EDITOR: Even Haaretz is a willing participant in the settlers campaign against civil rights activists!
Read the shocking evidence below, about the fake ad published in Haaretz. This was really silenced in Israel, of course.
HAARETZ PUBLISHES FRAUDULENT AD SUPPORTING SETTLER PRICE TAG ATTACKS WITH FORGED PEACE ACTIVIST NAMES: Tikun_Olam
There is a brewing media scandal in Israel that has received scant attention. Let’s try to change that. Earlier this week, a fictitious settler group published an ad in Haaretz supporting price tag attacks. One point they made in their support was the claim that price tag attacks are civil disobedience in the same sense that Ilana Hammerman’s group, We Do Not Obey, is. She is the activist who began a protest movement by driving Palestinian mothers and children from the West Bank into Israel in order to take them to the beach, amusement parks, zoos, etc. For her efforts, she’s been rewarded by three police summonses for questioning including a warning of criminal prosecution. It is illegal both for Palestinians to enter Israel without proper permits and it is illegal for Israeli citizens to bring such individuals into Israel.
We Do Not Obey acts in ways that are totally non-violent and designed to promote tolerance and peaceful co-existence between Israelis and Palestinians while price tag is a violent, abusive and illegal form, not of civil disobedience, but of hooliganism and even terror. The very comparison of the two is an act of outrageous chutzpah.
What is even more shocking about the ad than the bogus logic of the argument offered in it, is the fact that the ad purported to be signed by settler women who support the price tag acts of vandalism and defacement of Palestinian mosques, cemeteries, etc. It also listed the purported settlements in which each endorser lived. In reality, every woman’s name included in the ad is a member of Ilana Hammerman’s group of peace activists. In other words, the individual who created the ad engaged in an act of fraud and Haaretz abetted the fraud by accepting the ad and asking no questions to verify the authenticity of those names. Nor did it verify the authenticity of the fake group which purported to sponsor the ad.
CORRECTION: The information in the following paragraph was provided by sources close to this story. But it was incomplete. Haaretz’s weekend supplement editor had told Ilana before the ad was published that she would not be asked further to write about her activism in that section, which is the most popular and widely read. This decision was independent of the ad controversy and did not effect her publishing for other sections of the paper, which are still open to her.
Further, after Haaretz discovered it had been duped, it notified Hammerman that it would no longer accept any op-ed pieces by her about her work with We Do Not Obey (as it had in the past). It appears that Haaretz, instead of blaming the person who perpetrated the fraud, is washing its hands of Hammerman and her entire movement. A clear case if there ever was one of blaming the victim. Instead of showing respect for fairness and freedom of speech, and apologizing for their error in helping defame these women, Haaretz takes a typically liberal approach and absconds from the entire controversy.
We now know who is the author of the fraud. He is Benny Katzover, a notorious settler activist. Here is the audio transcript of the interview in which he took credit for the ad. Among his recent claims to fame (or better yet, infamy) is an interview he published in a Chabad journal, claiming the Israeli democracy had outlived its usefulness and should give way to a state governed by Jewish law (“We didn’t come here to establish a democratic state”). Does anyone besides me find it ironic (or possibly sociopathic) that a radical settler who rejects Israeli democracy defends price tag attacks as legitimate forms of civil disobedience?
We don’t know who paid for the $1,000-1,500 cost of the ad. Haaretz knows, but I doubt they’re going to tell. A source I’ve consulted who is knowledgeable about the story believes that the funding came from either a settlement or a settler agency, which may mean that the State itself paid for the ad (either directly or indirectly). In fact, a statement on the group’s Facebook page declares the ad was likely paid for through public funds. This would mean that this act of fraud was actually endorsed and paid for by a government entity and the taxpayers of Israel. Further, it would mean that public funds were used to endorse the acts of hooliganism and lawlessness represented by the price tag movement. In the event that this claim is true, it would mean that while Israel’s leaders are publicly decrying price tag pogromism, other parts of the Israeli government or its public agencies are actually endorsing it. Does this surprise anyone?
It also shouldn’t surprise anyone the government would smear Hammerman since her activism is considered a prime example of delegitimization, the right-wing concept du jour. Yuli Edelstein’s Hasbara ministry is charged with combatting delegitimization and Edelstein himself is a prominent settler leader. It wouldn’t be beyond the realm of possibility that his agency could’ve played some role in the attack, though I’m still exploring this angle of the story.
The women of We Do Not Obey have been consulting an attorney to decide how to proceed. It’s ironic that the draconian proposed defamation law that may shortly pass the Knesset and become law would greatly aid these women in their pursuit of justice. It would allow them to personally win substantial financial compensation of up to $75,000 each (for 40 women) from Katzover without having to prove any financial damage to them. The Israeli far-right devised this cockamamie law to use against the Israeli NGO and peace activist community. It never occurred to them that it could be used against them as well by the Israeli left. That’s how smart these dullards are.
EDITOR: Israeli racism and discrimination – no longer possible to hide under the carpet…
Racism against black Jews in Israel, and even more against black non-Jews, has become so intense that it inhabits much of the media output this week. I have gathered a range of articles, all dealing with this growing alienation of blacks in Israel. If that is how Israeli society, this Jewish Democracy, treats black Jews, one can easily imagine how they treat the Palestinians.
If anything, the article below is infuriating in its insistence of denial – in the name of liberal values, it continues to deny the racist basis of Zionism and Israeli policies. If only they just continued to apply racism to the Palestinians, that would be OK, supposedly… The idea of a Jewish state, racist in itself, does not bother him. On the contrary, he is claiming that in that name he wished racism against Jews to cease… Racism and discrimination on the basis of religion are so normalised into the ideology and state structure and practice, that to dislodge them is an impossible task.
Israeli society is tainted by racism: Haartez
Our muted reaction to the treatment of Ethiopian-Israelis in Kiryat Malakhi is a silence that damns us all.
By Anshel Pfeffer
I hate writing about racism. It is such a heavy and deadening word, though people seem to glibly toss it around. I feel that accusing a person of being a racist, or ascribing racism to entire groups and societies, is such a terrible charge that it does not allow us to carry on a rational debate once it has been made. It just taints everything and everyone, and the moment it is out there, we can’t trust ourselves to say or even think freely, lest we be associated and tarred by the same brush.
We don’t think of ourselves or the ones we love as racists. If a friend or family member lets slip an ethnic slur or bigoted remark, we make up some kind of excuse in our mind. It was just a careless utterance, we say to ourselves; she’s a bit old-fashioned and not entirely aware of today’s sensibilities; he just expressed himself badly, that wasn’t actually what he meant.
Of course we can’t be close to a racist. Even when it’s not people we personally know, if they resemble us at all – not members of a closed and blinkered community or citizens of some other backward country, but just ordinary people – we don’t want to believe they are racists. Racism is a heinous crime, like being a murderer. Only twisted and depraved individuals are capable of it, not people like you and me.
The very idea that 120 homeowners in Kiryat Malakhi, ordinary mainstream Israelis, signed a secret undertaking not to sell or rent their apartments to Israeli-Ethiopian families – as reported by Channel 2 last week – is so awful that I really want to believe the denials, as faint as they are. A few residents who were prepared to voice crude and vulgar opinions on screen can be explained away as ill-educated misfits, but 120 of them? But the fact remains, not one Israeli-Ethiopian lives in those four new apartment towers, though some have tried to rent there. And this in a town with a sizable Ethiopian community that suffers housing shortages.
What makes this story even more awful is that, since I can’t fathom every one of those 120 owners being racist, I start making excuses for them in my mind. They are not to be blamed for the housing market, after all. Is it their fault that when large numbers of Israeli-Ethiopian families move into a neighborhood, the apartment prices are driven down? After all, these apartments are their main asset: If the value goes down by ten or twenty percent, or even more, is it their responsibility to suffer a severe financial penalty for the cold real-estate realities?
How many of us can say without hesitation that we would jeopardize our property and fortunes so as not to be part of a racist agreement? Most of us live in neighborhoods where we will not be confronted with that dilemma. But does a racial current running through the property business mean that an entire society is racist? That depends on our definition of a racist. Does remaining silent qualify? What about the fact that hundreds of thousands of middle-class Israelis took to the streets last summer to protest against the tax burden and the high prices, but last week in Kiryat Malakhi only a couple of thousand protestors, mainly Israeli-Ethiopians, turned up. That doesn’t make those who marched on Rothschild Boulevard racist, but they did not make the short drive down to support the protest in Kiryat Malakhi.
Israelis are extremely sensitive to having their society branded as racist. And in many ways that sensitivity is justified. The state was founded by the survivors of the worst racist crime in history, and many of those who arrived from Arab lands were also the victims of a racist forced expulsion. The countries around us are much more sectarian, while many other western societies suffer from similar ills, yet the international media does single Israel out to a disproportionate degree.
Israel frequently gets called an apartheid state, a comparison that is not only historically erroneous but also counterproductive when used to describe the situation of Israeli Arabs and Palestinians under occupation. Arabs are discriminated in Israel and the Palestinians should have their own state, instead of being occupied, but the racist tendencies on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are symptoms, not root causes. A state for the Jews in the historical land of Israel was a necessary creation and can still be a noble enterprise, not a racist concept.
But while you can oppose the two-state solution for legitimate and nonracist reasons, discrimination of Israeli-Ethiopians has no political or national basis. It can stem only from racist feelings. And since almost none of us do anything about this, we are all at least tainted by racism.
Tenuous connection
There are different theories and opinions regarding the actual historical connection of the Beta Israel to the Jewish people. From what I have read and seen, I think this was tenuous at best. After covering this issue closely, I don’t think the Falashmura still in Ethiopia have any claim to Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return. And on a totally different level, after eating at Ethiopian restaurants in Israel, the United States and Ethiopia, I have to say that it is one of my least favorite cuisines.
But while these opinions and culinary dislikes are based on my research and personal palate, I write them with trepidation because they resemble racist tropes that you can hear today around Israel. What if I am unwittingly giving succor to racists? And looking within myself, can I be totally certain that I am writing without a gram of racism of my own? It is, after all, a human emotion.
Israel has adequate legislation against racist discrimination, and occasionally this is implemented effectively. But we must acknowledge that racism is prevalent on a local level – and not only in the low-income areas, where access to education, employment, decent housing and social services is relatively limited and Israeli-Ethiopians lose out to other communities with better connections and more resources. The indifference of ordinary Israelis to this situation may not make them racists themselves. But by hiding our heads in the utopian sand, we are willing accomplices to racism.
Hundreds expected to demonstrate against racism in Kiryat Malakhi: Haaretz
Hate graffiti against Israelis of Ethiopian origin sprayed on several vehicles and walls in Kiryat Malakhi Sunday.
By Revital Blumenfeld
Hundreds of people are expected to demonstrate in Kiryat Malakhi Tuesday against a recent spate of racist incidents aimed at Israelis of Ethiopian origin in the southern town.
Hate graffiti against Israelis of Ethiopian origin was sprayed on several vehicles and walls in Kiryat Malakhi on Sunday. The vandalism follows last week’s report that more than 100 families had signed a confidential agreement with their residential committee not to rent or sell property to Ethiopian Jews on their block.
Some graffiti said “Ethiopian price tag,” using the term (“price tag” ) rightist extremists use for their attacks and vandalism against Palestinians and peace activists.
“People are coming to cry out, to say enough,” said Uri Brihon, one of the demonstration organizers and founder of the organization United Ethiopians. “We may come from another country but we’re part of this merging of exiles. We have served in combat military units, we have given all of ourselves. This is extremely painful.”
Some 800 people from all over the country have joined a Facebook group calling to join Tuesday’s protest in the Kiryat Malakhi neighborhood whose residents signed the agreement.
“We believe in coexistence,” Yossi Menegisto, acting general manager of the Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews, said on Monday. “Nobody has the right to tell anyone where to live and why. As long as someone rents an apartment by law, nobody can prevent him from doing so. We hope the mayor takes legal measures against those who don’t want to sell apartments to Israelis of Ethiopian descent, as he promised in the media.”
Menegisto blasted politicians and civil rights groups for not condemning the racist manifestations in Kiryat Malakhi.
“I haven’t heard a single minister, not even the absorption minister in charge of all the immigrants, or the social affairs minister, say one word on the issue. Nor have any of the democratic social organizations advocating coexistence, which we saw on the streets in the summer, denounced it … It’s a matter concerning all of society. We are part of society, like it or not. Ignoring these manifestations only prepares the ground for the next racist incidents,” he said.
Community leaders of Israelis of Ethiopian origin condemned the incidents, which they say are taking place in other cities as well, including Rishon Letzion, Ashkelon and Beit Shemesh.
“We expect the people to join us and support us. The establishment, the government have created this separation … Our lives in separate communities are a stereotype the media inflicted on us,” Brihon said.
On Thursday the protesters plan to demonstrate outside the prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem.
Kiryat Malakhi demonstrators: Proud of our skin color: Haaretz
Members of the Ethiopian immigrant community in the southern Israeli town say that local homeowners’ committees refuse to sell them houses.
By Revital Blumenfeld and Yanir Yagna
About 2,000 people gathered yesterday afternoon across from the Kiryat Malakhi municipality, carrying signs reading “Down with Racism,” “We Are All Equal,” “Down with Discrimination” and “Discrimination Destroys the Foundations of Democracy.” Members of the Ethiopian immigrant community in this southern Israeli town say that local homeowners’ committees refuse to sell to them.
They were joined by hundreds of people who came from around the country to support them. There were fellow Ethiopian
“I am proud to say that I love the State of Israel with every fiber of my being,” community activist Rami Yaakov told the crowd. “Unfortunately, being Ethiopian in Israel is to be ‘other,’ weakened, ostracized, to be constantly doubted. Some people have forgotten the Holocaust and the Race Laws of Nazi Germany. To all the skeptics, I want to say that we are here and we shall not be moved. To all the racists, I want to say that we are proud of the color of our skin. The state and government of Israel must carry out a moral reckoning over the condition of our community. I ask the prime minister, the president and the Knesset to take a stand and denounce the spread of racism in our country,” Yaakov said.
MK Ilan Gilon (Meretz), who came to the protest, said he is promoting a bill that would prohibit housing discrimination. The proposed legislation will be submitted to the Knesset within a few days, he said.
“Israel made many mistakes in absorbing Jews from Ethiopia. We cannot change history, but we must prevent racist acts and bring about the full integration of members of the Ethiopian community,” Gilon stated.
The Coalition Against Racism in Israel, which organized transportation to Kiryat Malakhi from a few locations around the country, partnered with local residents who began planning the demonstration last week, along with organizations representing the Ethiopian community.
“Racism harms us all, and it is impossible to separate the discrimination against Ethiopians in Israel from the discrimination against Arabs or Russian-speakers,” said Rabia Elsagir of Shfaram, a coordinator for CARI who came to the protest with a small number of Israeli Arabs.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel issued a statement condemning discrimination against the Ethiopian community. The organization said the extraordinary session of the Knesset Committee for Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs convening tomorrow to discuss the issue should put forth legislation prohibiting discrimination in housing.
“The authorities must clearly state that they do not accept displays of racism and discrimination, and are taking clear and decisive steps to eradicate them,” ACRI said in the statement. The organization is seeking a legal amendment that would give the Real Estate Registrar the authority to suspend or even cancel the license of a real estate agent who discriminates against clients on the basis of their ethnic origin.
The association said that real estate agencies in Kiryat Malakhi that allegedly engaged in discriminatory practices could face fines of up to NIS 150,600 for violating the law prohibiting discrimination in regard to goods and services.
“I’m tired of hearing all the time about such cases. This time it reached our door so we decided to raise our voices, but we’re protesting on behalf of the entire society, not just the Ethiopian community,” said Shay Wanda, 31, a captain in the army reserves who has lived in Kiryat Malakhi since 1994.
“It’s the first time we young people are joining with the older people and going out together to protest against racism in Israeli society,” Wanda said. “I was in the standing army for three years, I lost friends in military operations, and I am part of this country. At the end of the day we all have the same blood – skin color isn’t what counts,” he said.
We thank you, Dear Leader: Haaretz
We naively believed that public money is allocated because it is deserved, according to egalitarian and transparent criteria, and that there is no need to plead and flatter. The situation has changed.
By Yossi Sarid
Immigrant Absorption Minister Sofa Landver has recommended that Ethiopian immigrants say thank you to the government. We can only guess for what: Thank you for taking us out of the jungle to a villa; thank you in the name of our children who study in ghettos; thank you to the neighbors who can’t stand the smell; thank you to the nightclubs that make us stay outside when we’re on leave from the army; thank you to the Health Ministry for destroying our blood donations; thank you to the rabbis who force us to undergo a giyur lechumra (conversions done in cases where doubt exists ).
This week we came across another expression of thanks. The Council of Youth Movements published an advertisement: “Thank you! We congratulate the prime minister and the education minister for increasing our support during their term…”
There is a new custom in the country – no more ingratitude toward our benefactors. Who deserves thanks and congratulations? The government and the kingdom. We thank you, Big Brother and Dear Leader. After all, we know that rulers bring the money from home – if they so desire, they are generous; if they so desire, they are tightfisted. And the subjects benefit from their goodness, because they live and operate thanks to loving kindness and not by right.
We naively believed that public money is allocated because it is deserved, according to egalitarian and transparent criteria, and that there is no need to plead and flatter. The situation has changed. More than the country having an obligation to its people, the citizens now have an obligation to the country, and they should say thank you nicely. And if it has graced us with several millions from its budget, we will not stint on several thousand shekels for an ad. And it was actually the youth movements that saw fit to bequeath to their members the new culture of gift-giving. Did they receive an “increase” because of their beautiful and pleading eyes, or because of their welcome activity that is deserving of support?
There are also parents who believe that they deserve a constant thank you from their children, because they got into bed and brought them into the world. That is why they are permitted to treat their offspring as their property. And there are employers who behave like benefactors, because the workers are their possessions.
And it is no longer clear who is working for whom – is our mother government working for us or are we working for her, and who should thank whom: “That is why we will work, that is why we will always work hard, on all the weekdays, the burden is heavy, the burden is pleasant! And during our free time we will sing aloud songs of thanks, songs of blessing” (words – the Prime Minister’s Office; melody – a folk tune ).
This week, an anonymous woman died in Jerusalem. She was a teacher, and for 60 years she lived in the Katamon neighborhood, in a rent-controlled housing project. Those coming to console the family in the deceased’s apartment were amazed: a full and rich life lived among popularly-priced furniture from the 1950s.
When relatives called her, she had no time for small talk. She was busy preparing a lesson plan, as though it was her last day in the classroom. Sometimes she phoned on her own initiative, in order to express anger: Did you hear, as she did, the chutzpah of the immigrant absorption minister or one of her colleagues? Did you also just see an Ethiopian child who goes to bed hungry? I think that in recent years, she felt like a stranger in her own country.
Once she had good connections in the Education Ministry, when her father was the director general and her brother the minister. But she didn’t want to advance anywhere. For her, educating children in fourth or fifth grade was the height of advancement. Give them to me when they’re young, she said, before they’re too old to be molded.
In the name of my sister, Hadassah Avtalion, I would also hereby like to give thanks: Thank you, dear country, for everything you gave her; for granting her the privilege of teaching for 45 years, and making her feel like a volunteer; for being so kind as to give her a pension of NIS 3,400 a month.
And thank you to our leaders, who managed to infuriate her to her dying day with their inarticulateness, with their false promises, and with their extravagant lifestyle. They are ruining my children, she said angrily. And that’s how the fire burned within her, even when she was fading away.
Israel set to deport 2,000 Ivory Coast asylum-seekers: Haaretz
No UN decision on refugee status, but Foreign Ministry calls situation ‘stable.’
By Dana Weiler-Polak and Maya Lecker
Bernard Abett sat in his spacious living room in Tel Aviv watching an African television channel he receives via satellite dish. A Christmas tree still stood in the room, whose matching furniture made clear that this wasn’t a temporary residence.
“I didn’t come here to stay,” Abett said. “I have a home, and it’s in Ivory Coast. That’s where my heart is, and that’s where I’ll return. But right now, my life is in danger.”
Abett came to Israel in 1997 in search of financial opportunity. In 2000, having found nothing but cleaning jobs, he decided to go home. But then Ivory Coast’s civil war erupted and Abett decided he was safer here. Like other Ivorians, he could do so because the UN High Commissioner for Refugees had granted Ivorians collective protection from deportation while the unrest in their country continued.
But three weeks ago, the Population and Immigration Authority announced that this group protection would expire at the end of January, because the fighting had ended, and the Foreign Ministry had determined that refugees could return safely. It advised the 2,000 Ivorians in the country to prepare to leave within a month, adding that if they didn’t leave voluntarily, they would be deported come February.
The authority justified this extremely short notice on the grounds that it had warned Ivorians to prepare for departure back in May, even though at that time it didn’t specify a deadline.
Abett, who lives here with his girlfriend and her 3-year-old daughter, said he heard about the planned deportation only on January 10, when he paid his monthly visit to the authority to get his visa renewed.
“They told me this was the last time,” he said. “I was very surprised, because they always said the state was discussing the matter but there’s no decision. And after years, you don’t expected to be told one morning, ‘Pack up, you have only 20 days left.'”
This isn’t nearly enough time, he added, because people have to give notice to their employers and their landlord, “and the late notice will cost us thousands of shekels that we won’t get [from our employers].”
Abett believes most Ivorians will nevertheless depart by the deadline, for fear of arrest. But while UNHCR and human rights organizations say that Ivorians from the country’s north – where Ivory Coast’s new president comes from – generally feel safe returning, members of certain southern tribes identified with the former president are still at risk.
“A few months ago, my brother was kidnapped and killed because he was a political activist,” Abett said. “Immediately afterward, my mother and sister fled because they feared for their lives. I’m not politically active but, because of my brother, they might hunt down everyone in the family to get revenge. In the coming days, I’ll apply for asylum in the hope that they’ll understand my situation.”
UNHCR says it is not currently encouraging refugees to return to Ivory Coast. At a meeting of the Knesset Committee on Foreign Workers last week, Sharon Harel of UNHCR said that, while the situation in Ivory Coast has definitely improved, there are still reports of severe human rights violations there.
Moreover, she said, in previous cases where collective protection was ended, Israel generally gave people a year’s notice – time enough to wind down their affairs in an orderly fashion.
But Israel is not the first to begin repatriation. UN data shows that Norway and Sweden began repatriating Ivorians in June 2011 and, since August, UNHCR itself has signed agreements to voluntarily repatriate Ivorians with the governments of Liberia, Ghana, Guinea and Togo – though not Israel. Altogether, UNHCR expects some 50,000 Ivorians to return this year.
Over the past year, 24 percent of Ivorians who sought asylum in Europe on an individual basis received it, compared to only 0.1 percent of those who did so in Israel over the past three years. Germany, for instance, approved 10 out of 45 asylum applications in 2011; Spain approved 30 out of 115; and England, which isn’t yet repatriating Ivorians, approved 20 out of 130. Israel, in contrast, approved only two out of 1,500 requests in 2009-2011.
Hundreds of asylum requests
Yapi Yves-Cesaire came to Israel in 1996. He met and married his wife, a fellow Ivorian, here and they now have two children – Yafit and Ariel. “We had no doubt their names would be Israeli,” he said. “They are part of the country that protected us and treated us well. And that’s how we’d like to end it – but only once it’s safe.”
His parents were killed during the fighting in 2000, and more recently his sister was badly injured. “She was in the village when the new president’s army came,” he explained. “Because he’s from the north, and knows our southern village supported the former president, his people attacked anyone who dared to open their mouth, including her. Today, she and my brother are in Ghana, and nobody is thinking of returning until we know for sure the situation has improved … Two of my friends who returned in 2009 were killed there. I don’t want that to be our future.”
But the short notice is a problem for those southerners who want to request asylum, because the department that approves asylum applications has only nine employees and will have trouble reviewing the expected hundreds of applications in a mere 20 to 30 days.
Nor is danger the only problem. Amido Kita, who has been here since 2008, is currently suing the hotel where he worked for three years over unpaid wages. The case is slated to be heard in May, but if the Population Authority has its way, he won’t be here. “I worked for three years without being paid, and if they deport me I’ll never get my pay and my rights, which are worth hundreds of thousands of shekels,” he said. “I just want them to let me attend the hearing, and once I get the money I’ll leave Israel. I didn’t come here to stay, but only to escape Ivory Coast.”
The Hotline for Migrant Workers asked the authority to let Kita and 23 other Ivorians in special circumstances stay for another few months, but the authority rejected all the applications collectively, without studying each one individually, and without offering any reason for its decision. The hotline now plans to appeal the decision to the courts, as it “mainly serves unjust employers who broke the law and didn’t pay their workers,” said its attorney, Asaf Weitzen. “This decision also gives these employers an incentive to continue breaking the law.”
The Population Authority declined to explain why it rejected the applications for extra time, how the asylum requests could be processed in time or why it doesn’t just extend the deadline for everyone. Ivorians, it said, were given “orderly notice back in May” and should have used the time to prepare. Any individual request for an extension or exemption “will be studied,” it said.
A toast to the captain of Israel’s own ‘Concordia’: Haaretz
Israeli democracy has already cracked, the ship is on its side, water is flooding it and threatening to sink it – and the captains are ‘coordinating.’
By Gideon Levy
The Costa Concordia was a luxury cruise liner – new, sophisticated, the creme de la creme. It was 290 meters long, had no fewer than 2,000 passenger cabins and had everything — restaurants, swimming pools, gyms and dance halls. Its safety systems were state-of-the-art.
Huge ships like that, experts said, never sink. The captain, Francesco Schettino, once said that while he would not have wanted to be the skipper on the Titanic, “with proper preparation one can overcome any situation.”
Ah, yes, bread and circuses, just bread and circuses. First World vacationers were enjoying it, while Third World sailors were sailing it. Sail on, sail on, my ship.
The last supper on the Concordia was also wonderful. They say that the Italian captain was whispering in the ear of a woman at the bar, and drank a toast to the two of them. Natan Alterman also once raised a toast to an Italian ship captain: “The wind lashed the sea, and the sea lashed the ship, yet the task was completed. We drink to you, Captain, and lift our glass high; we’ll meet again on these waters” (from “A Response to an Italian Captain” ). But we won’t be meeting Schettino on the waters any time soon.
Before midnight, the passengers heard a loud thump. The ship’s crew rushed to announce on the public address system that there was no reason to panic; it was an electrical problem. Only after the second thump did the small group of Israeli passengers run for their flotation devices and money. They realized there wasn’t much time. Thus did all the other passengers and crew. Schettino hurried more than all of them; he was one of the first to flee the ship. And his shame was recorded for all to hear.
“Schettino? Listen Schettino, there are people trapped onboard. You have to go back with your lifeboat,” yelled a Coast Guard officer.
But Schettino was already sipping coffee on shore.
Coast Guard: “What are you doing?”
Schettino: “I’m coordinating the rescue.”
“What are you coordinating there? Get back onboard!”
“I’m not going back; I’m with my second-in-command, Dmitry…do you realize it’s dark and we can’t see anything?”
Coast Guard: “You’ve been saying that for an hour already…get back there now!” End quote.
This incident occurred just when people are making reservations for summer cruises. Israeli cruise officials are calm, “we haven’t seen any change in demand,” they said. The Concordia is sunk, a dozen are dead, dozens are missing and there’s around a billion dollars in damage. End of story.
Just when we were sure we’d worn out the cliche about Israel being like the Titanic, sailing blindly toward the icebergs without opening her eyes to the dangers, comes the Concordia, which ran aground on a reef because of its officers’ arrogance. It’s so familiar, so similar.
While our leaders don’t have to flee for their lives like Francesco and his first officer Dmitry – they are well protected, even when onboard ship -they never stop fleeing from their responsibilities.
Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, like Francesco and Dmitry, merely want to survive, and the hell with their ship. Our Concordia risks being cracked open because of their arrogance.
We are also told there’s no reason to panic – after all, Israel, like the Concordia, is the best equipped and the most advanced. They also want to impress those living on the surrounding islands with how big and strong we are, and that’s also likely to run us aground. Until then, bread and circuses and conceit.
What better analogy could there be to describe Israel’s situation in 2012? The captain claims he’s “coordinating,” but the truth is that he is drinking coffee and doing nothing. Like Schettino, he sees nothing. The ship is on its side, the occupation continues and there is no longer any diplomatic process, while Iranian scientists are being mysteriously assassinated just to show someone’s long reach.
Israeli democracy has already cracked, the ship is on its side, water is flooding it and threatening to sink it – and the captains are “coordinating.”
Here’s to you, Captain! Let’s raise a toast to the Italian captain, who isn’t that much different from our own.
Shameful discrimination in Israel: Haaretz Editorial
Thousands of Israeli couples are forced to marry overseas or live as common-law spouses because of the ongoing capitulation by successive Israeli governments to the rule of the rabbinical establishment.
The fact that the Interior Ministry’s Population Administration prevents the spouses of gay Israelis from obtaining citizenship is a clear and outrageous case of discrimination. And the authority’s reasons for this rule, as given to Haaretz reporter Dana Weiler-Polak on Wednesday, reflect a primitive attitude.
Because of this attitude, the state doesn’t recognize same-sex marriages for the purpose of obtaining citizenship, because they don’t “meet [Israel’s] criteria for marriage.” Nevertheless, it makes sure to collect taxes and national insurance payments from these couples as if they were married.
In other words, when it comes to their obligations to the state, gay couples are considered married in every respect. But when it comes to their rights, they are defined merely as “maintaining a joint household.”
This is an unacceptable double standard, characteristic of the darkest regimes. Gay couples are entitled to full recognition by the establishment. All discrimination based on sexual orientation is illegitimate, because it violates a fundamental liberty: a person’s right to choose his own life partner without interference from the state.
The Population Administration’s primitive rule also creates unnecessary complications, especially for couples who are raising children. Should the Israeli spouse die, for instance, the remaining spouse may well lose his children. Because he isn’t an Israeli citizen, he can’t adopt them, and therefore he won’t be recognized as the parent, even if he is the one who raised them.
Last May, the prime minister boasted to the U.S. Congress that Israel – unlike every other country in the Middle East – grants full acceptance to the gay-lesbian community. But his boasts are belied by the fact that the state has entrusted decisions about every Israeli’s personal status to an ultra-Orthodox monopoly that is becoming ever more extreme.
Thousands of Israeli couples are forced to marry overseas or live as common-law spouses because of the ongoing capitulation by successive Israeli governments to the rule of the rabbinical establishment. Given this reality, it’s hard to even imagine the state granting full recognition to the rights of same-sex couples.
For all the live-and-let-live openness of Israel’s public – especially in Tel Aviv, recently voted the world’s best destination for gay travelers – the establishment is becoming ever more closed-minded. It is embittering the lives of all its citizens, and even more so the lives of those seeking to become its citizens.
The Twilight Zone / The lost boys of Levinsky: Haaretz
Ishaq-Muhammad-Sayid made it out of Darfur all the way to Tel Aviv’s Levinsky Park, but as long as the state uses scare tactics to make sure he can’t find work, he’ll have to continue sleeping under a slide and begging for food.
By Gideon Levy and Miki Kratsman
The sun has already risen over Levinsky Park in Tel Aviv, the home of Ishaq-Muhammad-Sayid-Fata-al-Rahman but he is still shivering from the cold. It’s been a week since his last shower, at Saharonim Prison.
It’s been nearly a whole day since he had anything to eat – since the last meal of leftovers brought to him yesterday at noontime by refugees from Eritrea who had been celebrating a wedding.
He spent the night, like the seven before it, under the colorful children’s slide. A thin and tattered blanket he received from one of the aid organizations did not do the trick against the cold.
Nor did the clothes he was wearing, the same he had on when he set out about a month ago from his home in Darfur, Sudan. His shoes did not even complete that journey. They were confiscated from him by Bedouin in Sinai, who ordered him to remove them so he could run more easily from the Egyptian soldiers.
Now Ishaq-Muhammad-Sayid is wearing the rubber flip-flops he was given at the prison in Israel. He is desperate. Only twice during the day we spent with him this week did he show any sparks of life: The first time was when he managed to read the sign saying Hayarkon Street in Arabic and the second was after the meeting at Assaf: The Aid Organization for Refugees and Asylum Seekers, where he received explanations of his meager rights, and was able, on his return to the park, a de facto community center for refugees, to serve for a moment as a guide for the asylum seekers gathered there.
At Assaf, a wonderful but impecunious aid organization that helps hundreds of asylum seekers, they also promised him they would try to find him a place to shower, but by nightfall no shower had been found and Ishaq-Muhammad-Sayid again settled in for the night, a carton for his bed and the slide for a roof over his head.
It is a bit after 7:00 in the morning, and the line is getting longer for the amazingly clean and orderly toilets at the corner of Levinsky Park, where it slopes down to the old Tel Aviv central bus station. The toilets are closed at night and now the Africans are standing in line for the two tiny stalls above which an Israeli flag – also tiny – flies.
The adjacent building has a sign reading “Etz Chaim [Tree of Life]: the Synagogue for the Mountain Jews of the Caucasus in Israel.”
The park is clean and well-tended, certainly taking into account that it serves as a nighttime hideaway for so many people – asylum seekers – especially during their first days in the metropolis.
The line of people standing and waiting for a day’s work in what is bitterly referred to by some as the “slave market” at the edge of the park has also grown longer, but not a single car has stopped. In the past few days, since the passage of the “infiltrators law,” which threatens to throw these unfortunates into prison for three years without trial and to incarcerate anyone who employs them for up to 15 years – if their workers were involved in terror or drug smuggling, something rare but sufficient to terrify potential Israeli employers – no one has come.
The sign says: “Dear Visitor, at this site it is prohibited to let dogs roam unleashed, to hold private events and to light fires.”
A night’s sleep is not considered a private event. Next to the water fountains, which in a pinch serve as a shower here, sprawls an African absorbed in reading a book in English, “Peace with God.”
Noa Kaufman, of Kav LaOved – Workers Hotline, is making the rounds of the people clustered in the park. They cluster around her. Some of them ride for hours on the swings intended for children.
“Go back to Africa,” shouts a passerby with a heavy Russian accent. Graffiti on a nearby wall, accompanied by a Star of David, reads, “We have come to expel the darkness,” words from a Hanukkah song. Scores of Sudanese and Eritreans sprawl basking in the sun with nothing to do.
Sundae Dean, who comes from Southern Sudan, has been in Israel for six years and is now a student of political science at Tel Aviv University, a rare success story with a Blackberry in his hand and patent leather shoes on his feet. Dean serves as our translator to Sudanese Arabic.
Refugees need not apply
Ishaq-Muhammad-Sayid, 31, was born in Jebel Marra in Darfur, one of nine children in his family. He completed high school and dreamed of becoming a journalist, but when the war broke out and the poverty and hunger spread, he decided to flee. When he heard about Israel, “a good place, a democracy where there are good people and work,” as he says, he decided to try his luck.
He saved the money for the trip, $1,500, from three years of work mining gold.
On December 18, about a month ago, he bid farewell to his parents and his siblings and traveled to Khartoum, the Sudanese capital. In Khartoum he received a visa for Egypt and bought a plane ticket to Cairo. On December 24 he flew to Cairo, slept three nights in a storeroom and hooked up with Bedouin who promised to take him to the Israeli border, in return for a lot of money.
There were 13 Sudanese who set out on the way. The Bedouin abuse many African labor migrants but not the Sudanese, who speak their language. Late at night, the migrants crossed the border, and, after trying to evade capture for several hours, they were detained by Israel Defense Forces soldiers.
They were taken to a military base and from there to Saharonim Prison, where they spent 13 days.
Finally they were released and given a bus ticket to Tel Aviv and a four-month residency permit. On it is stamped: “This temporary license does not constitute a work permit.”
Daniel Sher, the border control supervisor, wrote in the permit: “I have decided to release the bearer under the following conditions: He will cooperate fully with the state authorities for the issuance of a travel document for leaving Israel or for enabling temporary residence in Israel, as decided.”
Israel allows his entry and is prohibited from deporting him, since he is an asylum-seeker, but it does not allow him and tens-of-thousands of people like him to work here. However, according to a bulletin issued last month by a number of refugee aid organizations, the state explicitly told the High Court of Justice it would not enforce the prohibition on work and employment until the construction of “the holding facility for infiltrators from across the Egyptian border.”
According to the document, which the organizations distribute to the many employment seekers who apply to them so they can show it to potential employers, as of the date of its publication, asylum-seekers in Israel are entitled to work at any job, anywhere in the country, and there is no need for a permit to employ them.
But to no avail: The explicit stamp prohibiting them from working, which appears in the permit, and the incitement and scare campaigns, serve to deter many employers from hiring them.
Ishaq-Muhammad-Sayid set out for the big city last week along with another 105 labor migrants who were released from the prison that same day. At the beginning of last week he still had $100 in his pocket, the remnants of his savings, but the money ran out immediately after he used it to buy food for himself and others.
At the moment, all he has in his pocket are his passport, his Sudanese identity card, the Israeli residence permit, a plastic card issued by a Sudanese human rights organization and a slip of paper with the phone numbers of his family in Darfur, whom he has called only once since he left his village. At that time he told them there is no work in Israel and that he was in despair.
“Maybe you’ll try to get to America, Canada or Australia,” said his mother, trying to encourage him from Jebel Marra. All his attempts to find work, if only for a day, have failed.
In the rain he huddles into a sheet of plastic, in the cold he wraps himself into the tattered woolen blanket. None of the Sudanese who have already found a job and lodging have invited him to stay with them in their apartment. Not even to take a shower.
He is convinced that if he spoke English or Hebrew he would already have succeeded in finding work. During the day, as we made the rounds of restaurants, cafes and construction sites, it was evident that he was embarrassed to apply to employers, in part because of the language barrier.
The transition from the meager refugee park to the fashionable Tel Aviv Port, reached via a Number 4 bus, was swift and sharp. Ishaq-Muhammad-Sayid went into the Castro fashion store, which has a sign advertising a “Final Sale, Last Opportunity” in its show window, and gazed silently at the stacks of clothing, at the sweaters and the jackets. He did not dare touch anything. Then he went out and inquired at several places if here was any work.
At one cafe he asked “shuroul?” – “work” in Arabic. And the sales clerk thought he was asking about chocolate. At a well-known fish restaurant – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres ate here once, and their photos are on the wall – they do in fact need workers, but not ones that have that stamp in their permit.
“Come after 5:30, Ovadiah the boss will be here and we’ll see,” one person says. But at 5:30 Ovadiah too explained to Ishaq-Muhammad-Sayid that he would not hire him, because of the stamp.
Maybe only on Saturdays, he finally conceded, because there aren’t any policemen then. The page of explanations and the page of information from the aid organizations were of no help. Nor was the intervention of Haaretz welfare correspondent Dana Weiler-Polak, who accompanied us for the whole day and told the people at the restaurant to take the identifying details of any policemen who violate the state’s commitment to the High Court of Justice.
We sit down for a meal, and Ishaq-Muhamad-Sayid is quiet as a fish. Afterwards, he goes out and stands, leaning on the railing of the pier, looking out sadly over the stormy sea, still silent. Toward evening he returns to his park, wraps himself in his blanket and goes to sleep under the slide – like yesterday, like the day before yesterday, like tomorrow.