef. They didn’t hear from Dirar for a week until the end of February, when he finally called from an Israeli prison. During that period of silence, she summoned the Ukrainian press and began accusing the Mossad of kidnapping him.
In early March, a confidential Israeli source reported to me that Abu Sisi was in an Israeli prison. Until that moment, no one knew what had happened after he was kidnapped. A few days after I reported this, and after scouring the Israeli human rights nongovernmental organization (NGO) community, Dalia Kerstein of HaMoked wrote that the Gazan engineer was indeed in an Israeli prison. First, he’d been brought to the Shabak (also known as Shin Bet) detention facility at Petah Tikvah, where he’d been interrogated. Later, he’d been moved to Shikma prison outside Ashkelon. And the entire story was under gag order.
Kerstein identified Abu Sisi’s Israeli public defender. When I called her, she was tight-lipped. There was a gag. She couldn’t confirm anything. But by the mere fact that she didn’t deny representing the detainee, I knew she did.
I continued reporting these new developments as I uncovered them. I also tried, with mixed success, to get the foreign and Israeli media to expose the case because I considered this an act of extraordinary rendition, a violation of Ukrainian sovereignty by Israel in order to kidnap someone who wasn’t even its own citizen.
Later, I also reported – based on information supplied to me by Yousef – that during Dirar’s trip to Ukraine, he had had an airport layover in Amman, where their parents live. Jordanian intelligence officials refused to allow him to board his connecting flight, held him at the airport overnight and refused to allow him to continue his trip to Ukraine for seven days. When they finally allowed him to continue his travels, he was accompanied on his flight to Ukraine by four Jordanian intelligence agents. This implicates Jordan in the kidnapping and indicates at least a three-nation conspiracy in his disappearance. Pravda also reported this part of the story.
The gag also prevented Israelis from knowing that Abu Sisi was jailed, what the charges brought against him were or what conditions he was being held under. I was especially concerned, because during such secret detentions the Israeli security service is often accused of torturing suspects to procure confessions, which are then used against them in court. Critics of Israeli security policy, including Israeli human rights NGOs, say this sacrifices democracy, due process and rule of law on the altar of security.
I felt it was urgent to break the gag and to pressure Israel to make some accounting of its own actions, but it’s very hard to break a gag order. The Israeli press will not do it, since the government may remove their publishing license and so put them out of business. In the old days, an Israeli journalist could plant a story with a foreign journalist, who would publish it, thus allowing the Israeli to publish it inside Israel.
But that’s now less possible in national security cases like this one. Few Israeli reporters break such a gag. In the past few days, I’ve asked Israeli reporters whether they can report the Jordanian connection to this story, but they tell me they may not report anything about how Abu Sisi got to Israel – this despite the fact that it is now being reported here, in the Ukrainian media and virtually around the world.
But there is a way to do it inside Israel. It’s a bit like breaking down a mountain through thousands of years of slow, constant erosion. First, one blogger or media outlet publishes, then another. Finally, it becomes a torrent. The role of the blogger in these cases is a little like that first drip of water that falls on the hillside. It doesn’t bring down the mountain. Perhaps it doesn’t even carry much soil with it. After all, it’s just a drip. But one leads to another, and, before you know it, you have a raging waterfall of media coverage and exposure.
One thing the security establishment does not like is exposure. As the infamous American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) lobbyist, Steve Rosen, once said: “A lobby is like a night flower. It thrives in darkness and withers in the daylight.”
So too, Israel’s security apparatus. While no one denies the need to protect Israel’s citizens against terror, many find the pendulum has swung too far toward security and too far from respecting individual rights.
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Despite the gag, Israeli journalists specializing in security reporting heard hints from anonymous security sources about the reasons for Abu Sisi’s detention. Haaretz’s Amos Harel noted that Iran has reputedly been training Gaza “engineers” to develop an indigenous weapons industry. That is, unnamed sources are claiming that a man who purported to be a power plant engineer was really a weapons manufacturer. No proof of the charge. The suspect can’t speak for himself. His attorney can barely speak for him because she is under gag as well.
Other Israeli reporters intimated, using other unnamed security sources, that Abu Sisi might be the mastermind behind an interdicted shipment of Iranian weapons allegedly destined for Gaza in the ship Victoria. Der Spiegel claimed he was spilling his guts about the whereabouts of Gilad Shalit. More recently, unnamed sources claimed in this New Zealand Herald story that he’d given the Shabak information that enabled the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to attack a vehicle in Sudan carrying Hamas arms dealers and weapons bound for Gaza. In short, Abu Sisi had become an Israeli security Rorschach image onto which anyone could project whatever they wished to see. I half expected to read he’d provided the intelligence that enabled the Mossad to arrest and kidnap Adolph Eichmann in Argentina in 1960.
Early in the case, Haaretz’s security correspondent, Yossi Melman, reported that Ukraine’s security personnel kidnapped the victim on behalf of Israel, then transferred him to the Mossad, who delivered him to Israel. In an interview, Dirar’s brother Yousef confirmed his conviction that the Ukrainians collaborated in the abduction. For three weeks, Yousef traveled to every Ukrainian police and intelligence service office he could find, asking for help in locating his brother. He was universally treated with disdain, like a fly to be swatted away. Every official he consulted told him not to talk to the media, but to remain quiet and his brother would come back to him. One person even offered a date, saying that Dirar would come back by March 9. By March 9, Yousef had long known that his brother was in an Israeli prison.
Abu Sisi’s brother recently told me that a Ukrainian politician informed him that Ukraine’s deputy intelligence chief, Vladimir Rokitsky, orchestrated the entire kidnapping scheme.
Among the heartbreaking things Yousef told me was the account of his brother’s six children, who remain in Gaza without either father or mother. They are being cared for by his sister, Suzanne, who has six children of her own. He also recounted the suffering of his elderly father in Jordan when Yousef told him that Dirar had been arrested by the Israeli security apparatus. The man cried for almost a day without stopping, knowing that he might never again see his son, given his advanced age.
Israel has a long history of kidnapping foreigners and Israelis on foreign soil and spiriting them off to Israel for trial or secret detention. The phenomenon began with Adolph Eichmann, who the Mossad kidnapped 1960. Back then, this seemed an act of supreme justice in reparation for a rogue Nazi overlord who needed to be brought to justice.
But an act that seems almost heroic in one era can lose its glow in another. In the 1980’s, Mordechai Vanunu traveled to Britain to tell his tales to the tabloid press about working in the heart of Israel’s nuclear weapons facility at Dimona. Vanunu’s breaking the nuclear taboo seemed to provoke the ire of the Mossad. It has spent seemingly every waking moment since making this man’s life miserable. It began with Vanunu’s capture in Europe, then his drugging and repatriation to Israel, where he was tried and sentenced to a long prison term. Despite the completion of his sentence, Israel has refused to allow him to leave the country, and he remains under a form of national house arrest.
The case of Abu Sisi seems yet another in a long line of extraordinary renditions. But the question for Israel is – at what gain for what cost? Nabbing someone perhaps proves the Mossad’s power to get its man anywhere, at any time – a possible plus if the goal is to intimidate your enemy.
However, the cost is proving that as a nation, you respect neither national sovereignty, due process nor international law. You prove the claims of your enemies that you are a rogue state rather than an upstanding member of the international community.
In early April, after an unprecedented 45 days in detention without charges being filed (the maximum is usually 30 days) during which Abu Sisi’s lawyer, Smadar Ben Natan, claims he was tortured, the Shabak released an indictment which claimed that Abu Sisi was Hamas’ chief weapons engineer, that he developed and refined the design and manufacture of all of its missiles including Qassams and anti-tank rockets, among others, and that he applied Russian rocket research and engineering know-how to improving Hamas’ missile capability (Read the full indictment in Hebrew and the English language summary.)
Among the claims offered was that during Abu Sisi’s graduate studies in Ukraine, the suspect studied electrical engineering as a cover for his studies in rocket technology at a Ukrainian military engineering academy in Kharkov. But these charges contained many holes and inconsistencies. The named military academy had ceased to exist by 1992, while Abu Sisi earned his advanced engineering degree in 1999. The PhD adviser who allegedly sponsored Abu Sisi’s military studies (who is named in the indictment as Constantin Petrovich, traditionally a first and middle name, but neither of which is usually used as a last name), only joined the institute where he currently teaches in 2004, while Abu Sisi left Ukraine around 1999.
A number of the Hamas military leaders alleged in the indictment to have recruited and tasked Abu Sisi with his weapons assignments have been assassinated by Israel, including Salah Shehadeh and Nizzar Rayan.
All of which leads to one of two possible conjectures: either, as his attorney claims, the Palestinian engineer, under torture, concocted a story that would satisfy his interrogators and ease his abuse, or the Shabak has manufactured a tale out of whole cloth.
The Ukrainian government has consistently denied either collaborating in the kidnapping or having any knowledge of Abu Sisi’s whereabouts. However, there is speculation that Ukraine may have been motivated to participate by the fact that it is eager to sign a free trade agreement with Israel that it has promoted and which already allows visa-free travel by nationals of both countries.
Veronika Abu Sisi has initiated legal proceedings in her native country to force the government to account for its behavior and reveal what it did and why. If the courts refuse to take action, she and her brother-in-law, Yousef, plan to bring the matter before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
We are left to speculate regarding the reasons for Abu Sisi’s detention. The number of possibilities includes the fact that, as Gaza’s senior civil engineer, he would be a prize for Israel in its ongoing efforts to disrupt daily life in Hamas-dominated Gaza. Alternatively, Israel may feel that, as an engineer, he has knowledge that would be useful to it if he could describe to the security service aspects of the Gaza infrastructure about which they wish to know more. Gaza’s only power plant is a critical element of the enclave’s infrastructure. When Israel invaded during Operation Cast Lead, it bombed the plant and disabled it – causing all 1.5 million Gazans to lose power for the duration. Veronika Abu Sisi claims that Israel nabbed him because he was the “brain of the power system” and that he had rebuilt it himself after the last war. Others note that he had helped refine a new fuel system that made the plant far less dependent on Israeli-supplied diesel fuel. This may not have sat well with the Israeli authorities, who wish to control the system’s operations should they want to limit or cut them off. If Shabak could probe Abu Sisi for technical details about the plant’s operation and systems, it could penetrate it and disrupt it more easily, perhaps in a way similar to Israel’s use of the Stuxnet virus to sabotage Iran’s nuclear power plants at Natanz and Bushehr.
Of course, all of this is speculation because the national security state prefers to operate in the dark, prefers opacity. We can only look forward to a day when extraordinary rendition and the other favored tactics of such a state are as discredited as the lynchings and apartheid of a bygone era.
Jonathan Cook: on Nazareth, Israeli citizenship laws, and the Arabic language: IOA
20 APRIL 2011
Nazareth-based journalist Jonathan Cook interviewed by Jon Dillingham
Part I: Nazareth Complicates Israeli Narrative
British journalist Jonathan Cook explains how Nazareth’s religious mix doesn’t fit in with the common perception that all things Israel can be understood as Jewish vs. Muslim.
Cook, a former reporter for The Guardian and The Observer, now writes for Abu Dhabi’s The National as the only foreign correspondent based in Nazareth, where he’s lived for almost a decade.
Cook’s position in the Arab heartland of Israel puts a different perspective on his reporting: namely that the post-1967 conflict over the occupied territories is best understood as a reflection and continuation of the larger conflict begun in 1948.
Nazareth Complicates Israeli Narrative from Jon Dillingham on Vimeo.
Part II: The Underlying Philosophy of Upper Nazareth
Nazerat Illit, or Upper Nazareth, is a Jewish enclave built above the Palestinian Arab city of Nazareth in the Galilee, northern Israel. The “illit” city (the Hebrew word illit means both higher physically, but also “elite”, or better, in a moral and philosophical sense) was built on confiscated Palestinian land and, according to British journalist Jonathan Cook, serves two purposes: to stop the expansion of the “Arab capital” of Israel and to act as a mitzpe (“lookout”) to literally watch over Nazareth’s Palestinians (the municipal government building overlook the city).
Cook, a former reporter for The Guardian and The Observer, now writes for Abu Dhabi’s The National as the only foreign correspondent based in Nazareth, where he’s lived for almost a decade.
Cook’s position in the Arab capital heartland of Israel puts a different perspective on his reporting: namely that the post-1967 conflict over the occupied territories is best understood as a reflection and continuation of the larger conflict begun in 1948.
The Underlying Philosophy of Upper Nazareth from Jon Dillingham on Vimeo.
Part III: Israeli Inequality Sustained By Citizenship Laws
Israel uses the rule of law, namely two separate citizenship laws for Jews and non-Jews, to divide and oppress its minorities, says British journalist Jonathan Cook.
Cook, a former reporter for The Guardian and The Observer, now writes for Abu Dhabi’s The National as the only foreign correspondent based in Nazareth, where he’s lived for almost a decade.
Cook’s position in the Arab heartland of Israel puts a different perspective on his reporting: namely that the post-1967 conflict over the occupied territories is best understood as a reflection and continuation of the larger conflict begun in 1948.
**The “loyalty oath” to which Cook refers to in the video was taken out of a law passed in the Knesset on March 28, 2011, a week after the interview.
Israeli Inequality Sustained By Citizenship Laws from Jon Dillingham on Vimeo.
Part IV: Arabic – Israel’s Silent Official Language
Though Arabic is one of Israel’s two official languages, it’s virtually non-existent in official Israeli life, and even met by contempt within Jewish Israeli society, explains British journalist Jonathan Cook.
Cook, a former reporter for The Guardian and The Observer, now writes for Abu Dhabi’s The National as the only foreign correspondent based in Nazareth, where he’s lived for almost a decade.
Cook’s position in the Arab heartland of Israel puts a different perspective on his reporting: namely that the post-1967 conflict over the occupied territories is best understood as a reflection and continuation of the larger conflict begun in 1948.
Arabic: Israel’s Silent Official Language from Jon Dillingham on Vimeo.
Israel Prize laureates protest for Palestinian state: YNet
Leftists gather before building in which Ben Gurion declared Israel’s independence to ‘welcome expected declaration of independence of a Palestinian state’. Rightists stage counter-protest, cry ‘traitors’ and ‘Jewish Nazis’
Dozens of left-wing activists have joined 17 Israel Prize laureates in front of the building in which Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, declared independence, to call for the establishment of a Palestinian state with 1967 borders.
Dozens of right-wing activists also gathered on the scene Thursday for a counter-protest, and called the protesters “traitors”.
Police have set up a divide between the two sides, but the protests on Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard quickly came to blows.
Rightists waved Israeli flags and called out “Jewish Nazi” and “traitor” at actress Hanna Maron, who attempted to read out the declaration prepared by organizers. They also called the leftists a “fifth column” and some called out, “You forgot about the children who were slaughtered in Itamar.”
Meanwhile camera crews, among them journalists from various Arab news agencies, stood by as Maron spoke. “Sixty-three years ago Israel’s Declaration of Independence was read out here. The declaration extended a hand of peace to all of our neighbors,” she said.
“It is the natural right of the Jewish and Palestinian peoples to be as all other nations – to stand independently in their nation state,” she added.
The organizers of the event are a number of artists and academicians who have recently published petitions warning of the rise of “fascism” in the Israeli government. Among them are former Minister Shulamit Aloni, author Sami Michael, and filmmaker Ari Folman.
“We have gathered here today, on April 21, 2011, to welcome the expected declaration of independence of the Palestinian state, Israel’s neighbor, with our borders of independence – which came into being at the end of the War of Independence in 1949 – the borders known as the ’67 borders,” a document drawn up by the left-wing activists says.
“The independence of both states strengthens each other. It is a moral and existential need and the basis for the possibility of good neighborly relations.”
The document adds, “We call on the citizens of Israel, the Knesset, the government, citizens of the world and their governments to recognize two states, in which the right to self-definition must be expressed by
both peoples as well as the general principles of democracy and equality.”
Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon responded to the initiative. “Moves like these only lessen the chances of a truce and the establishment of a Palestinian state, and create false hopes among the Palestinians that they can establish a state one-sidedly and without negotiating with Israel. It would be better for the protesters to convince Palestinian leaders to come to the negotiations table,” he said.
The Scottish Trade Union Congress (STUC) condemns the Histadrut and declares its continued commitment to the campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against the state of Israel: STUC
Sofiah MacLeod, Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign Ayr (Scotland) April 20th, 2011)
There were blistering attacks on the Israeli Histadrut from the floor of the STUC annual conference. The FBU Jimmy Malone of the Scottish FBUScotland has been a consistent supporter of Palestinian calls for boycott. FBU Scotland Organiser, Jim Malone, expressed delegates’ disgust of Histadrut’s complicity with Israel’s crimes.
“The Histadrut through their collusion, through their support of the illegal actions of the Israeli government is an organisation unworthy of the title trade union. The trade union movement is a family, with the Israeli Histadrut, as an even distant cousin, we are a dysfunctional family”.
Mike Arnott of Dundee Trades Council called for “the Histadrut to be struck off the list of organisations that this movement recognises as representing the trade union family”.
Rab Paterson of Midlothian Trade Union Council called on Congress to “remove the cloak of respectability the Histadrut uses to justify Israeli injustices and to further Israeli interests”.
UCU Scotland’s Terry Brotherstone relayed a message from the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) that “the Palestinian people do not want PGFTU’s unbalanced power relationship with the Histadrut to be used as an excuse to maintain normal ties”.
Mike Kirby for the STUC General Council echoed the condemnation from the floor of the Histadrut.
“It’s clear, overwhelmingly, that the Histadrut has failed consistently to criticise the illegal occupation, the erection of the apartheid wall, the siege of Gaza, the attack on the humanitarian flotilla and countless other transgressions…In the General Council’s view this position is inconsistent with the duty of trade unions to support human rights and exhibit global solidarity. Furthermore, the stance adopted by the Histadrut has the effect of normalising the illegal occupation and other serious transgressions committed by the Israelis.”
The STUC General Council, Kirby announced, “remains deeply committed” to BDS and pledged “to the continued promotion of BDS both to its affiliates, wider Scottish society and our sister unions”.
The General Council recommended stopping short of a complete boycott of the Histadrut, but said that a “review will be immediate in the case of fresh developments in Israel/Palestine”.
On the issue of another institution involved in Israel’s ethnic cleansing, the General Council committed to “continue to consider its stance in relation to the JNF [Jewish National Fund]”. Dundee Trade Union Council’s Mike Arnott informed delegates of the official launch on Land Day, 30 March, of “an international campaign to stop the JNF and to strip it of its charitable status worldwide…we call for the JNF to be struck off as a charity in the UK.”
Assessing the progress made during the STUC 2011 gathering, Jim Malone argued that, “we managed, once again, to push the cause of the Palestinian people and our abhorrence of the Israeli Histadrut to the front of the Scottish political agenda”.
Broadcast regulator rejects every complaint on Promise: Jewish Chronicle
By Robyn Rosen, April 21, 2011
Ofcom has rejected scores of complaints about the impartiality and inaccuracy of the TV series The Promise, and defended it as a “serious television drama, not presented as a historical re-creation”.
The broadcasting regulator received 44 complaints about the four-part drama, written and produced by Peter Kosminsky and aired earlier this year by Channel 4. But Ofcom concluded in a 10-page report that the series did not breach its code of conduct.
Viewers complained that the drama, about British Mandate Palestine and its legacy, was antisemitic, used upsetting footage of concentration camps, incited racial hatred, was biased against Israel and presented historical inaccuracies.
But Ofcom said: “Just because some individual Jewish and Israeli characters were portrayed in a negative light does not mean the programme was, or was intended to be, antisemitic.
This was a drama, not a historic faithful re-creation “Just as there were Jewish/Israeli characters that could be seen in a negative light, so there were British and Palestinian characters that could also be seen in a negative light.”
While conceding that some characters could provoke negative views of Jews and Israel, Ofcom said such characterisation would not incite crime, harm or prejudice against Jews.
Responding to concerns about historical inaccuracies, it said: “Whilst references were made to the political disputes and conflicts between the Jewish/Israeli and Palestinian communities, these references were essentially descriptive in nature… and we considered their purpose was to add a backdrop to the dramatic narrative.
“References to aspects of the political and policy debates between he Jewish/Israeli and Palestinian communities…were throughout incidental to the main purpose of the series, namely, the dramatisation of the ‘personal view’ experiences of two people.”
Ofcom said that because it did not consider that the programme dealt with political controversy, it was not relevant to the code’s section on bias.
It said that controversial scenes such as the Deir Yassin massacre, King David Hotel bombing and the portrayal of the Irgun, were “in the context of a serious television drama and were not presented as a historical and faithful re-creation”. Ofcom added that other scenes, including those where Jewish settlers threw stones at Palestinian children and Israeli soldiers used a Palestinian child as a human shield, were “imagined dramatic events”.
Harvey Rose, chairman of the Zionist Federation, said: “I’m disappointed by the report. Relying on the fact it is a historical drama is a complete vacation of responsibility.
“Saying the conflict is incidental to the story is inverted. I would say the two characters were incidental to the story, not the other way around.”
Amir Ofek, press attache at the Israeli Embassy in London, said: “The Promise may not have broken the Ofcom code, but it certainly shattered every moral code in broadcasting.”
Ofcom has launched an investigation into award-winning Channel 4 documentary, War Child, after receiving a complaint about its bias against Israel.
The programme, made by Jezza Neumann, documents the life of children in Gaza in January 2009 following Operation Cast Lead.